Kelvin Long and Richard Osborne have seen to it that the British Interplanetary Society's conference on the highly influential science fiction writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon has gone off without a hitch. Here is their report from the event, a conference evidently as rife with speculation and far-future musings as anything the author himself ever penned. by K.F. Long & R. Osborne, Symposium Chairmen During the summer the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) played host to a symposium on World Ships, possibly the first such dedicated conference ever on these grand, long-term planning concepts. However, the most recent BIS symposium is on a topic that covers eons. There was no one who thought bigger and over longer timescales than the philosopher and writer Olaf Stapledon. Once again, the BIS has organized another first in history. On the 23rd of November members and visitors gathered to discuss the philosophy and literature of Stapledon in the context of today's current space...

Science fiction has been much on my mind of late, particularly following the 100 Year Starship Symposium, where so many of the scientists I talked to mentioned novels and movies that had been influential in getting them into science. My friend Keith Cooper, editor of Astronomy Now and a fine science writer whose work I often cite in these pages, also shares an interest in SF, and it was natural enough that we fell into a conversation by email on how the genre relates to interstellar studies. Because while we would expect a natural synergy between science and science fiction, the genre's cinematic and literary treatments are often at variance with each other. Why is this, and why are some elements of the interstellar idea easier to explore in writing than in film? Here are some thoughts (and memories) about science fiction's role. Paul Gilster Keith, you and I are both science fiction readers, although I'm enough old that I grew up in the heyday of Heinlein and all those great books...

What next for the 100 Year Starship Study? NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will make the call, as Tau Zero founder Marc Millis told Alan Boyle in his recent interview. To talk to Boyle, Millis donned virtual garb and appeared in Second Life in robotic form, but the interview is now available as a podcast on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. I'll send you there for the discussion in full, but do note that Boyle talked to Millis about starflight before the show and has made an edited transcript of that conversation available on Cosmic Log. The quotes I use below are from the earlier talk, but do pick up the podcast and listen to the whole thing. Where DARPA goes next is to make a decision about awarding the funds remaining from the $1 million originally put into the project. About $500,000 is available, and Centauri Dreams speculates that DARPA will be more than happy to allocate the funds and be done with them, thus removing 'starship funding' from a budget always...

Tau Zero in Second Life I have almost no experience with online virtual worlds like Second Life, but I do want to mention that Marc Millis will appear later today (Nov. 2) on the ‘Virtually Speaking’ talk show program, which can be accessed here as well as in Second Life. The focus of the interview is to be on prospects for interstellar travel, what a program like the 100-Year Starship can do, and what Tau Zero and other efforts (such as Project Icarus) are all about. The show begins at 9 PM Eastern time (0200 UTC) this evening, and may wind up being audio-only if the Second Life bit doesn’t work out. I’m sure it will, but Marc is as new to Second Life as I am, and my last experience with the medium had me wandering around in an enormous virtual house trying to find someone with whom I was supposed to be doing an online interview, and I remember being alternately intrigued and baffled by the options available to me. Old time Second Lifers will find this bizarre, I’m sure, but some of...

Nuclear rocket designs are hardly new. In fact, it was clear as early as the 1950s that conventional chemical rocketry was inefficient, and programs like Project Rover, set up to study the use of nuclear reactors to heat liquid hydrogen for propulsion, aimed at the kind of rockets that could get us beyond the Moon and on to Mars. The NERVA rocket technology (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) that grew out of all this showed great promise but ran afoul of political and economic issues even as the last Apollo missions were canceled. Nor is the public wariness of nuclear methods likely to vanish soon, yet another hurdle for future ideas. But making people aware of what has done and what could be done is good practice, as Kenneth Chang does by example in his recent piece on the 100 Year Starship Symposium, which bears the optimistic title Not Such a Stretch to Reach for the Stars. In interstellar terms, propulsion is the biggest problem of all. Chang's article suggests a...

We've been talking lately about space missions designed to maximize science vs. those that are at least partly geared toward public relations. But most missions will have both components, the need for public support being woven into the fabric of our ambitions. As we try, then, to ramp up the scientific return, what can we also do to keep the public engaged and instill interest in space exploration? One answer came from Wernher von Braun's massive project for space exploration, described in a series of articles on space presented by Collier's magazine from March of 1952 to April, 1954. Let's put aside all the technical problems of the von Braun concept and concentrate on it as an incentive for space missions. Al Jackson, with whom I enjoyed dinner and several good conversations in Orlando at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, recently sent me The Ugly Spaceship and the Astounding Dream, an article he wrote for the AIAA's Horizons magazine. Al is completely upfront about the fact that...

Did the Apollo missions produce enough good science to justify their cost? It's a question Freeman Dyson has speculated on in the past, calling the missions a success because they were "conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science." Symbolic of this is the fact that the first item to be unpacked after each landing was the television camera that relayed mission imagery back to Earth. Apollo inevitably labored under the camera's gaze, but no great scientific discoveries came from it, and the entertainment emphasis inevitably detracted from the missions' scientific objectives. Image: Buzz Aldrin leaves the lunar lander in this photo snapped by Neil Armstrong. What might Apollo have been if it had been conceived from the start to produce good science? Imagine this: Our six Apollo landings put two astronauts each on the surface for a period of several days. At their disposal were two tons of supplies and equipment....

I've got an out of town speaking gig today and am pressed for time, so this may be a good occasion for something I needed to do anyway for the record, which is to highlight the papers given by Tau Zero Foundation and Project Icarus people at the recent 100 Year Starship Symposium. Most of the following were delivered as individual talks, although some were presented in panels. If you're interested in reading the papers each author prepared for the conference, many (but not all, evidently) are to be published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. I'll deliver publishing details when they become available. Here are the presentations of those associated with Tau Zero: E. Davis, "Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps" K. Denning, "Inertia of Past Futures" (anthropology) P. Gilster, "The Interstellar Vision: Principles and Practice" G. Landis, "Plasma Shield for an Interstellar Vehicle" C. Maccone, "Sun Focus Comes First, Interstellar Comes Second (Mission...

I'm just back from the 100 Year Starship Symposium. The thoughts below were written yesterday evening (the 2nd), just after the event ended. It's a lovely evening here in Orlando, one I'm enjoying while sitting out in front of the Hilton waiting for my taxi. I got a chuckle out of the audience at my talk at the 100 Year Starship Symposium when I mentioned something that is completely true: I'm actually a very retro kind of guy. Sure, starships are a passion, but I also restore old fountain pens, love film noir, and as I told the audience, chose an overnight sleeper train to come to Florida in rather than an aircraft. They enjoyed the observation, probably because we're all an odd mix of personally defined and often contradictory impulses. But as I soak up this gorgeous Florida evening, I'm feeling a profound singleness of purpose. To begin with, it's clear to me that writing about the starship conference won't be a matter of a single Centauri Dreams entry but rather a series of...

Arrived yesterday afternoon at the Orlando Hilton for the 100 Year Starship Symposium. I'll try to get updates out on my Twitter feed @centauri_dreams when possible. The WiFi here has been mostly good but it did go down this morning for a time, so bear with me.

Quite a few people involved with Tau Zero and many of the Project Icarus team are planning to be in Orlando at the end of the month for the 100 Year Starship Symposium. I know about most of these, but if you haven't already told me that you are planning to attend, please leave me a note in the comments to this post. I'm looking forward to meeting many Centauri Dreams readers there.

The key to a sane life is perspective. Or at least that's how I feel when I see an image like the famous Apollo 8 shot of a gorgeous blue Earth rising over the barren, cratered Moon. Great images of the kind the space program deals up can change how we see everything -- the Apollo 8 image is widely thought to have energized environmental and ecological thinking in its day. We also have a few striking images showing both the Earth and the Moon together. The one I always fall back on is the one below, a barren Moon with a living Earth swimming in black space. It was a departing gift from the Galileo spacecraft as it left on its long journey to Jupiter in 1989. Image: On its way to Jupiter, the Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of Earth and the moon. The image was taken from a distance of about 3.9 million miles. The brightly colored Earth contrasts strongly with the moon, which reflects only about a third as much sunlight as Earth. Contrast and color have...

Why think seriously about mounting an effort to reach the stars? In yesterday's New York Times, Dennis Overbye runs through some of the basic drivers: The discovery of a habitable planet around a nearby star would create intense interest in sending a probe or, depending on how technology develops, mounting an expedition The demands of human nature include a basic restlessness that has always impelled us to explore The danger of a future impact from an asteroid or other space debris will force us to think not only about how to mitigate the threat, but also about a 'backup' plan for humanity The article is worth looking at for the gorgeous Adrian Mann illustration alone -- it shows a future starship on a 'shakeout' cruise near Jupiter. Overbye then goes on to discuss the 100 Year Starship Study and its upcoming symposium, with plentiful references to Project Icarus and the Tau Zero Foundation. It's good to see the press continuing to focus on the real goals of the 100 Year Starship...

By Rob Swinney Rob Swinney is a freelance writer, a member of the British Interplanetary Society and an active participant in the Tau Zero Foundation/BIS study group Project Icarus, a team of volunteers working on a practical design for an interstellar probe. Rob completed his Bachelors degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and his Masters in Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester (Jodrell Bank). Later he graduated from Cranfield University (then the Cranfield Institute of Technology) with a Masters degree in Avionics and Flight Control Systems. After a rewarding career in the Royal Air Force as an Aerosystems Engineer (Avionics) Officer he completed his Commision in 2006 having attained the rank of Squadron Leader. He is a Chartered Engineer registered with the UK's Engineering Council and a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Rob recently attended the UK Space Conference on July 4 and 5th and here offers us a...

A good futurist can come up with all kinds of outcomes for humanity, but for those of us consumed by space exploration, a recent article in The Economist sketches a particularly bleak possibility. Forget about the stars. For that matter, forget about Mars, even the Moon. The new reality is emerging in the symbolic end of the Space Shuttle program and the eventual de-orbiting of the International Space Station. It's a reality based on a space program that fares no higher than geostationary orbit and the growing technosphere that encloses us like a planetary ring. The End of the Space Age is a cautionary tale about an all too real possibility, one that dismisses those anxious to move into the Solar System as 'space cadets,' while invoking the space ideas of the 1950s and 60s as an almost surreal excursion that quickly gave way to the outright fantasy of 'Star Trek.' The Economist will have none of the old optimism, the vision of ever expanding humanity pushing out to build an...

Here's the latest in the weekly collection of space writing known as the Carnival of Space, in which people with their eyes on the stars go to work to explain the latest findings. Let's start with the Sun, for even as we push our investigations of distant exoplanets, we have much to learn about the nearest star, as our recent discussion of the Solar Probe Plus reminds us. Launching this week's Carnival, Vega 0.0 explains the plasma beta parameter, the ratio of gas pressure to magnetic pressure on the Sun, in an environment where plasma behaves like a fluid. In his Astroblog, the ever reliable Ian Musgrave offers up a review of Stellarium 0.10.6.1. Stellarium, for those not already acquainted with it, is a great, free photo-realistic planetarium program that amateurs should find helpful. Does Ian like it? Evidently so, given his description of the piece as an 'enthusiastic Fan Boi review.' And having worked with Stellarium myself, I can see why he's enchanted with its possibilities....

Because I'm immersed in Laura Snyder's wonderful book The Philosophical Breakfast Club (Broadway Books, 2011), I've been thinking lately about William Whewell. Long the master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell helped bring sound, inductive methods to the fore in the science of his day, created models of international cooperation in scientific investigations through his studies of the tides, founded the discipline of mathematical economics, studied crystallography and, in one memorable episode, became involved in a 19th Century imbroglio over alien life. This morning I want to focus on that incident, but it's just one of the numerous episodes Snyder recounts in her history, which follows four remarkable men -- Whewell, mathematician Charles Babbage, astronomer John Herschel (son of William) and economist Richard Jones -- through a lifetime of friendship and scientific inquiry. What's fascinating about Whewell's brush with the topic of extraterrestrial life is that it reveals how...

All weekend long, as the dreadful news and heart-wrenching images from Japan kept coming in, I wondered how press coverage of the nuclear reactor situation would be handled. The temptation seemed irresistible to play the story for drama and maximum fear, citing catastrophic meltdowns, invoking Chernobyl and even Hiroshima, along with dire predictions about the future of nuclear power. My first thought was that the Japanese reactors were going to have the opposite effect than many in the media suppose. By showing that nuclear plants can survive so massive an event, they'll demonstrate that nuclear power remains a viable option. This is an important issue for the Centauri Dreams readership not just in terms of how we produce energy for use here on Earth, but because nuclear reactors are very much in play in our thinking about future deep space missions. Thus the public perception of nuclear reactors counts, and I probably don't have to remind any of you that when the Cassini orbiter...