The interstellar community has seen a surprising number of conferences since the 2011 event in Orlando, which kicked off the 100 Year Starship effort and brought unusual media attention to the idea of travel between the stars. I had thought when 2015 began that further conferences were unlikely — it seemed to be a year for consolidation and, if you will, introspection, measuring how the effort to reach the public with deep space ideas was progressing and consolidating progress on various projects like the Icarus Interstellar starship redesign.
But both Icarus and the 100 Year Starship organization have surprised me with conferences announced for this fall. Icarus pulled off a successful Starship Congress in 2013, one I remember with pleasure because of my son Miles’ work with Icarus and the chance to meet up with him in Dallas to hear interesting papers and share news and good meals. There will doubtless be much to say about Project Icarus itself at the new meeting. After all, the organization is deep into the redesign of the original Daedalus starship, applying all the changes in technology, both real and projected, that have occurred in the past 35 years.
Starship Congress 2015 is being billed as an ‘interstellar hackathon,’ one centered on “hacking the paradigm of interstellar space exploration.” The Icarus site notes that it occurs “With a nod to this year’s University setting and a Hollywood and video game-driven surge in popularity of deep space exploration (“Interstellar”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, “EVE: Valkyrie”, “Kerbal Space Program 1.0″)…” Talks and presentations will be punctuated by workshops and speakers from the deep space community over the two days of the event — the schedule is here, as is the registration link for accommodations at the Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel.
The venue is Drexel University in Philadelphia for the event running September 4-5. Ticket prices are online and credit card orders are easily placed on the Icarus site. Icarus is distinguishing this event from the 2013 Starship Congress by saying “… the 2015 edition is being structured to quickly break-down status quo approaches in anticipation of reaping new results from looking at old challenges with fresh outlooks.”
I see that Rachel Armstrong has been designated “First Speaker” for the Hackathon, and Ralph McNutt, most recently in the spotlight as a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission, will give the keynote. McNutt (JHU/APL) has been involved with Icarus since its early days; I remember with appreciation his help on deep space mission concepts when I was writing Centauri Dreams (the book) back in the 2002-2004 era. And I’m delighted to see that Cameron Smith (Penn State), an anthropologist whose thinking on long-term interstellar missions has graced these pages, is also to be on hand as a special guest.
Icarus is trying to raise $20,000 through KickStarter to support Starship Congress 2015. The campaign is now live, with a page providing additional background about the organization and its plans for the event.
100 Year Starship Symposium 2015
Finding Earth 2.0 is the theme for the 2015 100 Year Starship Public Symposium, to be held from October 29 through the 1st of November at the Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley. The focus draws on recent discoveries of planets either in or close to the habitable zones of their stars. While none of these can be definitively called Earth 2.0, it’s clear that we’re making progress toward that goal, finding smaller worlds around stars more like the Sun and heading for the day when a G-class star with a small rocky world in a habitable zone orbit will tantalize us with the possibility that it is as capable of developing life as our own green and blue world.
When we find such a planet, we’ll have an abundance of cross-disciplinary studies to invoke in its characterization. “The 100 Year Starship 2015 Public Symposium challenges participants to consider what specific capabilities and systems — scientific, technical and societal — will be needed over the next 5-25 years,” says the organization’s website, “not to merely suggest or catalog earth analogue candidate exoplanets, but to identify at least one definitive Earth 2.0—and to consider how such a discovery itself will impact our world and space exploration.”
You can find background on Finding Earth 2.0, the schedule, registration and hotel information here. There is also a form for submitting abstracts. The technical tracks being examined are these:
- Designing for Interstellar
- Propulsion and Energy
- Interstellar Space, Stars and Destination
- Data Communications and Information Technology
- Life in Space – Health, Astrobiology, Earth Biology and Bioengineering
- Interstellar Technology Enhancing Life on Earth
- Becoming an Interstellar Civilization
Also being introduced at the 2015 symposium is the Canopus Award, designed to recognize both fiction and non-fiction works that have contributed educationally and inspirationally toward the goal of interstellar flight. The awards are to be given in two categories: Previously Published Works of Fiction, with an award made for Long Form (40,000 words or more) and one for Short Form (between 1,000 and 40,000 words), and Original Works, based on this year’s 100YSS Public Symposium theme Finding Earth 2.0. An award will be made for Short Form Fiction (1,000-5,000 words) and one for Short Form Non-fiction (1,000-5,000 words).
Jason D. Batt, a writer who is also Canopus Award program manager, explains the award’s rationale:
“100YSS is launching the awards at a particularly fortuitous time. The recent announcements of Kepler-452b exoplanet, major financial support of searches for extraterrestrial intelligence and the space probe New Horizons close encounter with Pluto and the amazing images it is generating highlight how we all look up and dream of what’s out there. The Canopus award celebrates that passion that is common to the public, researchers and science fiction fans alike.”
The award is named after a star that has been used as a navigation beacon back to the days of the earliest civilizations and forward to spacecraft like Voyager, which tracks Canopus as one way to orient itself toward Earth for data transmissions. Submissions are being accepted here through August 31 for original works and nominations for previously published works.
Two questions here, is there any future plans that might include having the conference (s) in St. Louis, Missouri ? And is there any plans to broadcast this conference on the Internet ?
Paul – are any of your articles being considered for the Canopus Award? You have written some outstanding pieces, some of the best on the web that I have seen.
I don’t know what Earth 2.0’s parameters must be but what about an near exact match of Earth. We need a planet the size of our Earth and a Moon of similar size. I mention this because I am curious of with present exo-planet finding techniques do we have the technology or know how so to be able to detect a double planet system like our Earth-Moon system? Maybe the transit method with a fluctuation of light combined with the radial velocity method? Direct imaging? A new technique?
Certainly oxygen and methane detected in it’s atmosphere is enough but a planet without a Moon might not have have a large enough liquid core to produce a magnetic field or magnetosphere to block the solar wind like Venus since the angular momentum of the Earth was caused by a collision with a Mars sized body and the result was the birth of our Moon. It seems an Earth 2.0 needs a Moon to be hospitable for the long term evolution of life or the planet needs a larger metal core than the Moonless Venus.
Alex Tolley writes:
Why thank you, Alex, very kind. Bear in mind that the pieces you and Brian did on the Spacecoach concept are very much in play for that award as well!
Charlie writes:
I’m pretty sure that neither group has set a venue for conferences beyond these, so St. Louis could presumably be in the running for a future gathering. Re broadcasts, Icarus did a good job getting the 2013 Starship Congress up on the Web, so I assume they’ll do the same here. I recommend checking their site as the meeting approaches. I haven’t heard of any similar plans for 100 Year Starship, at least not yet.
I noticed the pop sci blurbs about the homegrown salad on ISS. I wonder if it is practical to work out an aeroponic type system using free floating plants. I’m thinking of something akin to the Israeli En Gedde (sic) system. Picture a growing chamber filled with nutrient mist, LEDs and a gently fan. Everything is in motion and the plants receive nutrients continuously.
GeoffreyHillend wrote that a large moon is needed for a planet to be habitable.
This is a dubious assumption :
1) The planet’s rate of spin (day length) is set by the overall properties of the various objects which impacted each other to make that planet. This gives a random number with quite a large range (and the planet could even end spinning in the opposite direction by chance). There’s no reason why you can’t get an earth-like or faster day length by chance without a moon.
2) Other planets in the Solar System spin at the same rate (Mars) or even faster (eg. Jupiter) than Earth. The Mars example (virtually a 24-hour day) shows that a large moon is not needed.
3) The impact which formed Earth’s moon may have spun up the planet. Tidal interaction between the two is also slowing down the same spin [the length of 1 day has already at least halved]. The tidal interaction could easily turn out opposite effect to that envisaged – giving eventually a slower rotation than the planet would have had without the impact; especially if the impact happened in such a way as to counter the initial rotation.
@coacervate – I’m not familiar with the details of the lettuce experiment. Normally you want roots to be supplied with nutrients and not teh leaves, but with lettuce I don’t know. Lack of g can also be a problem, but again I don’t know the conditions for the lettuce.
If one could do without the mass of the support structure that would be very useful, much better than growing unicellular algae in tanks of water.
I have to think that the gene expression and development of lettuce must be different in micro-g than on Earth. What impact does that have on the lettuce produced?
As for the experiment as a whole, while it is nice for the astronauts to get fresh food (Chris Hadfield noted it was a highlight in his book), lettuce isn’t very nutritional and is rather water intensive. I’m not sure how useful it is for space exploration beyond being a morale booster. One advantage lettuce has over other plants, like tomatoes, is that you can east the whole plant almost in entirety, leaving minimal waste. No problems with dealing with slugs either on the ISS.
The lettuce LOOKED fabulous. Micro-g seemed to suit it fine. I admit that as a whole plant foods vegan I may be biased however there are a series of powerful factual arguments for eating plants in space.
Nutrition – plants are far better for humans than animal products
Thermodynamics – plants win again. Producing meat in space is insanely inefficient
Safety – Virtually all instances of food poisoning can be traces to meat or fecal matter on plants.
I would take the opportunity to highlight more recent science that shows antioxidants from whole plant foods (that means unprocessed, refined foods …no oil, sugar, white starches) are effective at protecting from reactive oxygen species. Taking supplemental antioxidants, isolated from plants, have little effect and sometimes cause harm.
I have great deal of interest in this subject. I am sure NASA/ESA/CNSA are moving ahead with in depth R&D. Although none of the major food science dept.s seem to be working on it, to my knowledge.
Scott Gordon.
2) Mars is smaller than our Earth so its core cooled of faster and the core is believed to be solid. Consequently is has little or no magnetic field to block the solar wind reaches its surface as its thin atmosphere does not provide and adequate shield. Astronauts with be exposed to more radiation as a result.
3) I am already know about the tidal interaction and the result is the Moons orbit is slowly getter larger moving the Moon farther away from the Earth. As a result, we won’t have a total eclipse in the distant future. This process is very slow though and we wont have to worry about it until the distant future.
A generally accepted idea by astrophysicists is that the our faster rotation of the Earth is the result of the angular momentum of the collusion which was my main point since this faster rotation is the result of a collusion with a large body but that faster rotation is still needed for our magnetic field. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol22/vol22_iss1/Core_Spin.html