by Paul Gilster | Sep 5, 2014 | Sail Concepts |
Andreas Hein is a familiar figure in these pages, having written on the subject of worldships as well as the uploading of consciousness. He is Deputy Director of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (I4IS), as well as Director of its Technical Research Committee. He founded and leads Icarus Interstellar’s Project Hyperion: A design study on manned interstellar flight. Andreas received his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Munich and is now working on a PhD there in the area of space systems engineering, having conducted part of his research at MIT. He spent a semester abroad at the Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse and also worked at the European Space Agency Strategy and Architecture Office on future manned space exploration. Today’s essay introduces the Initiative for Interstellar Studies’ Project Dragonfly Design Competition.
by Andreas Hein
2089, 5th April: A blurry image rushes over screens around the world. The image of a coastline, waves crashing into it, inviting for a nice evening walk at dawn. Nobody would have paid special attention, if it were not for one curious feature: Two suns were mounted in the sky, two bright, hellish eyes. The first man-made object had reached another star system.
Is it plausible to assume that we could send a probe to another star within our century? One major challenge is the amount of resources needed for such a mission. [1, 2]. Ships proposed in the past were mostly mammoths, weighing ten-thousands of tons: the fusion-propelled Daedalus probe with 54,000 tonnes and recently the Project Icarus Ghost Ship with over 100,000 tonnes. All these concepts are based on the rocket principle, which means that they have to take their propellant with them to accelerate. This results in a very large ship.
Another problem with fusion propulsion in particular is the problem of scalability. Most fusion propulsion systems get more efficient when they are scaled up. There is also a critical lower threshold for how small you can go. These factors lead to large amounts of needed propellant and large engines, for which you need a large space infrastructure. A Solar System-wide economy is probably needed, as the Project Daedalus report argues [3].
Image: The Project Icarus Ghost Ship: A colossal fusion-propelled interstellar probe
http://www.spaceanswers.com/futuretech/ghost-ship-to-alpha-centauri/
However, there is a different avenue for interstellar travel: going small. If you go small, you need less energy for accelerating the probe and thus less resources. Pioneers of small interstellar missions are Freeman Dyson with his Astrochicken; a living, one kilogram probe, bio-engineered for the space environment [4]. Robert Forward proposed the Starwisp probe in 1985 [5]. A large, ultra-thin sail which rides on a beam of microwaves. Furthermore, Frank Tipler and Ray Kurzweil describe how nano-scale probes could be used for transporting human consciousness to the stars [6, 7].
At the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (I4IS), we wanted to have a fresh look at small interstellar probes, laser sail probes in particular. The last concepts in this area have been developed years ago. How did the situation change in recent years? Are there new, possibly disruptive concepts on the horizon? We think there are. The basic idea is to develop an interstellar mission by combining the following technologies:
- Laser sail propulsion: The spacecraft rides on a laser beam, which is captured by an extremely thin sail [8].
- Small spacecraft technology: Highly miniaturized spacecraft components which are used in CubeSat missions
- Distributed spacecraft: To spread out the payload of a larger spacecraft over several spacecraft, thus, reducing the laser power requirements [9, 10]. The individual spacecraft would then rendezvous at the target star system and collaborate to fulfill their mission objectives. For example, one probe is mainly responsible for communication with the Solar System, another responsible for planetary exploration via distributed sensor networks (smart dust) [11].
- Magnetic sails: A thin superconducting ring’s magnetic field deflects the hydrogen in the interstellar medium and decelerates the spacecraft [12].
- Solar power satellites: The laser system shall use space infrastructure which is likely to exist in the next 50 years. Solar power satellites would be temporarily leased to provide the laser system with power to propel the spacecraft.
- Communication systems with external power supply: A critical factor for small interstellar missions is power supply for the communication system. As small spacecraft cannot provide enough power for communicating over these vast distances. Thus, power has to be supplied externally, either by using laser or microwave power from the Solar System during the trip and solar radiation within the target star system [5].
Image: Size comparison between an interplanetary solar sail and the Project Icarus Ghost Ship. Interstellar sail-based spacecraft would be much larger. (Courtesy: Adrian Mann and Kelvin Long)
Bringing all these technologies together, it is possible to imagine a mission which could be realized with technologies which are feasible in the next 10 years and could be in place in the next 50 years: A set of solar power satellites are leased for a couple of years for the mission. A laser system with a huge aperture has been put into a suitable orbit to propel the interstellar, as well as future planetary missions. Thus, the infrastructure can be reused for multiple purposes. The interstellar probes are launched one-by-one.
After decades, the probes start to decelerate by magnetic sails. Each spacecraft charges its sails differently. The first spacecraft decelerates slower than the follow-up probes. Ideally, the spacecraft then arrive at the target star system at the same point in time. Then, the probes start exploring the star system autonomously. They reason about exploration strategies, exchange and share data. Once a suitable exploration target has been chosen, dedicated probes descend to the planetary surface, spreading dust-sized sensor networks onto the pristine land. The data from the network is collected by other spacecraft and transferred back to the spacecraft acting as a communication hub. The hub, powered by the light from extrasolar light sends back the data to us. The result could be the scenario described at the beginning of this article.
Image: Artist’s impression of a laser sail probe with a chip-sized payload. (Courtesy: Adrian Mann)
Of course, one of the caveats of such a mission is its complexity. The spacecraft would have to rendezvous precisely over interstellar distances. Furthermore, there are several challenges with laser sail systems, which have been frequently addressed in the literature, for example beam collimation and control. Nevertheless, such a mission architecture has many advantages compared to existing ones: It could be realized by a space infrastructure we could imagine to exist in the next 50 years. The failure of one or more spacecraft would not be catastrophic, as redundancy could easily be built in by launching two or more identical spacecraft.
The elegance of this mission architecture is that all the infrastructure elements can also be used for other purposes. For example, a laser infrastructure could not only be used for an interstellar mission but interplanetary as well. Further applications include an asteroid defense system [20]. The solar power satellites can be used for providing in-space infrastructure with power [18].
Image: Artist’s impression of a spacecraft swarm arriving at an exosolar system (Courtesy: Adrian Mann)
How about the feasibility of the individual technologies? Recent progress in various areas looks promising:
- The increased availability of highly sophisticated miniaturized commercial components: smart phones include many components which are needed for a space system, e.g. gyros for attitude determination, a communication system, and a microchip for data-handling. NASA has already flown a couple of “phone-sats”; Satellites which are based on a smart phone [13].
- Advances in distributed satellite networks: Although a single small satellite only has a limited capability, several satellites which cooperate can replace larger space systems. The concept of Federated Satellite Systems (FSS) is currently explored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as at the Skolkovo Institute of Technology in Russia [14]. Satellites communicate opportunistically and share data and computing capacity. It is basically a cloud computing environment in space.
- Increased viability of solar sail missions. A number of recent missions are based on solar sail technology, e.g. the Japanese IKAROS probe, LightSail-1 of the Planetary Society, and NASA’s Sunjammer probe.
- Greg Matloff recently proposed use of Graphene as a material for solar sails [15]. With an areal density of a fraction of a gram and high thermal resistance, this material would be truly disruptive. Currently existing materials have a much higher areal density; a number crucial for measuring the performance of solar sails.
- Material sciences has also advanced to a degree where Graphene layers only a few atoms thick can be manufactured [16]. Thus, manufacturing a solar sail based on extremely thin layers of Graphene is not as far away as it seems.
- Small satellites with a mass of only a few kilograms are increasingly proposed for interplanetary missions. NASA has recently announced the Interplanetary CubeSat Challenge, where teams are invited to develop CubeSat missions to the Moon and even deeper into space (NASA) [17]. Coming advances will thus stretch the capability of CubeSats beyond Low-Earth Orbit.
- Recent proposals for solar power satellites focus on providing space infrastructure with power instead of Earth infrastructure [18, 19]. The reason is quite simple: Solar power satellites are not competitive to most Earth-based alternatives but they are in space. A recent NASA concept by John Mankins proposed the use of a highly modular tulip-shaped space power satellite, supplying geostationary communication satellites with power.
- Large space laser systems have been proposed for asteroid defense [20]
In order to explore various mission architectures and encourage participation by a larger group of people, I4IS has recently announced the Project Dragonfly Competition in the context of the Alpha Centauri Prize [21]. We hope that with the help of this competition, we can find unprecedented mission architectures of truly disruptive capability. Once this goal is accomplished, we can concentrate our efforts on developing individual technologies and test them in near-term missions.
If this all works out, this might be the first time in history that there is a realistic possibility to explore a near-by star system within the 21st or early 22nd century with “modest” resources.
References
[1] Millis, M. G. (2010). First Interstellar Missions, Considering Energy and Incessant Obsolescence. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 63(11), 434.
[2] Hein, A. M. (2012). Evaluation of Technological-Social and Political Projections for the Next 100-300 Years and the Implications for an Interstellar Mission. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 65, 330-340.
[3] Martin, A. R. (Ed.). (1978). Project Daedalus: The Final Report on the BIS Starship Study. British Interplanetary Soc.
[4] Dyson, F. J. (1979). Disturbing the universe. Basic Books.
[5] Forward, R. L. (1985). Starwisp-An ultra-light interstellar probe. Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 22(3), 345-350.
[6] Tipler, F. (1994), The Physics of Immortality, Chapter 2, Doubleday, New York.
[7] Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. Penguin.
[8] Forward, R. L. (1984). Roundtrip interstellar travel using laser-pushed lightsails. Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 21(2), 187-195.
[9] Mathieu, C., & Weigel, A. L. (2005, August). Assessing the flexibility provided by fractionated spacecraft. In Proc. of AIAA Space 2005 Conference, Long Beach, CA, USA.
[10] Brown, O., & Eremenko, P. (2006). Fractionated space architectures: a vision for responsive space. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, VA.
[11] Colombo, C., & McInnes, C. (2011). Orbital Dynamics of” Smart-Dust” Devices with Solar Radiation Pressure and Drag. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 34(6), 1613-1631.
[12] Andrews, D., & Zubrin, R. (1990). Magnetic sails and interstellar travel. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 43, 265-272.
[13] Wikipedia, Phonesat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneSat
[14] Golkar, A. (2013, April). Federated Satellite Systems: an Innovation in Space Systems Design. In 9th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites for Earth Observation, IAA, Berlin, Germany.
[15] Matloff, G. L. (2012). Graphene, the Ultimate Interstellar Solar Sail Material? Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 65, 378-381.
[16] Paton, K. R., Varrla, E., Backes, C., Smith, R. J., Khan, U., O’Neill, A., … & Coleman, J. N. (2014). Scalable production of large quantities of defect-free few-layer graphene by shear exfoliation in liquids. Nature Materials, 13(6), 624-630.
[17] NASA Interplanetary Cubesat Challenge: http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/interplanetary-cubesat-challenge/
[18] Mankins, J., Kaya, N., & Vasile, M. (2012). Sps-alpha: The first practical solar power satellite via arbitrarily large phased array (a 2011-2012 nasa niac project). In 10th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference.
[19] Mankins, J.C. (2014). The Case for Space Solar Power, Virginia Edition Publishing.
[20] Hughes, G. B., Lubin, P., Bible, J., Bublitz, J., Arriola, J., Motta, C., … & Pryor, M. (2013, September). DE-STAR: Phased-array laser technology for planetary defense and other scientific purposes. In SPIE Optical Engineering+ Applications (pp. 88760J-88760J). International Society for Optics and Photonics.
[21] I4IS Project Dragonfly Design Competition: http://i4is.org/news/dragonfly
by Paul Gilster | Jul 26, 2014 |
Interstellar Booklist Many of the books listed below are ones that I used in preparing my 2005 book Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. But in the time since, I’ve added a number of more recent titles. I’m hoping Heath...
by Paul Gilster | May 9, 2014 | Culture and Society |
Today begins Heath Rezabek’s survey as we look at the curation of a booklist on interstellar flight, using as basis a list of books I’ve gradually accumulated over the years. Before Heath introduces the survey, a few words about my methods: Many of the books listed below are ones that I used in preparing my 2005 book Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. But in the time since, I’ve added a number of more recent titles. I’m hoping this curation project will reveal other books that may be useful as we flesh out the list. Please glance over the entire list and be thinking of additional possibilities as you engage with Heath’s survey.
As to the choices made, these are non-fiction science books, although several recent titles contain a mix of non-fiction and science fiction stories. Feel free to suggest SF titles that specifically broaden our thinking about interstellar flight — we can either integrate them into the main list or develop a second list focused on fiction. The latter may be more practicable. Also, books on SETI and exoplanetology are under-represented in favor of books on spaceflight and propulsion. Given how often we discuss these matters on Centauri Dreams. I’d like to see recommendations for more titles in both these areas.
I also restricted the selection to books that have been through serious peer review from the publisher itself or qualified people chosen by its editors. Books that largely compile previously published papers that have been through rigorous peer review also make the list. While self-publishing is a growing phenomenon, if no peer review is evident, I cannot add such titles to the short list. With that in mind, let’s see what happens as Heath’s work develops.
by Heath Rezabek
In yesterday’s entry, I summarize my work to this point as an Intern with the Long Now Foundation, assisting and advising on the community curation of the Manual for Civilization collection.
In today’s entry, we’ll undertake our own experiment in community curation, by asking the readers of Centauri Dreams to compare the books in Paul Gilster’s Centauri Dreams shortlist, and most importantly, to recommend titles which you don’t see represented but which you feel are integral to the themes explored here over time. We’ll end up with two resources which Paul can use in the future: The list itself, and the relative rankings based on community comparison of titles’ relative importance to a core Centauri Dreams community collection.
In the Centauri Dreams Vessel Survey (link immediately below), participants are encouraged to add as many titles as they wish — particularly newer or older titles not yet reflected — and sort between titles as often as they like. Over time, we’ll end up with our own wish list for a core collection reflecting the Centauri Dreams readership community.
This survey tool works a bit differently from other surveys you might have taken, but may be familiar if you’ve run across our use of it here before. At the link below, your task to complete as many times as you wish to weigh in is simply to pick between two titles from the list in any given round.
Once you’ve picked one as more integral than the other, another pairing will come up. You are encouraged to sort between titles as many times as you can, as the more data such a survey has, the more useful its results. You may stop when you’re weary, and return later if you wish.
You are also greatly encouraged to add related titles, items which have informed your thinking on these themes as a member of the Centauri Dreams community of readers. Duplicates are not much of a problem, as they cluster over time and we can deactivate them once they do. Again, the more data, the better the results. Click on the image or the link below it to participate in the survey.
Centauri Dreams Vessel Survey: Community Curation
We will revisit this survey as time passes, as votes accrue, and as titles are added.
Thank you, Paul, for giving the nod to try community curation on Centauri Dreams; thank you, readers of Centauri Dreams, for lending your voice as community members.
Paul’s original list is below, though because of character limits in the surveys, annotations and publisher details are not always included in the survey version.
[PG note: The breakdown of my list into General Audience, College, Graduate and Professional was an attempt at sorting that I’ve grown uncomfortable with — many of these titles could go in more than one such category. So don’t let the categories concern you at this point].
General Audience
Adler, Charles (2014) Wizards, Aliens and Starships. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Caleb Scharf calls this “…a delightful, funny, and immensely interesting romp through science and fiction,” which precisely nails the spirit of the book. Adler looks at the wonders of science fiction from alien civilizations to teleportation and warp drive, framing the discussion against judiciously explained physics. It’s hugely entertaining and scientifically sound.
Berry, Adrian (2000) The Giant Leap: Mankind Heads for the Stars. New Yorks: Tor Books.
A look at the technologies that might one day lead to the nearest stars and beyond. Discusses the options for making such journeys, along with the political and philosophical imperatives that might drive such a mission. Interesting chapters on interstellar navigation and suspended animation.
Boyce, Christopher (1979) Extraterrestrial Encounter: A Personal Perspective. Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books.
Speculations on the nature of alien intelligence and the possibilities for understanding and communicating with it. The odds on SETI and the possible use of Bracewell or von Neumann robotic probes for studying other planets play a role in this lively discussion.
Burrows, William E. Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond. New York: Random House, 1990.
One of the best histories of the space program ever written, this book gives full weight to automated probes rather than manned flight, and speculates on the technologies that will take us outside the Solar System. Burrows’ look at the politics behind programs like the Space Shuttle resonates today.
Calder, Nigel (1978) Spaceships of the Mind. New York: Viking Press.
Speculations on space technologies including many interstellar concepts. Numerous useful though dated illustrations. The driving factors pushing space colonization are carefully examined.
Forward, Robert L (1995) Indistinguishable from Magic. New York: Baen Books.
Perhaps the greatest interstellar theorist of them all, Robert Forward offered mission concepts galore in the course of his career, many of them entertainingly discussed in this collection of essays. The author’s wry humor often shows through in discussions that range from wormholes to antimatter engines.
Friedman, Louis (1988) Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Friedman’s background working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a once-considered solar sail mission to Halley’s Comet allows him to tap deep resources in explaining how solar sails will one day open up the Solar System, with potential for interstellar flight via particle or laser beam.
Kaku, Michio (2008) Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. New York: Doubleday.
Kaku discusses three levels of ‘impossibility,’ ranging from things we may one day puzzle out to technologies that would strike us as indistinguishable from magic, to use Arthur Clarke’s fine phrase. This wide-ranging study includes a look at interstellar technologies now under active study.
Krauss, Lawrence (1995) The Physics of Star Trek. New York: Basic Books.
A theoretical physicist offers thoughts on the scientific wonders of the popular TV series, discussing such issues as teleportation, time travel, warp drive and black holes. Excellent at untangling the futuristic but possible from the hugely improbable, based on known physics.
Macvey, John W. (1977, 1991) Interstellar Travel: Past, Present and Future. New York: Stein and Day.
Revised in 1991, this book examines interstellar travel technologies ranging from space arks to wormholes, with a long discussion of the nature of extraterrestrial life and how it might communicate with humans. Wide-ranging and easy to read, this is a good choice for young readers.
Myrabo, Leik and Dean Ing (1985) The Future of Flight. New York: Baen Books.
Starship drives are only one of the topics covered by this survey of future flight technologies, but the interstellar chapter is strong, surveying concepts from the Bussard ramjet to the laser-driven lightsail and antimatter engines. A good though now backgrounder for those wanting a quick survey of these ideas.
Nicholson, Iain (1978) The Road to the Stars. New York: William Morrow & Co.
A well-illustrated and lively survey of future space technologies, with a useful discussion of SETI and the possibilities of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence. The major ideas for upgrading today’s engines are presented, beginning with ion drives and carrying forward to the Bussard ramjet.
Sagan, Carl (1980) Cosmos. New York: Random House.
Carl Sagan’s classic offers some of the most captivating illustrations ever made available in a space book. While the book, like the TV series it parallels, offers perspective on the entire human experience of the heavens, it places the possibilities of interstellar flight in a readable, powerful context.
Wright, Jerome L. (1992) Space Sailing. New York: Taylor & Francis.
A history of the solar sail concept, one that uses momentum from the Sun’s own light to drive a space vehicle, without the need to carry heavy fuel. Well illustrated, this book examines all the ways solar sails may change our future in space, both in the near term and the far.
College Level
Adelman, Saul J. and Benjamin Adelman (1981). Bound for the Stars: Space Travel in our Solar System and Beyond. Inglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
The exploration of space from travel in the nearby Solar System to interstellar missions. The latter chapters discuss interstellar propulsion, navigation, the search for extrasolar planets and the first starship. Useful discussions as well about a plausible program for long-term interstellar planning.
Andreadis, Athena (1999) To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek. New York: Three Rivers Press. A professional biologist goes to work on life sciences as depicted in Star Trek, with thoughts on everything from telepathy and the genetic code to the cultural sameness of the societies the Enterprise’s crew encounters. Entertaining and instructive.
Benford, Gregory and James (2013) Starship Century. Lucky Bat Books.
Starship Century is an anthology by authors from both science and fiction writing backgrounds, illustrating some of the tech and ideology behind the illustrious goal of traveling to another star within the next century. Edited by Gregory Benford, New York Times bestselling science fiction author, and James Benford, leading expert on space propulsion, Starship Century includes science fiction by Neal Stephenson, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, John Cramer, Richard A. Lovett, and Allen Steele, as well as scientific articles by Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Robert Zubrin, Peter Schwartz, Martin Rees, Ian Crawford, James Benford, Geoffrey Landis, Paul Davies and Adam Crowl.
Billings, Lee (2013) Five Billion Years of Solitude. New York: Current.
The exoplanet hunt as seen through Lee Billings’ eyes as he interviews the major players in the field, from Frank Drake to Jim Kasting, Sara Seager, Greg Laughlin, Geoff Marcy and more. Within their individual stories Billings weaves in the technological and science breakthroughs that have made current work possible, and points eloquently toward the next stages in the journey as we look for a genuine Earth. 2.0. There is no better examination of the basic techniques and issues surrounding exoplanet detection and the human impact of this work.
Clarke, Arthur C. and David Brin, ed. (1990) Project Solar Sail. New York: Roc.
Useful essays from leading theorists examine the role of solar sails in future space missions, with attention to missions in the Solar System and beyond. The essays are interleaved with short fiction and even poetry that explores plausible scenarios for putting sails to work.
Dole, Stephen H. and Isaac Asimov (1964) Planets for Man. New York: Random House.
This is the popular version of a RAND Corporation study originally performed by Dole. The later version includes the thoughts of Isaac Asimov, and examines the factors necessary for planets to be habitable for humans, and our chances of finding them. Although dated, this book still offers useful information about the concept of a habitable zone and the factors that will one day make particular planets useful destinations for our probes.
Dyson, George (2002) Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
Freeman Dyson’s son tackles the great attempt to wed nuclear technology to deep space missions, Project Orion. Told with flair and access not only to key documents but the recollections of the major players, this history shows how one team of experts viewed journeys to the outer Solar System and beyond before the realities of the Test Ban Treaty put the concept beyond reach.
Forward, Robert L. and Joel Davis (1988) Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Interstellar theorist Robert Forward offers a thorough background to the history of antimatter research. Propulsion concepts that could drive our first starships are examined, while the methods for creating and storing antimatter and using it here on Earth receive solid scrutiny. The chapter on antimatter in science fiction is particularly energetic.
Genta, Giancarlo (2007) Lonely Minds in the Universe. Berlin: Springer.
A valuable study of astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, unique in the extent to which it explores the philosophical and religious background of humanity’s awakening interest in the cosmos. The discussion of biology both on Earth and elsewhere offers insights into the possibilities of living organisms around other stars, while the author’s speculations about consciousness and intelligence remind us just how unique each alien ecosystem and its inhabitants may be. How we may interact with any intelligence we discover forms an insightful part of the narrative.
Gilster, Paul (2004) Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. New York: Copernicus Books.
Surveys methods for moving an interstellar probe to speeds that could reach nearby stars in a single human lifetime. These range from fusion to antimatter, beamed lightsails, magnetic sails, Bussard ramjets and other concepts. Also covers interstellar navigation and exoplanet detection.
Grinspoon, David (2003) Lonely Planets. New York: Ecco.
I found this a useful and deeply entertaining overview of current and historical thinking on extraterrestrial life, with interesting arguments against the hypothesis that the Earth is in any way unique when it comes to the ability to produce living organisms. What intelligent life might become both on Earth and elsewhere is considered with a leavening of personal anecdotes and humor, and a plea that we move beyond definitions of life too firmly attached to our own planet.
Impey, Chris and Holly Henry (2014) Dreams of Other Worlds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Read Impey and Henry for an overview of where we’re coming from in unmanned space exploration and robotics. The book lays out our explorations from Viking on Mars to Cassini, WMAP and Spitzer, chronicling the interplay of new technologies and emerging science. Manned missions invariably get more buzz, but until we ramp up our methods, the outer system belongs to increasingly sophisticated machines. This is where they come from.
Johnson, Les and Jack McDevitt, eds. (2012) Going Interstellar. New York: Baen.
A collection of tales by an all-star assortment of award winning authors including Ben Bova, Mike Resnick, Jack McDevitt, Michael Bishop, Sarah Hoyt and more together with essays on high technology by space scientists and engineers – all taking on new methods of star travel. The essays include reports on propulsion technologies including antimatter, solar sails and fusion. The science fiction speculations tackle the human consequences of travel to another star and how our descendants will master issues from species survival to alien contact.
Kaku, Michio (1995) Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension. Oxford University Press.
Understanding the possibilities of interstellar flight demands a look at the things that may warp space and time, including wormholes that could offer fast transit without exceeding the speed of light. Michio Kaku explains the options with a minimum of jargon and clear, readable prose.
Mallove, Eugene F., and Gregory L. Matloff (1989) The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer’s Guide to Interstellar Travel. New York: John Wiley.& Sons.
A classic of interstellar studies, Matloff and Mallove’s book provides the necessary theory to understand the various propulsion methods proposed to reach the stars. All major concepts are considered by two authors who have been involved in interstellar concepts for decades.
Matloff, Gregory, Les Johnson and C. Bangs (2007) Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Space travel as we do it today requires large amounts of fuel that take up a major part of the rockets we launch. How we can learn to use resources in space itself may determine how soon we push into the outer Solar System and beyond. The science behind space tethers, solar sails and other techniques for in-System voyaging are here explored, along with speculations about even more audacious concepts that could take us to the stars.
Matloff, Gregory, Les Johnson and Giovanni Vulpetti (2010) Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel. Berlin: Springer. A comprehensive survey of solar sail concepts ranging from near-term designs like the Solar Polar Imager to interstellar possibilities enabled by laser-driven lightsails, this book summarizes our sail knowledge at the beginning of the solar sail era, with numerous thoughts on sail design, construction, deployment and trajectories.
Michaud, Michael (2006) Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials. New York: Copernicus.
A thorough discussion of the consequences of our encounters with extraterrestrial civilizations, with background studies of the history of human speculation about extraterrestrial intelligence, our searches for life and for the signals of other cultures, and the various ways contact might play out. In an era when some are trying to extend the SETI (listening) paradigm to METI (broadcasting), this book offers sober analysis of how humanity should weigh these options, and opts for multidisciplinary negotiation and consensus before acting in ways that could impact the entire species.
Savage, Marshall T. (1994) The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps. New York: Little, Brown & Co.
An optimistic look at how mankind can spread into the cosmos, offering a program to transfer a large proportion of the world’s population into venues off-planet. Step by step improvements lead to terraforming Mars, using the resources of the outer system, and moving to the nearby stars.
Strong, James (1965) Flight to the Stars. New York: Hart Publishing Company.
An early classic of interstellar studies, Strong’s book offers a rationale for the human expansion to the stars, while considering a variety of propulsion concepts to get the job done. While dated in specifics, the scenarios considered here paint possible futures for a star-faring race with vigor and enthusiasm.
Thorne, Kip S. (1994) Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Thorne is a major player in the theory of wormholes, and thus the kind of distortions of spacetime that may one day make it possible to travel vast distances quickly without ever exceeding the speed of light. This book places his theories into the Einsteinian context in readable if challenging fashion.
Zubrin, Robert (1999) Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.
The case for becoming a spacefaring civilization is made with enthusiasm and panache. The action ranges from terraforming nearby Mars to exploiting the resources of the outer planets, with solid chapters on interstellar propulsion and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.
Graduate/Professional Level
Carroll, Michael (2011) Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds. New York: Springer.
From the Soviet Venus balloons to the advanced studies of blimps and airplanes for the atmospheres of Mars and Titan, Drifting on Alien Winds surveys the many creative and often wacky ideas for exploring alien skies. Through historical photographs and stunning original paintings by the author, readers also explore the weather on planets and moons, from the simmering acid-laden winds of Venus to liquid methane-soaked skies of Titan.
Czysz, Paul and Claudio Bruno (2009) Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems: Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration. Berlin: Springer.
Space propulsion systems from near-Earth to the outer Solar System and beyond. Focus on applied engineering working within the known principles of physics, with emphasis on fusion rocket designs and the extension of today’s technologies to missions into deep space.
Doody, Dave (2009) Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Flight. Berlin: Springer.
Descriptions of interplanetary spacecraft with detailed looks at their instrumentation and the Earth-based operations needed to acquire and process their incoming data. Flight operations and the interactions between a mission’s science team and the light team are examined, with detailed appendices on the range of instruments that have so far flown, and those likely to be aboard spacecraft in the future.
Finney, Ben R. and Eric M. Jones (1985) Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
This is a compilation of papers from the Conference on Interstellar Migration held at Los Alamos in May of 1983, which examined not only the scientific possibilities, but also the social, ethical and even legal ramifications of our move into the cosmos. Its look at how humanity has coped with past challenges, such as the settlement of the Pacific islands, places interstellar migration in context.
Kondo,Yoji, ed. (2003) Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generational Space Ships. Apogee Books Space Series 34. Collector’s Guide Publishing Inc (June 1, 2003).
Papers from a symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002, exploring propulsion concepts and the solutions needed for flight to the stars. The book also addresses the cultural and psychological issues related to long-term voyaging and ponders ‘generation ships,’ in which crew members spend their entire lives on voyages several centuries in duration.
Long, Kelvin (2011) Deep Space Propulsion. New York: Springer.
The technology of the next few decades could possibly allow us to explore with robotic probes the closest stars outside our Solar System, and maybe even observe some of the recently discovered planets circling these stars. This book looks at the reasons for exploring our stellar neighbors and at the technologies we are developing to build space probes that can traverse the enormous distances between the stars. All the propulsion concepts seriously considered for interstellar flight are examined here.
Maccone, Claudio (2009) Deep Space Flight and Communications: Exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens. Berlin: Springer.
Maccone has long been the champion of a mission to the Sun’s gravitational lens at 550 AU and beyond. Here he lays out the results of his two decades of study of the concept, discussing possible probe designs, the best targets for investigation, and the underlying principles of lensing. Section 2 examines the challenge of communicating between an interstellar spacecraft and the Earth, focusing on the opportunities found in the Karhunen-Loève Transform (KLT) for optimal telecommunications.
Matloff, Gregory L. (2005) Deep Space Probes: To the Outer Solar System and Beyond. Berlin: Springer/Praxis Books.
Recently revised, Matloff’s look at deep space technologies offers abundant references in its examination of current theories of interstellar propulsion, including nanotechnology and ramscoops that draw their fuel from hydrogen between the stars. Also included are speculations on astrobiology and the development of self-reproducing von Neumann probes that could saturate the galaxy.
Mauldin, John H. (1992) Prospects for Interstellar Travel. American Astronautical Society Science and Technology Series, Vol. 80. San Diego, CA: Univelt.
A thorough study of interstellar flight possibilities that covers, in addition to the relevant propulsion concepts, every aspect of starship design, including the navigation problem and the difficulties posed by lengthy voyages with human crews. The overall engineering of space probes designed for such missions is discussed at length, with abundant references for follow-up reading.
McInnes, Colin R. (1999) Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics and Mission Applications. Chichester, UK: Praxis Publishing.
The most exhaustive study of solar sail technology available, offering a rich list of references for specialists. Applications for near-term missions are considered in detail, with the relevant equations for understanding the forces at work. A thorough examination of sail materials and design explains where we are now and how solar sails may change the economics of propulsion. Beamed lightsails for interstellar missions.
Millis, Marc and Eric Davis, eds. (2009). Frontiers of Propulsion Science. Reston, VA: AIAA.
A compilation of essays from specialists about the prospects for breakthroughs that could revolutionize spaceflight and enable interstellar flight. Five major sections are included in the book: Understanding the Problem lays the groundwork for the technical details to follow; Propulsion Without Rockets discusses space drives and gravity control, both in general terms and with specific examples; Faster-Than-Light Travel starts with a review of the known relativistic limits, followed by the faster-than-light implications from both general relativity and quantum physics; Energy Considerations deals with spacecraft power systems and summarizes the limits of technology based on accrued science; and, From This Point Forward offers suggestions for how to manage and conduct research on such visionary topics.
Seedhouse, Erik (2012) Interplanetary Outpost: The Human and Technological Challenges of Exploring the Outer Planets. New York: Springer/Praxis.
Interplanetary Outpost follows the mission architecture template of NASA’s plan for Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE), which envisions sending a crew to the moon Callisto to conduct exploration and sample return activities. To realize such a mission, the spacecraft will be the most complex interplanetary vehicle ever built, representing the best technical efforts of several nations. A wealth of new technologies will need to be developed, including new propulsion systems, hibernation strategies, and revolutionary radiation shielding materials. Step by step, the book will describe how the mission architecture will evolve, how crews will be selected and trained, and what the mission will entail from launch to landing.
Smith, Cameron (2012) Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation and Space Colonization. New York: Springer.
Based on the most current understanding of our universe, human adaptation and evolution, the authors explain why space colonization must be planned as an adaptation to, rather than the conquest of, space. Emigrating Beyond Earth argues that space colonization is an insurance policy for our species, and that it isn’t about rockets and robots, it’s about humans doing what we’ve been doing for four million years: finding new places and new ways to live. Applying a unique anthropological approach, the authors outline a framework for continued human space exploration and offer a glimpse of a possible human future involving interstellar travel and settlement of worlds beyond our own.
Vakoch, Douglas and Albert Harrison, eds. (2013) Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society. Berghahn Books.
This collection of essays takes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and offers a sociological and philosophical entry into a field that is often dominated by the hard sciences. Vakoch, a sociologist, brings a useful new dimension to the question of how humanity would react to extraterrestrial contact, and the essays chosen for this volume form a discussion that meshes well with Michael Michaud’s work in Contact with Alien Civilizations. Harrison, a psychologist from the University of California, helps to ensure that SETI analysis will continue to deepen its multidisciplinary links as the field evolves.
Woodward, James (2012) Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes. New York: Springer/Praxis.
A study in three parts: The first deals with information about the theories of relativity needed to understand the predictions of the effects that make possible the “propulsion” techniques, and an explanation of those techniques. The second deals with experimental investigations into the feasibility of the predicted effects; that is, do the effects exist and can they be applied to propulsion? The third part of the book – the most speculative – examine the questions: what physics is needed if we are to make wormholes and warp drives? Is such physics plausible?
by Paul Gilster | Oct 14, 2013 | Culture and Society |
Space writer Neil McAleer’s long association with Arthur C. Clarke culminated in Visionary: The Odyssey of Arthur C. Clarke (Clarke Project, 2012). A gifted journalist whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, McAleer is also the author of The Omni Space Almanac, which won the 1988 Robert S. Ball Award from the Aviation and Space Writers Association. Neil recently reminded me that a new book on Clarke was about to appear, and in the post that follows, he gives us an overview of a title in which Fred Clarke, Arthur’s brother, makes an informative contribution, along with a host of writers and other Clarke associates. The photos in Arthur C. Clarke: A Life Remembered are worth the price of admission, and I’ve reproduced a few of them below with permission. Neil breaks the review down by contributing author and explains what you can expect from each. Ordering information is at the end.
by Neil McAleer
Arthur C. Clarke: A Life Remembered
$22.95 plus shipping. ISBN 978-1926837-26-0
Authors in order of first appearance: Fred Clarke, Robert Godwin, Mark Stewart, and Kelvin F. Long (multi-contributor chapters follow the chapters from the four authors in this review)
Fred Clarke
Chapter I – Childhood: Vignettes by Fred Clarke (25 pp.)
If the Guinness World Records had a category for “Devoted Brothers,” Frederick William Clarke (1921-2013), the second born son of Nora and Charles Clarke, would have held the world record since the first edition in 1955. Even so, Fred Clarke was his own man and shared with his brother Arthur a unique individuality and vitality in life. I think of the wonderful quote from Joseph Campbell: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
Twenty-three (23) vignettes, all with titles, almost all humorous and positive anecdotes about growing up in Somerset England, introduce this accessible and many-peopled volume on the life and work of Arthur C. Clarke.
The lengths vary from 4 lines to 2 full pages—the longest including “Huish Grammar School” and “Star Gazing”; and the shortest, including “Cider Thieves!” and “Fred Enlists.”
Image: Arthur C. Clarke takes his first flight in an Avro 504. Nora Clarke is in the rear seat. Captain Percival Philips at the controls. Taunton circa 1927. Credit: BIS/Apogee Prime/Rocket Publishing. Published with permission.
Great, high-end quality black and white photographs, numbering 17, appear in this chapter, and their variety ranges from portraits of Arthur’s space cadet friends and colleagues to a special plaque, attached to the stone exterior of Arthur Clarke’s birthplace at 4 Blenheim Road in Minehead. (A total of 70 photographs in the book, with 2 tables on starships in fiction.)
Robert Godwin
Chapter II – Early Days: From Ego to Fame (46 pp.)
Rob Godwin’s important Chapter II is a substantial contribution to Clarke’s early life, and its coverage of 20 years (1934-54) represents one-fifth of the book’s entire text. Indeed, this accessible, readable text tends to cloak its original and hard-won research from an expert and publisher in the space sciences–a devoted writer who knows the joy of discovering new treasures of a well-lived life. This labor of love also required the skills of a genealogical sleuth—tracking down, contacting, and interviewing many descendants of key contemporary influences in Arthur Clarke’s life.
After Godwin’s fine history, gold nugget pieces of reality from the early days come forth to complete the chapter via the still lasting magic of print—a time machine from Arthur’s pen and from the pen of his good friend and fellow space cadet, Bill Temple. These are three pieces from the classic fanzine, Novae Terrae, dated June 1937 (Clarke, 3 pp.), June 1938 (Temple, 5 pp.), and January 1939 (Clarke, 3pp.). Read them. They will transport you back to a time when Arthur was 20 years old.
Image: Arthur C. Clarke in his study at Ballifants. Credit: BIS/Apogee Prime/Rocket Publishing.
Chapter XII — Beyond 2001: The Gala (13pp.)
And later on in the book, third to last chapter, Godwin’s dramatic and colorful account of the Arthur C. Clarke Gala at the Playboy Mansion overflows with his genuine enthusiasm and gratitude for actually being there and playing a part of moving some of the events along smoothly. This reviewer, who was also present that November night just weeks after the September 11 attack, was reminded how much he had forgotten in 12 years! But to this day, seeing the living Arthur C. Clarke, from a half world away, projected as a 3D hologram standing at a podium opposite Star Trek Commander Patrick Stewart, will never be forgotten.
Mark Stewart*
Chapter IV – The Clarke Legacy: An Interview with Fred Clarke (6 pp.)
Mark Stewart, editor of the online monthly Odyssey, meets the other brother, Fred Clarke, for the first time, when Fred is closing in on his 90th birthday. With summary narration and quotes, Stewart writes up Fred’s delightful anecdotes as only Fred Clarke can tell them, with good humor and optimism. The short tales do not overlap with those of the Fred’s first chapter.
* Mark was accompanied by BIS members Kelvin F. Long and Colin Philp.
Chapter V – Tales from Taprobane*: An Interview with Nalaka Gunawardene (11 pp.) in December 2010.** Nalaka’s interview’s timeline stretched from the latter half of the 1980s to Clarke’s death in March 2008. Nalaka handled all public relations and media work upon his death. As Clarke’s assistant of many hats, the stories and insights into life with Clarke and his work are fresh and insightful.
*In three parts, with this Gunawardene interview as part one—and the longest. All three parts share the place: Sri Lanka, aka Ceylon and Taprobane. The other two parts are: “Rendezvous with Arthur,” Michael Lennick (6 pp.); and “The Brightest Star,” Helen Sharman (2 pp.)
** Colin Philp was present at the Gunawardene interview held at BIS Headquarters in London.
Image: Arthur in his beloved Sri Lanka. Credit: BIS/Apogee Prime/Rocket Publishing.
Michael Lennick, the producer of a Discovery television documentary on the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, writes the second part of Chapter V about his visit and interview with Arthur in 2000. He was astounded that his draft came out to exactly 2001 words! Serendipity! He left it that way—not wanting to press his luck. (5.3 pp)
And part three was written by astronaut Helen Sharman. Her narrative tells of her visit to Sri Lanka to meet Arthur and promote her book, which began with a foreword by Clarke. Sharman was the first British woman in space, who flew to the Mir Space station in 1991.( 92pp.)
Chapter X – Interplanetary Men: Arthur Clarke and Olaf Stapledon — Cosmic Visionaries (6 pp.)
Mark Stewart writes about one of Arthur Clarke’s most profound and consequential early influences in his work, Olaf Stapledon, whose books include the long-lasting, relevant, and classic novels, Last and First Men and StarMaker. Many other contemporaries of Clarke, including his lifelong friend, Patrick Moore, were equally influenced by Stapledon. And how did these “Deep Time and Space” enthusiasts get the famous writer to the youthful British Interplanetary Society to give a lecture in post-WWII 1948? Bob Parkinson, then President of the BIS, told Stewart before a lecture one night: “Clarke and a few others just went to where he was living at the time, and knocked on his front door; they just asked him to do it! …That’s how we got him to speak.”
Clarke had the honor of introducing Stapleton to the audience that evening, and Stewart gives several rare and great quotes from the lecture in this piece. A must read for the “Deep Time and Space” cadets.
Chapter XIV – Fred Clarke (2 pp.)
Mark Stewart writes this piece about the rare and wonderful lifetime relationship between the Clarke brothers who are now together forever in “Deep Time.” This heartfelt tribute of the first order has a lasting power to anyone who met and knew Fred Clarke.
Chapter XV – Fictional Last Word (2pp.)
Stewart extends the power of his tribute to Fred Clarke by flashing forward from the tribute’s last paragraph to this short, fictional image tale of the two brothers once again together.
Kelvin F. Long
Chapter VIII – Old Spaceship (3 pp.)
This chapter is divided into three sections: “The Spaceship” (Kelvin Long) – “Blueprint for a Starship” (Stephen Baxter) – “Creating a Self-Fulfilling Prophesy in Space” (Kelvin Long). Two tables appear in the chapter, one covering ACC’s spaceships in his fiction and nonfiction work; the second covering starships in the works of other science fiction writers.
“The Spaceship” is an overview introduction to the relationship between spaceships in fiction and spaceships in advanced engineering design.
Stephen Baxter’s section, “Blueprint for a Starship,” (9 pp.) is a look at the interstellar starships of the Icarus/Daedalus class, which respectively represent an ongoing and previous program of studies from the membership and associates of the British Interplanetary Society. All starship concepts in these two research programs travel at some fraction of the speed of light and none reach it. Three sample starship concepts from the final page table in Baxter’s essay give the cruise speed of the Daedalus Project as 0.12 c; Clarke’s Magellan in Songs from Distant Earth as 0.2c; and the Venture Star in James Cameron’s Atavar as 0.7c – all as speed-of-light percentages. The Table on the concluding page of Baxter’s “Blueprint” gives the neophyte starship student an excellent perspective—including the keyed references, one of which cites Paul Gilster’s Centauri Dreams (Springer 2004) as an excellent source for starships in science fiction.
Long’s “Creating a Self-Fulfilling Prophesy . . .” (6 pp.) concludes the chapter with an inspirational narrative about the many and varied ways Arthur left his mark on several generations of future space farers—what I call, “Arthur Clarke’s Deep Legacy,” in both time and space. This includes Long’s own renewed enthusiasm from Clarke’s lifetime work as well as a commitment to the interstellar vision that Long works toward, what Paul Gilster (whom I dub the “Master of the Deep”) named his book and website for — Centauri Dreams. But Long puts reality into his renewed vision by organizing the new interstellar research effort he names Project Icarus. “Where Project Daedalus showed that interstellar travel was possible in theory (proof of an existence theorem), Project Icarus aims to demonstrate it is theoretically possible in practice, not by building the vehicle but by demonstrating that the design is sufficiently credible and possible in the near-term.” And the Project Icarus mission also must fire up future generations of interstellar experts as they move into Deep Space and Time to reach new worlds.
Image: Clarke’s ‘The Sentinel’ as it appeared on the cover of New Worlds in 1954. Credit: Michael Moorcock.
Chapter XI – Before the Odyssey (6 pp.)
Kelvin Long compliments Mark Stewart’s chapter X, Interplanetary Men, by covering other early literary influences in Clarke’s youth. His primary focus is on David Lasser and his classic 1931 nonfiction book, The Conquest of Space, which describes the practical applications and future prospects for humankind of rockets and rocketry. He quotes Clarke on its importance to him at the age of 14.
——-
NOTE: Front and back matter, plus multi-contributor chapters now follow. All chapters by the four primary authors have been summarized, in order of appearance, prior to this note.
——-
Front Matter Overview – Acknowledgements by the four authors. Preface by Gregory Benford: “Remembering Arthur” (3 pp.). Benford’s upfront essay joins the large starship crew of admirers and personal friends who carry forth Clarke’s lifelong desire to reach other star’s and their worlds of sentient beings; Preface, by the four authors who man the bridge of the good starship, Arthur C. Clarke, which carries the legacy of his vision to future reality. Special Introduction by Angie Edwards, Fred Clarke’s daughter and Board Member of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. “This is the first truly personal memoir of my Uncle Arthur. . . .”
Back Matter Overview. Resources and Recommended Reading; Selected Papers by Arthur C. Clarke, covering 43 years,1938 to 1981. About the Authors, who take the helm of the Good starship Arthur C. Clarke.
Chapter III – Friends and Followers (10 pp.)
This chapter, short and sweet, has reminiscences of 5 friends who knew Clarke over long periods of time. They are, in order of appearance, Fred Ordway (met in 1950); Michael Moorcock (met in early 1960s); Ben Bova (met in 1956); Keir Dullea (met in late 1965), and writer Robert J. Sawyer (who met ACC only through his work–he read 2001: A Space Odyssey when he was 11, in 1971, but saw the movie when he was only 8, in 1968.
For the “general reader,” who might not be familiar with one or more of these five space cadets, there is a succinct mini-bio is at the end of each piece.
Chapter VI – Remembering Arthur: Members of the British Interplanetary Society Reminisce (12 pp.)
Seven members of the BIS tell their personal tales and connections to Arthur Clarke. In order of appearance they are:
- Martin Fry (Chair of the Space 82 BIS Conference in Brighton who interviewed Clarke via satellite link)
- David A. Hardy (Studied sciences at the College of Technology in Birmingham and met Arthur Clarke when he lectured there for the BIS in the early 50s)
- Mat Irving (The great model maker for BBC Television, Arthur’s friend, and BIS member, who last saw Clarke in 1999, at the British Film Institute showing of Kubrick’s remastered 2001 film print.)
- Bert Lewis (Met Clarke when he was a young student at Taunton Grammar School. Many years later in 1955 he stayed with Bert and his wife when on a lecture tour. The couple were challenged to get him to the dinner table because Arthur was completely engrossed in Bert’s great science fiction collection)
- Kelvin F. Long (Met Clarke at the London Science Museum in 1999. A fellow was pointing up to an exhibit, Arthur C. Clarke invented the communications satellite, and the man turned out to be Arthur. Kelvin and friends talked briefly with Clarke, and this changed Kelvin’s his life, which is now devoted to “rejuvenating the study on interstellar flight”)
- Sir Patrick Moore (Met Arthur at BIS when he was 12 and Arthur was 17—in 1934. They were fellow enthusiasts and both became great men in the space and astronomy fields. They were friends for 74 years!)
- Ray Ward (One of the great fans of Arthur C. Clarke, who met Arthur for the first time in 1971, when Clarke was in London and delivered a lecture at the BIS headquarters.)
- David Baker (Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and currently the editor of its magazine, Spaceflight. He recalls the fascinating details of Kubrick’s advance men mining NASA’s concept and project art to supply realism to the film. Dr. Baker worked in the US space program for more than 25 years, and spanned the early days of the Gemini program, through the years of Apollo mission planning and with the Space Shuttle program during the 1970s and 80s. He’s been a genuine space cadet throughout his full career.
Image: Brighton 1987. David Brin, Fred Clarke, Charles Sheffield and Robert Forward. Credit: BIS/Apogee Prime/Rocket Publishing.
Chapter VII – Treading the Sands of Mars: Arthur’s work in Retrospect (20 pp)
Eight book reviews, one review of current state of space exploration, written by 7 reviewers, with Adam Crowl and Mark Stewart writing two each. One novel, The Sands of Mars, is reviewed twice, and the review is of a limited edition which presents his teenage writings. The reviewers are, in order of appearance:
Kelvin F. Long – The City and the Stars
John Silvester – The Sands of Mars
Adam Crowl – The Sands of Mars
Gregory L. Matloff – Childhood’s End
Paul McAuley – Rendezvous with Rama
Adam Crowl – Earthlight
Mark Stewart – 2001: A Space Odyssey
Andy Sawyer – Childhood Ends (Not the famous 1953 novel, but ACC’s teenage writings)
Mark Stewart – “Arthur’s Guide to the Universe” (A review of the current state of the planet’s space-faring, as seen through the works of Clarke)
Chapter IX – Father to the Man – Stephen Baxter (8 pp.)
“We seem to be young, in a very old Galaxy. We’re like kids tiptoeing through a ruined mansion.” — Stephen Baxter, Ark
And Arthur Clarke was the first kid in line to open up the doors that still were on their hinges. This piece by well-known novelist Stephen Baxter is a wonderful tribute from a successful and grateful author who was brought up on Clarke’s novels, stories, and nonfiction science writings.
There are many insightful personal and professional expressions of his late-in life friendship with Arthur Clarke, and the concluding paragraph of his essay is one of the best.
“A writer’s early works, before experience and craft take over, can be a richer expression of his/her deepest influences and subconscious yearnings than later material. By returning in his and later life to visions from his boyhood, Clarke was revisiting the wellspring of his own creativity.”
Chapter XII -Later Days: 90th Birthday Reflections* (3pp.)
This three-page transcript is Arthur C. Clarke’s last media appearance that was uploaded to YouTube one week before his 90th birthday — on December 9, 2007. His assistant, Nalaka Gunawardene, made this significant event happen — once he approached Arthur and got a high-sign go ahead. Its first appearance, recalls Nalaka, “made some international news and soon became a hit on You Tube.” My bet is that all Clarke fans alive today have seen this broadcast at least once, and millions of other viewers around planet Earth also saw Arthur Clarke and heard his final goodbye to the world.
*Readers who wish to know more about the “back story” of this final media appearance should refer to Neil McAleer’s definitive biography, Visionary: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, chapter 44, “Two Media One Last Time.” (The eBook edition of this biography, published by RosettaBooks, is retitled as Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary, which has a new preface.
The Reviewer now humbly titles the review, The Good Starship Arthur C. Clarke, with the four authors on its bridge, taking the helm in turn. And there are 30 other crew members, all important to the mission of the good starship Arthur C. Clarke.
Beautiful night last night. Southern Cross
(a very feeble constellation) just above the
front gate, with Alpha Centauri beside it.
It always gives me an odd feeling to look
at Alpha and to realize that’s the next stop.
–Letter to Val Cleaver, 1955
——-
Arthur C. Clarke: A Life Remembered
$22.95 plus shipping. ISBN 978-1926837-26-0
Available from Apogee Prime Books through the links below.
http://www.apogeeprime.com/prime/bookpages/9781926837260.html
http://www.bis-space.com/2013/06/25/11092/out-now-arthur-c-clarke-a-life-remembered
This last link is the original announcement from Apogee Books
http://www.cgpublishing.com/9781926837260.html
by Paul Gilster | Aug 26, 2013 | Culture and Society |
With the beginning of a new week it’s time to ponder how best to move forward with coverage not only of the recent Starship Congress in Dallas, but the upcoming 100 Year Starship Symposium in Houston. For that matter, I still have material from the Starship Century event in San Diego, a gathering I was unable to attend but which continues to be available online. The Starship Congress videos are also up for those who missed Dallas, and I’m going to assume the Houston conclave will likewise be recorded. Watching online can’t match the interaction and conversation of being there, but getting to hear the presentations is a major plus.
What I’ll be doing as Houston approaches is continuing to reflect on the conferences I’ve attended so far this year while also trying to keep up with ongoing news. In the days since Dallas I have continued to speak with a number of presenters who will be joining us, as Charles Quarra did on Friday, with reports on their own work. Several have also agreed to drop in as regular columnists, so we’ll be tracking ongoing progress in a number of interesting areas as reported by people directly involved. I’m seeing the level of engagement between researchers and the public growing, a fact that speaks well for using the Internet to move the ball forward.
Interstellar Flight Before DARPA 2011
Kelvin Long is head of the Institute for Interstellar Studies and one of the founders of Project Icarus, the attempt to redesign the Project Daedalus fusion starship of the 1970s. As befits the latter, he is also editor of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, whose role in interstellar studies has always been immense. It was Geoffrey Landis who told me many years back that JBIS (‘J-biz,’ as it is affectionately known) had been the home of advanced concept thinking for decades, and as a BIS member myself, I can tell you that seeing that familiar cover appear in my mailbox renews my energy levels for tackling these issues.
Project Daedalus, of course, was designed largely in London’s pubs, particularly the Mason’s Arms, while Project Icarus takes a different tack, the effort being distributed over the Internet in addition to gatherings at conferences (and yes, the occasional pub still crops up). When Long spoke to Starship Congress, he offered up a history of the field as it grew from the Renaissance musings of Leonardo da Vinci all the way through the first astronauts on the Moon and into the present day. It was a useful session (and I thank Kelvin for the kind words about Centauri Dreams) because it helped to frame where we are today in relation to the DARPA grant of 2011 that drew so much press attention.
The DARPA grant of $500,000 resulted in the 100 Year Starship organization that is putting on the upcoming Houston conference, and in many ways awakened public interest in the idea that a trip to the stars was feasible. Popular science fiction on television and in the movies has for the most part made star travel out to be a simple matter, and it’s my guess that the average home viewer looks at the Enterprise flitting about the galaxy and regards the idea of star travel as something akin to fantasy. Thus to have newspapers and other venues begin to report in on serious work that researchers were performing came as a bit of a surprise to many.
Who knew that so much was going on, even if most of it was not being funded by government agencies? Kelvin and I have had this discussion before, and I’m always glad that he hearkens back to Les Shepherd, the British nuclear physicist who played such a large role not only in the British Interplanetary Society but in organizations like the International Astronautical Federation, which he served twice as president. Also a founder of the International Academy of Astronautics, Shepherd wrote a key paper in 1952 called “Interstellar Flight,” another JBIS contribution that moved the field forward by looking critically at how to move a starship.
Here I think of Giovanni Vulpetti’s words about Shepherd, which he kindly supplied for my obituary of the man that ran early last year:
Dr. Shepherd realized that the matter-antimatter annihilation might have the capability to give a spaceship a high enough speed to reach nearby stars. In other words, the concept of interstellar flight (by/for human beings) may go out from pure fantasy and (slowly) come into Science, simply because the Laws of Physics would, in principle, allow it! This fundamental concept of Astronautics was accepted by investigators in the subsequent three decades, and extended/generalized just before the end of the 2nd millennium.
Long’s talk went through Shepherd’s work and touched on many of the figures that have helped the field grow. On the first night of Starship Congress, Heath Rezabek gathered a number of those who had submitted proposals to DARPA for the 2011 grant, including Joe Ritter’s Starship Alliance and the Tau Zero Foundation. I was asked to supply some closing remarks to that event and gave the audience my view that the DARPA grant had put the earlier interstellar work into context and raised its visibility, firming up the idea that journeys to the stars moved beyond fantasy into the realm of extraordinarily difficult but not impossible mission challenges.
Like Long, I went through many of the names of the great players. After Shepherd, Eugen Sänger came to mind with his work on a so-called ‘photon drive’ in the 1950s. The great Robert Forward more than anyone worked out the physics of antimatter and sail possibilities and studied how powerful laser or microwave beams could drive a starship. George Marx wrote a seminal paper on beamed propulsion, while Clifford Singer studied particle beams to drive the craft. Gregory Matloff and Eugene Mallove examined worldships and sails (Matloff, of course, is still active), while the aforementioned work on Project Daedalus gave us the first true starship design.
The background is indeed rich, and bear in mind that many of these researchers were doing this work in their spare time while holding down demanding positions at labs or universities. The interstellar effort has been driven largely by will and determination. Alan Bond and Anthony Martin of Daedalus fame conceived new ideas for worldships, while in Italy the physicists Giovanni Vulpetti, Claudio Maccone and engineer Giancarlo Genta ignited an Italian solar sail effort that defined the issues and developed mission concepts that are still under investigation. One of these, Maccone’s FOCAL, is an ambitious mission to the Sun’s gravitational focus.
I won’t spend the entire post dwelling on the past, but it’s worth remembering that when Robert Forward was nearing the end of his life, he declared Geoffrey Landis (NASA GRC) to be his successor, and Landis indeed worked through many of the problems in sail materials that so interested Forward. The DARPA grant didn’t happen until 2011, but in the mid-90s we had the Vision-21 conference at NASA Glenn (then Lewis Research Center) followed by the creation of the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project under Marc Millis. Ed Belbruno ran a conference called Robotic Interstellar Flight: Are We Ready in New York in 1994, this one sponsored by The Planetary Society and with involvement from NASA and JPL. The point is that tough-minded researchers have been tackling these issues since long before the public began to notice. We can hope the new interest will be quickened by future events, the most likely driver being the discovery of a truly Earth-like world around a star close enough for detailed study.
Image: Icarus Interstellar’s Andreas Tziolas, along with wife Zoi Maroudas-Tziolas, son Constantine, myself and, to my left, my son Miles.
Awakening the Mythos
Meanwhile, we continue with the interstellar effort while acknowledging that this is a multi-generational quest. The critical scientific and engineering studies are increasingly engaging the strands of science fiction and the popular media as the effort continues. We are discovering interest from sociologists, psychologists, historians, biologists, making the case that this is not a project that can remain purely a matter of physics and engineering. To engage the public we need the humanists as well, for we must ignite the vision in our culture, communicating sound reasons for deep space.
I sometimes turn to the Greek word mythos in describing what is happening. It’s the origin of the word myth, of course, and it has a range of meanings from ‘word’ through ‘fiction.’ The Greeks used ‘logos’ to mean ‘word’ as well, but logos was the word that can be argued and demonstrated, whereas mythos aimed at something ineffable, beyond argument, something that could provide guidance for the critical aspects of our lives. Mythos is all about how we face death, how we confront falsehood, how and where we find the meaning that keeps us going. Tennyson has Ulysses, that great figure of Homeric myth, speak for all those who go journeying:
“…my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Whether consciously or not, we find in myths the inspiration we need to continue traveling. We tap mythos to get things done. In confronting the challenge of interstellar flight, we are re-learning what as a culture we knew in the days of ancient Athens and the earliest Chinese dynasties, that our works must not just reflect but surpass us. Because they are multi-generational, we must hand them along to our children so that they can build upon them to discover their meaning. Yes, we are dealing with the greatest problems of physics and engineering we have ever faced. But we know in our bones that to be successful, an interstellar effort must supercede all of this.
The problem of the starship, then, is problem of science but it is also a problem of philosophy as we choose how to live. The problem of the starship is a problem of engineering but it is also a problem of poetry, as we draw upon sources of inspiration to motivate our species. The starship mythos happens in that place where dreams confront reality and both grow and change from the experience. In leaving Earth we reinvigorate a mythos that may one day take us into the galaxy.
