You can sign up for the special rate and get all of your accommodation-related questions answered at this link: https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=10633347

Please book early, we only had a block of 50 rooms reserved at this rate, and many have already been taken.

The newly renovated hotel has great amenities & services and dining options, and is centrally located, a perfect base for seeing Dallas’s top attractions. For example, all located within 3 miles are:

- Downtown Dallas / city center

- The American Airlines Center

- Dallas Museum of Art

- Dallas World Aquarium

- The House of Blues

- The JFK Memorial

- Meyerson Symphony Hall

“Imagine collectively experiencing the progressive thoughts and unencumbered designs of the world’s leading spacecraft designers, engineers, and astro-theorists. Picture for a moment, attending a forum where scientists, physicists, engineers, researchers, urban designers, representatives from international space programs and present-day commercial space operators, as well as popular and well-known interstellar speakers and space journalists share their visions for how the future of spaceflight and exploration may unfold.“

Click below to see the full campaign, plus view the video.

 See the Starship Congress Kickstarter Video Here

If you are planning on attending Starship Congress, please note the extra giveaways if you become a backer. For donations of $100 and up (the conference ticket cost) you get some neat things like Starship Congress wristbands and stickers.

Starship Congress Kickstarter Video.

Join Icarus Interstellar at Starship Congress in Dallas August 15th to 18th for a conference on interstellar flight. Google “Starship Congress” to learn more.

Dr. Hunter obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics at The College of William and Mary in 1984.  He was the SHARP (Super High Altitude Project) team leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1990 to 1994, where he raised $3 Million and helped design, build and operate the world’s largest hydrogen gas gun (over 400 feet long).  During testing SHARP surpassed all electric gun records for energy and velocity.  SHARP also launched a series of nine supersonic combustion ramjets (scramjets) with velocities up to Mach 9 (3.1 km/s). These set the record for high Mach number engine operation in a free flying scramjet.

Other roles include participating in gun truck armor projects in Iraq in 2004-2005 as well as running a solar power project for a large company in 2009.  Additionally Dr. Hunter founded Water Station which installs water stations in the California desert and Citizens for All American Canal Safety addressing the drownings in the All American Canal.  He appeared on 60 Minutes regarding the drownings in the All American Canal, as well as on NBC, Univision, Telemundo and others.  Dr. Hunter Co-authored several scientific publications on using hydrogen gas guns to deliver supplies to Low Earth Orbit.  Articles were published in Smithsonian, Popular Science, USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post, and he was also interviewed on the TV series “Prophets of Science Fiction”. Dr. Hunter currently manages Star Sports LLC, which licenses sporting goods, and he also operates Sundance Solar LLC.

The following is the abstract for Dr. Hunter’s talk Jules Verne 2.0 — The Hydrogen Gas Gun: Part of the Interstellar Roadmap:

Since the 1940s, vast intellectual and financial capital has been directed toward the development of chemical rocket technology. This is partly due to the breathtaking ability of rockets to deliver ordnance payloads to virtually any location on the planet in a very short amount of time. This has lead to the myopic belief that rockets are the only way to launch payloads into Earth orbit. This viewpoint is fundamentally flawed, and in this talk I’ll discuss a technology that holds the potential to radically alter our collective paradigm regarding Earth-to-Orbit launch technologies. 

The Hydrogen gas gun is, conceptually, a simple mechanism that involves heating hydrogen gas to a high temperature. This gas is then released into a barrel accelerating a payload to high velocities.  We have built and tested such a device and launched payloads at 3.1km/s. With relatively straight forward modifications we could scale this mechanism to launch payloads to full orbital velocities, allowing for the systematic and ongoing delivery of non-organic payloads into Earth orbit.

A large scale campaign of solar system exploration and colonization that may very well be the first steps necessary to kickstart the launch of our first interstellar mission will likely require thousands, if not tens of thousands of tons to be launched into Earth orbit. Due to the costs involved, this is largely considered prohibitive today. I will demonstrate that Hydrogen gas guns can be used to deliver propellant to LEO at $100 per lb and that the path to the stars can begin today with the Hydrogen gas gun. 

Giorgio Gaviraghi received his Architectural degree in 1968 at the Milan Polytechnic University in Italy. He has since taken part in a number of graduate courses in management, marketing, and design at several major universities. At first as a project architect, then as project manager, responsible for international projects, he has built a distinguished career across the globe. He has acted as CEO for international companies operating in the areas of design, construction, real estate and touristic resort development, and he has been a Director General of multinational companies operating in Europe, U.S., Latin America and the Middle East in the field of design and construction, touristic resorts and real estate. He has been responsible for major initiatives, some valued at more than $5 billion, as the design and construction management agent. Project examples include the reconstruction of Friuli after the 1976 earthquake; in aerospace, the Aeritalia Boeing facilities, the HAI in Greece, and the electromagnetic gun for SDI. Mr. Gaviraghi was project designer and general manager of major resorts and hotels in the Red Sea, Sardinia, Bahamas and other major tourist sites in the world. He was also the winner of international competitions in innovative products and systems for industrial design, and has specialized in space architecture for advanced projects and proposals for major space agencies. In the last five years he has founded Exponential Design Lab, a design and project management company that operates from Latin America with customers all around the world and co-founded UNISPACE and Star Voyager space design groups.

       Giorgio Gaviraghi

André Caminoa is an architect based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has spent the majority of his career. He graduated with degrees architecture and urbanism from the University of Buenos Aires in 2002. Since then he has complemented his academic background with several post-graduate programs and courses related to communication, project management, and quality assurance. He has conducted extensive research during the last three years, and currently he is completing a Masters program in Advanced Architectural Design at the University of Buenos Aires, with a thesis dissertation focused on 3D printed modular habitats. A creative and strategic thinker, in his blog urbi et urbi Mr. Caminoa writes about the synergies between art, science and technology. Recently, he has co-founded UNISPACE, an advanced design organization geared towards space architecture, experimental architecture, and strategic advanced research in future concepts design. As licensed architect, he has been working in the Architectural and Construction Industry for more than 10 years, specializing in Strategic Direction, Design Management, Project Management and Construction Management with a multidisciplinary vision for diverse multi scale projects. He has managed highly complex projects, providing his clients with design management, engineering, procurement, and construction services.

       André Caminoa

Following are the abstracts for Mr. Caminoa’s and Mr. Gaviraghi’s talks:

Critical Path and Interstellar Routes

It is highly probable, due to its proximity to our Solar System, that the Alpha Centauri system will be the first destination of mankind’s interstellar odyssey. However, once we achieve the technological ability to launch such an endeavor, what’s next? A tentative strategy to satisfactorily answer this question appears necessary and pertinent.

The Sun’s neighborhood, considering a distance of 15 light years from Sol, contains 56 Stellar Systems, encompassing a total of 75 Stars. Although we have not confirmed the existence of extrasolar planets in each system, only a few at the time of this writing, these stellar systems are all potential targets of human colonization.

In this talk, we will describe the most convenient interstellar routes that a space-based Kardashev II human civilization should use to explore, to settle, to colonize, and to ensure its immediate surroundings or influence area. We will analyze this subject analogous to an exercise of project management. For this reason we will use Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) tools, in order to answer the followings questions:

• - How many starships should be dispatched?
• - In which order should their destinations be chosen?
• - How much time will be required?

The correct answers to these questions could give us an initial clue for the likely paths of a structured roadmap to reach and secure our stellar neighborhood.

Code of Ethics for Alien Encounters

One of the main motivations for manned Interstellar travel will be to expand human civilization to new planetary systems, to preserve its culture and promote its growth. Since most of the extrasolar planets discovered so far are not directly habitable for different reasons, such as their atmospheric compositions, our options for making them habitable include: 

- Terraforming
- Underground Terraforming
- Space settlements with planetary manned outposts expandable to bases

While potential habitability could be defined by the sophisticated ESI (Earth Similarity Index) and PHI (Planetary Habitability Index) scales developed by Dirk Schultze-Masuch, we will utilize the following classification system to evaluate potential locations for manned settlement: 

000 – Not approachable due to hostile alien presence
00 – Difficult to approach due to alien presence
0 – Not approachable due to natural conditions (gravity, chemical composition, radiation, others), only suitable for exploration by robotic probes (i.e. Jupiter)
1 – Approachable, short-term manned visits are possible, but no Terraforming / permanent settlement potential (i.e. Io)
2 – Underground Terraforming possibilities only with surface outposts (scientific, manufacturing etc. only), i.e. Moon, Titan, Enceladus, Mars
3 – Terraforming possibilities for non-optimal conditions, i.e. none in solar system
4 – Optimum Terraforming possibilities but lacking components (gravity, chemical composition), i.e. Mars
5 – Earth-like (chemical composition, weather, gravity, possibility of terrestrial ecosystem), i.e. Earth 

Before we can consider any of the listed alternatives we must ensure that there is no alien life, especially intelligent life, present on the considered body. In case such life may exist, we should define a Code of Ethics before any encounter with alien societies could happen. Such code must be based not only in the definition of their state of progress, through the Kardashev scale or other similar system, but also by applying the code that will be the argument of this paper.

A Kardashev III Approach to Extra-Solar Planetary System Colonization

Looking at the history of mankind’s exploration of space, we acknowledge that all vehicles ever sent into Earth orbit, to the Moon and other destinations in the solar system, have been launched from Earth. Our society, being a K1 planetary type in accordance with Kardashev’s classification, is entirely ground-based, delivering our rockets from the Earth’s surface. How would a society mastering interstellar travel, classified as a K3 on the Kardashev scale, pursue a similar goal, the colonization of a planetary system?

A type K3 society, for example, could be an alien society arriving in our planetary system or, optimistically, a future version of mankind, after obtaining interstellar travel capability, planning the development of an extra-solar system. What could be the pattern of expansion and transition to new terrestrial environments, where possible, in an alien planetary system?

What would the launching facilities for planetary development look like aboard a space-based starship, and what could be a systematic and logical approach to the system that may lead to colonization or terrestrial ecosystem expansion?

Most activities, at least initially, would be space-based, from a so-called “mothership”, the vessel that would transport the alien society to a new planetary system. In the talk we will explore the strategies involved in a space-based approach, the infrastructure, equipment, and facilities needed to successfully explore and develop and new planetary system. Strategies considered in the talk range from unmanned to manned preparation phases, as well as a hybrid approach that includes sending machines and human embryo clones whose minds have been temporarily uploaded to the machines and who will be born in the new territories.

His professional interests and expertise include: 

• Advanced Energy Technologies and System Design
• Nuclear Reactor Physics, Thermal Hydraulics, and Energy Conversion
• Integrated Analysis of Nuclear Systems and Development of Methods & Tools Including Integrated/Hybrid Monte Carlo-Deterministic Modeling & Coupled Neutronics-Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis
• Complex Modeling of Nuclear Systems
• Innovative Energy Systems (LWRs, HTGRs, Fast Reactors and ADSs, Hybrid Systems, Space Applications, Direct Energy Conversion, and etc.)
• Advanced Fuel Cycles (Self-Sustainability, Resource Consumption, Spectra Conditioning, Spent Fuel Management, Safety, Economics, Environmental Impact, Non-Proliferation, and etc.)
• Safety of Nuclear Systems and Nuclear Energy Technologies
• Information Technologies Relevant to the Nuclear Material Safe Management

Dr. Tsvetkov received a Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute (Tech. Univ.) in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2002. 

The nearest star is Proxima Centauri at 4.3 light years distance. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year at its speed of around 300,000 km/s, which is equal to 9,460 billion km away. So the nearest star is at a distance of 40,678 billion km. If you could travel at only 1% of the speed of light, it would still take 430 years to get there. Going back in history that is the year 1583. In that year the Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei would only have been 19 years old. By the time the starship reached its destination after centuries of travel time, what history would have passed by back on Earth? Indeed, how would the culture on board the starship have evolved? They would have their very own rich and interesting history, although hopefully no conflicts. What if we could travel at 10% of the speed of light? Then it would take us a mere 43 years trip time, half a century. In Earth’s history that would be the year 1970 which is one year after mankind first walked on the surface of its small gravitational companion – The Moon. That certainly sounds more reasonable.

And when that crew gets to their destination what will they find? Will it be pastures green, new life, and new civilizations? Or will they have to work hard for many decades in order to establish a viable colony? Of course, those who arrive at the destination from the slow centuries long mission will never have known the planet Earth. It would only be a memory in the banks of their computers and stories told by their great grandparents of old. For the quicker decades-long mission, some who set out on the journey may still be alive when they arrive but how will they react? Will they be disappointed by what they find and look back with their deep space telescopes at the distant Sun, wishing they were home and had never made the attempt? The colonists will be resigned to their situation and will have to make the best of whatever they have. Hopefully, with hard work and optimism, they can make a liveable home for themselves and learn to mine the resources of their new stellar system. In time, towns will spring up, followed by cities as an entire civilization emerged in this new place suspended by the light of a different sun beam.

As the new generation grows up they will hear tales of the green and blue planet Earth, the home of their genetic origin, and while looking up at the stars at night, they will wonder what that planet must be like. They will hear about its deep and vast watery oceans, its cold polar ice caps, its hot dry deserts, and wet and wondrous jungles adorned with so many species of life you cannot count them all. To them, Earth will appear as a place of myth and fantasy, a place of magic and splendour. Their urge to learn more about it will grow. Their yearning to see it for themselves and to feel the touch of a rain drop on a cold windy day will become strong.

Today there are some of us who look at the stars with a dream to travel there, to wander among those glistening gems that shine in the deep, and to satisfy our tenacious curiosity for what may be there. Some of these future interstellar colonists will have a will of adventure just like their ancestral explorers and eventually they will be determined to make the crossing back, to the place from where they had come. What a moment that would be, a human being from the distant stars many centuries later returning to the planet Earth. As a species we can be proud of all that we accomplished and welcome our Star Child as one of our own. They may appear different, perhaps of altered complexion – although there would not have been time enough for evolution to do its work. But their character and personality would certainly be different. They would have less of our weaknesses and more of our strengths. These humans from the stars would be made from the hardships they had endured making their distant space colony a success. They would have things to teach us, and the children that were sent away had come home to tell us their stories. Yet, this would still be only two star systems occupied by our kind, and the entire cosmos would still await us to be explored.

Eventually, some of those distant colonies will be so far away, that they may forget Earth altogether. As natural catastrophes happen on their adopted planets perhaps their entire history will be wiped out over eons of time. The name Earth may have no meaning for some of these future colonies. But does this matter? Our seed will be out there and life, the most precious thing in the Universe, will be flourishing. How wonderful is nature to give us this great tapestry of space and time, matter and energy that we see before us scattered across the dome of our sky so that one day we may go out to it, and finally learn the meaning of what it means to be a starship human? So what role does the starship play in all this? It is our vessel that takes us from star A to star B. All animals on Earth undergo some form of migration, including birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects and crustaceans. Even tree populations may migrate over the landscape through generations, typically due to environmental suppression or dispersal capacity of the population by seed. Perhaps humans too have it within our biological drivers to migrate to new places, so that we may survive, learn, adapt and grow. In the timescales of the cosmos, humans going to the stars and returning may be like a form of migration. How awe-inspiring is nature to lay out all of these opportunities for us? The question is: are we intelligent enough to yield the technology we develop for this purpose or will we destroy ourselves in the attempt? In some ways, the development of the starship is a test of our nature and fitness for survival out there, due to the duality of the advanced technology which can be used for good or bad. I’m personally optimistic that we can mature from our childhood slumber and embrace the promising future that is before us.

Godspeed! Second star to the left – eyes forward.

Eric is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics, and recently co-published, with Marc Millis, the book Frontiers of Propulsion Science. Eric’s lifetime mentor was Bob Forward, who was a renowned physicist and science fiction writer. Eric earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Arizona (1991), and his dissertation research focused on the Io Plasma Torus at Jupiter while working on the Voyager 1 & 2 missions, giving him a solid foundation in nuclear fusion and plasma physics. He also earned a B.Sc. in physics and mathematics from the University of Arizona (1983) and an A.A. in liberal arts from Phoenix College (1981). Eric has further space mission experience including the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) mission (1984-85), ASUSat-1 (1990), and space theater reconnaissance in South Korea (USAF & U.S. Forces Korea, 1995-96). As part of his graduate studies he was involved in research on antiproton annihilation propulsion. Eric’s current research specialization includes breakthrough propulsion physics, general relativity and quantum field theories, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), spacecraft exploration of the outer solar system, and space mission engineering.

Eric is currently employed as a Senior Research Physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. He is also the CEO/Chief Scientist of Warp Drive Metrics, and has provided contract services to the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. He was also a technical contributor and consultant to the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program.

Eric authored an award winning paper on the quantum vacuum zero-point energy (Space Technology & Applications International Forum 2007), and authored several papers and reports on traversable wormholes, warp drives, laser propulsion, teleportation physics and advanced propulsion concepts. He has been twice recognized by the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics for outstanding contributions to national defense and space public policy. Eric is member of the New York Academy of Sciences, member of the American Astronomical Society, member of the Directed Energy Professional Society, a lifetime member of SPIE, and was a lifetime member of the now-defunct American Institute of Beamed Energy Propulsion. Eric also serves on the Tau Zero Foundation advisory board and is on the international editorial board of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

Following is an abstract of Eric’s talk “Faster-Than-Light Space Warps: What’s It All About?”:

Advanced interstellar (starship) propulsion concepts are limited by the speed of light, the amount of propulsion fuel carried by starships, or propulsion energy that can be beamed to them, and by the extremely long interstellar flight times and distances to stars that possess exoplanets suitable for exploration. Therefore, it is imperative that we explore alternative propulsion physics that allow the circumvention of the light speed limit, have less demanding propulsion system, fuel or energy requirements, and that manifest relatively short flight times and distances to the stars.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicts two types of faster-than-light (FTL) space warps that can achieve these goals: Traversable wormholes, and warp drives. Implementation of FTL space warps requires the use of so-called “exotic” matter to engineer spacetime into very specialized local geometries. One can appeal to quantum field theory to find both natural and phenomenological sources of exotic matter. Such quantum fields are disturbed by the curved spacetime geometry they produce, so their energy-momentum tensor can be used to probe the back-reaction of the field effects upon the dynamics of the FTL space warp, which has implications for their construction and control. Also, the production, detection, and deployment of “exotic” quantum fields are seen to be key technical challenges in which basic first steps can be taken to experimentally probe their properties. FTL space warps also possess features that challenge the notions of momentum conservation and causality. The status of these important issues is addressed in this report, and recommended next steps for further investigations are identified in an effort to clear up a number of technical uncertainties in order to progress the present state-of-the-art in FTL space warp physics. 

—

Enjoy Icarus’s interstellar flight conference this August in Dallas.

Dr. Eric Davis

Image Credit: University of Michigan

Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, Dr. Terry Kammash, has been announced as a speaker for Icarus Interstellar’s 2013 interstellar flight conference Starship Congress, with a talk titled Fission or Fusion for Interstellar Missions. Dr. Kammash is the Stephen S. Attwood Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan. He was first appointed at the University in 1954 after earning a Bachelor’s degree (in 1952) and a Master’s degree (1954), both in Aeronautical Engineering, from Pennsylvania State University. He obtained his Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1958.

Dr. Kammash has conducted research into a wide field of specializations including theoretical and computational investigations of high temperature plasma confinement in magnetic fusion devices, including the study of equilibrium, transport, and stability of plasma in toroidal and open-ended devices, as well as inertial confinement fusion, plasma engineering, power producing fusion reactors, and space applications of nuclear energy.

He has published dozens of technical papers on such topics as antiproton-driven magnetically insulated inertial fusion propulsion systems. He has published several scholarly texts, including ‘Fusion Reactor Physics: Principles and Technology’ (1975) and ‘Fusion Energy in Space Propulsion’ (1995). Recently, the AIAA Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion Technical Committee awarded Terry Kammash the 2012 Pioneer Award for outstanding achievements, exemplary leadership and sustained contributions to the field of aerospace engineering in advanced nuclear fusion propulsion.

Dr. Kammash’s talk, Fission or Fusion for Interstellar Missions, will provide an in-depth view of different nuclear propulsion options. The following is the abstract for Dr. Kammash’s talk:

Using the conservation equations, we derive a set of equations yielding specific impulse and travel time as functions of power per unit mass (P/M) of the propulsion system that can be utilized for interstellar missions. We find that for any electrical propulsion technology such as RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) and some magnetic fusion concepts, a limit of 10W/Kg is readily obtainable. For such systems we find that trip time to the Sun’s lens and Jupiter’s lens take 52 and 257 years, respectively. However, increasing P/M by an order of magnitude would reduce the travel time to the Sun’s lens to 30 years. Increasing P/M by another order of magnitude, which may be achievable in fission-driven systems, will further reduce the journey time to less than 20 years. One fusion-hybrid concept that can deliver large P/M is one based on the gasdynamic mirror (GDM), in which the fusion component serves as a neutron source that delivers neutrons to a surrounding Thorium blanket, where they breed Uranium and simultaneously burn it to produce power. Such a system is shown to be capable of producing tens of megawatts of thermal power per cm of length, which translates to several megawatts per cm of electric power with a mass of about 672 mTs. 

Mr. Quarra was influenced early on in his life by two books: The Science in Science Fiction by Peter Nicholls, and The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan. Among the phenomena that are ubiquitous in science fiction, artificial intelligence and wormhole engineering intrigued him the most. This latter led him to eventually obtain a degree in theoretical and mathematical physics from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela. However, as it turned out, wormholes proved to be a harder nut to crack than he anticipated, so he moved on to a career as a programmer and software developer. Still, from time to time he goes back to the problem of fast interstellar travel in his spare time. 

In his Starship Congress talk, The Laser Star Way: A Light Bridge to the closest Stars, Mr. Quarra will address questions such as – must the wheel always precede the road? And, what if, in order to reach for the nearest stars, we first have to develop a kind of interstellar highway for the ships to travel on?

In addition, Mr. Quarra’s talk will analyze the basic feasibility of a stable chain of equidistant optical laser relays, forwarding laser power between two stars as a way to provide beamed power to interstellar ships travelling along the entire length of the flight. Among other aspects, the engineering challenges of manufacturing and maintaining such interstellar highways will be discussed.