There will be a sequel to last year's popular 100 Year Starship Symposium. This year's meeting will be in Houston, TX from 13-16 September, and the Call for Papers has just been announced.
The original DARPA-funded 100YSS project has been spun-off as a non-profit organization led by former Shuttle astronaut Mae Jemison.
Well-grounded speculative science is important - even if practical applications in the short-term aren't likely. Plus, it's fun and cool in the nerdiest sort of way, and who can argue with that?
The Call for Papers is re-published below after the jump.
The 100 Year Starship considers broad and in-depth public engagement critical to accomplishing human interstellar flight with in the next 100 years. The 100YSS Public Symposium is central to gathering and sharing knowledge, aspirations, capabilities, as well as building advocacy, imagination and momentum.The Symposium’s technical session issues this open call to individuals and organizations from all disciplines—amateur and professional—to contribute to understanding, developing and building the solutions needed for successful interstellar flight.The 100YSS™ Symposium 2012’s theme – Transition to Transformation … The Journey Begins, acknowledges the accomplishments of space exploration to date and calls for authors to consider what changes are needed in how we currently envision and “do space” to truly push forward humanity’s journey to another star. Discussions this year should focus within each topical track on those transformative ideas and processes that make the leap to new breakthroughs.Papers accepted will be included in the 100YSS™ 2012 Symposium Proceedings and may be considered for publication in the coming Journal of Interstellar Studies.
Tracks
1. Time-Distance Solutions
The vast distances that separate the stars pose profound challenges to the existing technologies and design paradigms used for both robotic and human space exploration in and around our solar system. Successful transition to interstellar exploration requires solving “extremely long duration” mission requirements (e.g., energy, materials, knowledge capture, update and storage, data collection, aging and longevity, etc.) or reducing travel times by orders of magnitude to the timescales of human lifetimes. In considering potential time-distance solutions, what are the possible paths to leap from current knowledge and capabilities to those needed to meet the interstellar challenge?
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- Propulsion
- Time-space Manipulation and/or Dilation
- Relativistic and Faster Than Light Navigation
- Energy Production, Storage, and Control
- Integrated Designs
- Engines
2. Life: In Vivo and In Vitro — Earth to the Stars
Whether a human or robotic mission, the life sciences are integral to interstellar space exploration. Obvious concerns are crew health — physiological, psychological and spiritual — during the journey and upon arrival, as is the capacity to detect life. Less obvious perhaps is the role of space exploration in our fundamental understanding of life, its origins, evolution, prosperity and threats thereto.
The life sciences in space exploration today make assumptions about the type of crewmembers, their tasks and even levying requirements for life to be carbon based elsewhere. What strategies, techniques, basic science, uses of space as an experimental platform, and philosophies about life must be addressed to transition to human interstellar space exploration?
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- Physiology in Space
- Definitions of Health and Human Survival
- Psychology in Space
- Cybernetics
- Human Life Suspension (e.g. Cryogenic)
- Medical Facilities and Capabilities in Space
- Spawning from Genetic Material
- Exobiology and Astrobiology
- Teams – Human Relationships and Social Dynamics
- Implications of Experimentation
- Children and Development
- Education
3. Becoming an Interstellar Civilization
Our society has changed in extraordinary ways since Sputnik was launched in 1957 and the challenge to send humans to the Moon was issued in 1961. Many of the changes resulted from technologies developed to get humans to the Moon; while others had to occur to facilitate the process. Long held social and cultural beliefs had to expand to accommodate the implications of the new knowledge and figurative and literal perspectives gained.
While space exploration continues to excite the imagination, interstellar flight remains, in many ways, the domain of science fiction. This session invites papers across disciplines related to animating the necessary political, economic, social and cultural shifts that will enable our transition from a “near Earth” society into an interstellar civilization.
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- Government Policies
- International Co-operation
- Politics
- Space Law
- To Profit Or Not to Profit?
- One-way Or Round-trip
- Legacy Investments and Assets Left Behind
- Who Goes and Who Stays?
- Moral and Ethical Issues
- Economies in Space
- Communications Back to Earth
- Education
- Culture
- Religion & Spirituality
- Implications of Finding Hospitable Worlds
- People Or Technology
- Extraterrestrial Intelligence
- Storytelling and Inspiration
- Linkage Between Incentives, Payback, and Investment
- Movies, Television, and Books to Popularize Long-term Research
- Why We Should Go?
4. Destinations and Habitats
Choose a destination. Build and maintain the transport vessel to accommodate some type of human crew. Design and construct residences, schools, offices, and farms that are more than 6 trillion miles from the nearest pine forest. Find, greet and accommodate the “indigenous residents”. Feed, entertain, care for and govern the humans.
Papers in this track are invited to offer strategies, techniques, processes and solutions that address these needs, especially as they contrast to today's space infrastructure.
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- Criteria for Destination
- Technologies to Identify Suitable Destinations
- Exoplanets
- Staging of Missions and Destinations
- Journeys of Faith
- Enabling Technologies for Establishing Sustained Independent Human Outposts
- Habitats and Vehicles Architecture and Materials
- Living and Working on World Ships
- Vehicle Infrastructure (e.g. Power, Sanitation, Food, Agriculture, Atmospheric, Waste Disposal)
- Gravity/No Gravity
- Navigation
- Docking
- Radiation, Toxins
- Electrical Systems
- Smart Machines & IT & AI
- Crew Operations
5. Special Sessions
These sessions are meant to focus on immediate and relevant issues in the industry and society today. They will change for each symposium.
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- A. College Track College undergraduates and high school seniors are invited to present papers on any of the topics of the Symposium technical tracks during this session. Or, students are called to imagine how their lifetime would differ with or without a global interstellar ambition.
- B. Interstellar Enhances Life on Earth Session invites papers on new/novel current or proposed applications of space technologies, interstellar disciplines, research and knowledge to enhancing and understanding life on earth.
- C. Interstellar Aspiration — Commercial Perspiration: The Next 30 Years of Space Start-ups and Commercialization From weather satellites to GPS to high temperature, low-density materials, space technologies touch our lives every day. And now entrepreneurs are offering space itself as an industry. This session will include current and potential commercial space technology and exploration businesses over the next 30 years. Papers should consider business and technology innovations spanning several years, strategies funding, and creating new markets in space and on earth.
Submission Process
Abstract must be submitted online through the 100YSS website. Abstract must be no longer than 250 words. Complete information on the authors must be included with the submission. If a paper has more than one author, only submit the paper once under the primary authors name and list up to 2 additional authors on the same form along with their full information. Do not send abstracts to any 100YSS email addresses.
Dates
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- Abstracts Due: 8 July, 2012
- Selection Notification: 20 July, 2012
- Selected, Papers Due: 17 August, 2012
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