The 100 Year Starship Symposium was much like a science fiction convention, with solid content and a zest seldom seen. Held Sept. 30-Oct 2 in Orlando, it struck a strong note among the hundreds of attendees. I found it to be enormous fun.
DARPA’s intention in sponsoring this was to spur research and select an organization that will sustain and develop interstellar ideas over the next century. More important, it strove to create a culture centered on human expansion into the solar system, and onward to the stars. A science fictional staple, yes—so it needed sf writers.
Brother Jim and I had invited Steven Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Geoffrey Landis, Robert Sawyer, Allen Steele, George Zebrowski, Joe Haldeman, Gerald Nordley, Charlie Stross and Vernor Vinge. We writers gave two panels moderated by Gay Haldeman before the ~1000 person crowd. Jim ran the biggest part of the tech program, propulsion. It was fun to see tech types recapitulate sf ideas – worldships, spacewarps, long lived societies, wormholes, intricacies of biology and aliens. They’re putting numbers on ideas we embodied in stories. One talk titled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” called our assumptions onto the galactic stage, quite wittily.
DARPA will give out one grant to an entity with the ‘Communication of the Vision’ goal of furthering ideas that lead to interplanetary travel and a society that will support going to the stars within 100 years. Paul Gilster of Centauri Dreams said to me this was like an endorsement from on high, and the symposium may be remembered as the Woodstock of interstellar. John Cramer, who ran the warp drive session, said the same.
I tried to deal with the many talks running on six parallel programs, scurrying among the rooms—an impossible task. For example, Jim and I think the most likely first unmanned “ship” will be a beam driven sail that makes a sundiver fall to get a boost from maybe 1/100th of our orbital radius, then gets pushed by beamed laser or microwave beams to very high speeds. The physics of that we now understand; Jim and I worked on the basics in the early 2000s—stability, steering, high acceleration. We even lifted a carbon fiber sail against gravity at JPL. With the basic physics done, it’s merely engineering… but what fascinating prospects! The sail papers were all promising.
What about larger payloads? We’ve hit the engineering wall, going as far as we can with chemical propulsion systems. If we’re going to make it to Mars in any sort of reasonable timeframe or with healthy transit durations, nuclear is the obvious next step.
Indeed, if NASA doesn’t show the world it has a goal—which should be Mars, certainly–and will develop the means to go there, it will be deeply cut in the budget battles soon to come. The Webb space telescope, now projected to cost $9 billion (ten times the initial supposed cost), is the only good project they have on hand. If we put it into the L2 point at Earth’s shadow as planned, we’d better be able to service it, to get long term performance from such a huge expense. That’s hard and expensive to do with chemical rockets.
Nuclear thermal rockets are the sole economical way we have to reach such places, four times further away than the moon. The outlines of an emerging interplanetary transport system are clear. At the Symposium Geoff Landis reported on the NASA Glenn nuclear thermal rocket program, the third generation of development (after the NERVA program of the 1960s-70s and Timberwind, a still classified program of the 1980s-90s). Stan Borowski of NASA Glenn projects a manned Mars expedition by 2033! That goal could inspire a new generation.
So NASA has a choice, I think—swing for the bleachers, or die. We may know within a year or two which the bureaucrats – who have over thirty years with the Station and Shuttle turned an exploratory agency into something like a postal route—will choose. I’d like to be optimistic.
Several NASA execs remarked to me that the big opportunity now, nuclear thermal rockets, has a lot of opposition from those in the agency who fear public outcry. We’re in the third generation of nuclear thermal rocket development, which already has lift/pound ratings four times that of a Saturn V. But fears of failure dominate Agency thinking. Indeed, the NASA figures I talked to automatically assumed that nuclear thermal rockets were off the table because of “public outcry.” So I said, “Ever done a study to back that up?” Well, no.
I believe the public isn’t so concerned. The 1990s protest against the Cassini mission, which carried a nuclear “battery” source of small power, was the most recent such dustup. But it was funded by a publicity-seeking self promoter, Michio Kaku, who made preposterous claims about the dangers. There was no general public opposition at all. The future has many enemies.
As Joe Haldeman put it, the symposium was “A good and strange time. All those seemingly normal people doing what we do.“ Yes. And we all had a grand time doing it.
[...] First Hard Science Fiction Convention As Greg Benford describes it. Not sure exactly where to post this or what there is to say about it but I thought it was neat [...]
It sounds like a wonderful experience, Greg! I’m envious of all the cool stuff you heard and saw!
The British Interplanetary Society is going to publish the proceedings in their Journal, the JBIS.
I have talked to one of the participants and they said they have already had a request from the BIS.
(The boggle factor is , all of the papers presented? That’s going to take more than one issue. Unless they plan to publish the proceedings as a separate monograph.)
I think there’ll be some culling of papers, though luckily I’m not among the editors. There’ll be several issues, yes.
I hope text or videos of the “numbers” presentations you mentioned will show up on the DARPA site.
If they don’t, and you see them, could you send me a heads up, please?
-Sage
Sage: I will, when DARPA makes them available. I hope they do!
Thank you.
-Sage
Really good interesting stuff there Gregory, though I feel you are doing yourself and the symposium a bit of an injustice titling it as a Hard Scinece Fiction convention. My impression on reaing up on it is that it was more focused on the science rather than the fiction
Mike: You’re right, I did tilt it in the sf direction. But the science was devoted to what we hard sf writers do — envisioning futures with real constraints.
My brother & I are hoping to assemble a book based on the Symposium. Stay tuned!
I’d like to see that! Nice one
Greg,
I hope you brought along the DVD I gave you several years ago with my sixty year collection of info on anti-grav and FTL. How much in depth did the panels get into those topics anyway. I’m curious about that and which theories and space drives they may have taken seriously.
Doug
Indeed, do that that DVD. There were many far-out theories–Sarfatti much in evidence, first I’d seen him since grad school. Anti-grav of some sort came up. There’s a classic problem with antigrav–violates conservation of energy, as I recall.
[...] You may also be interested in Slate’s take on the Symposium, which focuses on some of the breakthrough propulsion concepts at the far edge of the speculative frontier. The Smithsonian’s blog also carried an update about the conference, while MSNBC offered up a look at possible starship destinations, a major interest as we continue to lack planetary data for nearby stars. Finally, I loved Gregory Benford’s article describing the 100 Year Starship Symposium: The First Hard Science Fiction Convention. [...]
Slate was a tad slow on understanding the tech parts, but at this stage, all coverage is good!
Hi Greg
)
So you’re to blame for blowing my mind with all those Writers! Thank you very much
Was a real pleasure to finally meet you and Jim. You both already had a convert to beam-sails in “Project Icarus” – one of my trade studies will be of how to use sails to deliver fusion propellant to an “Icarus” vehicle. I think that’s an idea with legs in the “beam-power doldrums” of below 0.2c cruise speeds. Once we’re edging into the relativistic, then the picture may change, though I might argue a Benford-Nordley Mass-Sail-Beam might get the best performance of all
Focusing particle beams over great distances is a big problem not faced by photons. But powered sails do have a future, indeed. I wish there were funding for such research. We stopped experiments and then theory when our NASA grants went away.
DARPA asked us to get the writers in, after Jim met with David, and it was easy to get them to come. I had trouble getting women writers, though. If the book based on the Symposium happens, Jim & I want it to be a mix of fiction and non.
[...] » Gregory Benford blogs on The First Hard Science Fiction Convention [...]
As a “lunatic”, I advocate settling the moon as a stepping stone to Mars. Launching nuclear-propelled craft from lunar bases would obviate the risk of contaminating the earth with radioactive materials. And lunar launches would require less power on account of the moon’s lesser gravity.
Kudos to Mr Benford for calling out Michio Kaku for what he is.
Really nice report on the symposium. Can’t believe I hadn’t found your blog until now.
and thanks for calling out Michio Kaku for the idiotic self-promoter he is. Wish more people would do the same. I think the same of Neil Tyson, though his science isn’t usually as absurdly bad (just mediocre, mainly).
I know its only research for a possible rocket, but we have to start somewhere!! I think it’s fascinating to think that from this small, fun start will spring a real interplanetary ship!
We have nuclear thermal rockets developed through three generations–NERVA, Timberwind and the present Glenn Ohio program–that would be true interplanetary rockets capable of sending men to all the planets. That’s the way to go for people. Sails can give us economic fast rack for light quick survey ships, too.
I am surprised at all the interest in nuclear thermal rockets. They don’t offer enough performance advantage over chemical propulsion to be worth the trouble, and would be very expensive to use if built. One can do much better at far less cost by placing propellant depots at Earth=-Moon L1 and in Mars orbit. With a couple of refueling stations, ordinary chemical propulsion can take us to Mars and back and offer a cost benefit of re-usable systems.
I could write a lengthy thing on why not nuclear rockets but I suspect this blog is not the venue for that.
But…nukes have Isp over 4 times that of a Saturn V.
How do you get propellant stations there? Where’s the efficiency?
Actually, they are built. They just aren’t flown. Test bed results are solid for first 2 generations, NERVA and Timberwind.
I’d like to read the piece. Can send to gbenford@uci.edu?
You can use lasers to get as high a performance as you can get with nuclear and, although they have political problems, they are not in the same class as using nuclear propulsion near the earth.
Even NASA is putting a little money ($2 million) into a 1 MW setup to test hydrogen heaters.
[...] Gregory Benford has a nice writeup here, where he discusses it in terms of the first “hard sci… [...]
Thanks for your contributions there, too!
Thanks for this commentary, Dr Benford.
I was hoping to hear some of the gossip from this conference since there wasn’t a comet’s chance in the solar corona that I could have attended. And so I have.
I’ll keep a lookout for the proceedings, and especially your book. There seems to be a building impatience (at least in some quarters) with Earth-bound thinking, or so it seems to me, and the recent “exo-planet” craze may portend a new interest in space-faring. Golly, I sure hope so.
Maybe we’ll get off this ball of rock yet.
Quite agree!
“an exploratory agency [turned] into something like a postal route” — this wouldn’t be that bad if they had the attitude of the old Postmaster’s slogan: “neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay this messenger from his appointed rounds.” Unfortunately neither NASA nor the USPS possesses this kind of focus and determination any more.
All too true… By gold plating the shuttle they adopted the attitude not of exploration but of a routine delivery shuttle–to a place of no great utility, the station. NASA never realized that part of the excitement of space is that it’s DANGEROUS to fly Roman candles into the sky, and to own up to it.
[...] You may also be interested in Slate’s take on the Symposium, which focuses on some of the breakthrough propulsion concepts at the far edge of the speculative frontier. The Smithsonian’s blog also carried an update about the conference, while MSNBC offered up a look at possible starship destinations, a major interest as we continue to lack planetary data for nearby stars. Finally, I loved Gregory Benford’s article describing the 100 Year Starship Symposium: The First Hard Science Fiction Convention. [...]
[...] …”); 500’000 Dollar sind ja noch da. (The Space Review, Centauri Dreams 10., Gregory Benford 5., Discovery, Space.com 4., Moon & Back [mehr], Centauri Dreams 3., Space.com 2.10., Parabolic [...]
[...] Gregory Benford called the 100 Year Starship conference the first hard science fiction convention. Jim and Gregory Benford think the most likely first unmanned “ship” will be a beam driven sail that makes a sundiver fall to get a boost from maybe 1/100th of our orbital radius, then gets pushed by beamed laser or microwave beams to very high speeds. The physics of that we now understand; Jim and I worked on the basics in the early 2000s—stability, steering, high acceleration. We even lifted a carbon fiber sail against gravity at JPL. With the basic physics done, it’s merely engineering… but what fascinating prospects! The sail papers were all promising. [...]
> We even lifted a carbon fiber sail against gravity at JPL.
I’ll not soon forget our surprise as it accelerated at several gees at a power level of about 1/3 our calculated liftoff power — so there had to be an effect we hadn’t thought of. And there was: desorption of CO molecules from the carbon fiber lattice, put there during manufacture.
[...] Gregory Benford who used the wonderful phrase ‘the first hard science fiction convention’ to describe what happened at the 100 Year Starship Symposium. It was an apt choice of words. ‘Hard’ science [...]
[...] Gregory Benford who used the wonderful phrase ‘the first hard science fiction convention’ to describe what happened at the 100 Year Starship Symposium. It was an apt choice of words. ‘Hard’ science [...]
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My brother & I will publish in May an anthology exploring the 100 YEAR STARSHIP ideas–STARSHIP CENTURY in paper and e-editions. A large book with major writers. Thanks for your comment!
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The whole vast Bowl physical and social landscape gets played out through SHIPSTAR, which will come out early next year. It’s been fun to romp through the idea-landscape for Larry & me.