Icarus Interstellar's Starship Congress underway
The first day of Starship Congress has a track titled: Interstellar Now (Next 20 years), dedicated to research into existing technologies and interstellar precursor missions.
Most of the sessions I caught were dedicated to lightsails (solar sails) for interstellar missions. Most of the current interest is in lightsails accelerated by laser beams (If you want an idea of how this might work, check out the late Dr. Robert Forward's Rocheworld novels.).
There was a fascinating afternoon session with Dr. Phillip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara talking about the proposed DE-STAR Planetary Defense concept. DE-STAR is the acronym for Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and ExploRation; it's a proposed modular, solar-powered, space-based, laser array. An early use of DE-STAR will be to target asteroids that threaten the Earth and either 'evaporate' it over time (We're not talking Star Wars Death Star lasers) or deflect. DE-STAR can also be used against incoming comets (think Tunguska 1908. All the other asteroid defense systems would have a problem deflecting a comet due to the very limited time between the comet being detected and the impact.
DE-STAR's laser beams can also be directed against solar sails to propel them to relativistic velocities (velocities at a high fraction of the speed of light.) for interplanetary or interstellar exploration. Dr. Lupin also mentioned using DE-STAR laser beams for interstellar communications.
Friday's track will be titled: Interstellar This Lifetime (20-50 years). The focus will be on interstellar travel with travel times within a human lifetime.
Saturday will be where the real fun begins; this is where we will hear from people who are working on really 'Black Sky" concepts like space warps and wormholes.
You can follow the livestream on the Icarus International website or on their YouTube channel.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Commander Scott.
