Time-Distance Solutions

Chaired by Eric Davis, PhD

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?

Papers: Propulsion • Time-space manipulation and/or dilation • Relativistic and faster than light navigation • Energy production, storage, and control • Integrated Designs • Engines

Life: In Vivo and In Vitro — Earth to the Stars

Chaired by Ronke Olabisi, PhD

Whether a human or robotic mission, the life sciences are integral to interstellar 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 crew members, 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?

Papers: 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

Becoming an Interstellar Civilization

Chaired by Ian O'Neil, PhD

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.

Papers: 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?

Destinations and Habitats

Chaired by Joe Ritter, Phd.

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.

Papers: 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