Transition to Transformation: The Journey Begins
Symposium Speakers

Speakers explore the complexities of Becoming an Interstellar Civilization.

Dr. Mae Jemison and Benjamin Palmer

Dr. Mae Jemison and Benjamin Palmer discuss panel topics.

LeVar Burton and Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole

LeVar Burton and Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole discuss the effects of pop culture on space travel and vice versa.

The 2012 Public Symposium Team

Educators at the workshops 2012 Public Symposium

The 2012 Public Symposium kicked off with a message from President Bill Clinton, Honorary Chair, emphasizing the rewards, challenges, and promise of space exploration. The four-day event hosted workshops, panels, and presentations addressing technological and societal issues surrounding interstellar travel. The group of more than 300 talented people represented physical and social sciences, engineering, education, finance, medicine, business and the arts - hailing from the USA, UK, China, South America, Africa, and Australia.


Announcing the availability of the 2012 100YSS Symposium Conference Proceeding. Available now at Amazon.com

Panels

There were several presentation tracks, each being led by a distinguished and knowledgeable track chair.

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.

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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.

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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. Long held social and cultural beliefs had to expand to accommodate the implications of the new knowledge and figurative and literal perspectives gained.

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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.

Papers in this track are invited to offer strategies, techniques, processes and solutions that address the needs of special habitats (on the journey and at the destination), especially as they contrast to today's space infrastructure.

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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

Special Sessions

A. College Track

Chaired by David Alexander, PhD.

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

Chaired by Fola Soares, PhD

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

Co-Chaired by Amy Milliman and Dan Hansen

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.

selected papers & presentations

  • Warp Field Mechanics

    Harold White, PhD NASA Johnson Space Center

  • The Nuclear Option: The Feasibility of Transport of an Interstellar Target within a single human lifetime

    Jim Caver, AIM-USA

  • Near Term Commercial Space Infrastructure Colonization

    Keith Taggert, et al, Spec Innovations

  • Key Issues for the design of Habitable Extraterrestrial Structures

    Haym Benaroya, PhD, Rutgers University

  • Role of Gameplay in Space

    Mellissa Patton

  • A User Friendly Graphical Interface for Simulating Galactic Stellar Populations

    Alexander Bailey Howard

  • The Starship Singularity

    Gabriel Rothblatt, Terasem

  • Whole Brain Emulation: Feasibility and Design Considerations

    Greg Fleetwood, Space Colony Earth

  • Sustainability as a Criteria

    David Haberman, IF LLC

  • Viable Interstellar Economies for the Collective Good

    Gordon Gould

  • SERVIR: a space-based remote sensing for land management

    Dan Irwin, NASA

  • Considering Clothing and Textiles on an Interstellar mission

    Karl Aspelund, PhD, University of Rhode Island

Distinguished Speakers & Guests

  • Mae Jemison

    Leader, 100 Year Starship

  • LeVar Burton

    Actor

  • Nichelle Nichols

    Actress

  • Annise Parker

    Mayor

  • Sheila Jackson Lee

    Congresswoman

  • Miles O'Brien

    Journalist

  • Dr. Jill Tarter

    Director, SETI Institute

  • Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole

    Director, Smithsonian Museum of African Art

  • Zhang Wenxiang

    China National Calligrapher

  • Benjamin Palmer

    CEO, The Barbarian Group

  • Dr. Ellen Ochoa

    Deputy Director, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

  • Stephanie Wilson

    Astronaut

  • Frank Hughes

    50-year NASA veteran engineer

  • Dr. Linda Wetzel, Professor

    George Washington University

gallery

Location

1200 Louisiana Street
Houston, TX 77002

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Mae Jemison speaking at The 2012 Symposium

A Note From Dr. J

“[The challenge of human interstellar travel is] more than a propulsion problem, more than an engineering problem. There are incredibly difficult social and cultural questions to answer as we go. [...]. Where are we going? Who gets to go? And what do we do when we get there? And most importantly, how does it benefit the people on earth? For the last few decades, astronauts and rocket scientists have been the face of space exploration but they weren’t the only ones making it happen. [...]. Achieving the capabilities for travel to another solar system will require a global, collaborative effort.”

sponsors

  • Scholastic, Inc.
  • The Barbarian Group
  • Pfizer, Inc.
  • The Studio NYC
  • Houston Museum of Natural Science
  • United Airlines
  • Rice University
  • The Jemison Group, Inc.
  • NASA
  • Greater Houston Convention and Visitor's Bureau
  • Greater Houston Partnership
  • Houston Independent School District
  • Music World Entertainment
  • Hiram Dallas
  • Prophet

*Image courtesy of NASA/JPL