PRINCIPIUM

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F OR I N T E R

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S T U D I E S

The Newsletter of the Institute for Interstellar Studies™

Introduction by Adrian Mann

News from the Institute

Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop

Advances: DE-STAR

The Starship Art of Jon Lomberg

Book review

www.I4IS.orgScientia ad sidera

Knowledge to the Stars

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 2

“I affirm that next to the soul, the mostbeautiful object in the galaxy is thespaceship!” So said Alejandro Jodorowskyin his foreword to Chris Foss’ book 21stCentury Foss. And who could argue withthat sentiment?

Witness the work of Jon Lomberg in thisissue. He creates radical, ground-breakingconcepts of great beauty that inspire andforce us to rconsider notions of what ispossible, or how things can be. Which isright and proper, of course.

It seems many of us can recount thesame sort of childhood experiences – anearly interest in astronomy or sciencefiction, a teacher that inspired orencouraged, and a tireless curiousity and adesire to know more. Almost all thepeople I know in the ‘InterstellarCommunity’ have taken the science orengineering route. I was presented with adilemma when it came to my furthereducation – choose either maths andphysics, or art. Naturally, I decided topursue all three – much to theconsternation of teachers, other pupilsand parents who couldn’t imagine what onEarth I was thinking. To be honest, I hadno idea either – but also couldn’t see whyscience and art couldn’t get along.

And yet, it now makes sense. Though thedesign of spacecraft is constrained by theiron hand of physics and mathematics,there’s no reason why the form thatfollows the function can’t be beautiful.Take some examples from aviation –the Supermarine Spitfire, the deHavillandComet, Concorde – all governed by theprinciples of flight and yet some of themost beautiful objects created. So why not spacecraft?

Personally, I don’t think the trulybeautiful spacecraft has yet been built.One could hardly describe the SpaceShuttle, or a communications satellite, as‘beautiful’. Perhaps better to describethem as solutions to problems -engineering, thermal, materials and evenpolitical problems, but hardly objects ofgreat aesthetic value. There are designs asyet unbuilt which aspire to beauty.Reaction Engines’ SKYLON spaceplane,for instance, though designed at the verylimits of the possible, has that sense ofpurpose and elegance that harks back to

the golden age of aircraft design. I wonderwhat Geoffrey deHavilland, ReginaldMitchell or Barnes Wallis would havedesigned? I suspect it might not have beentoo dissimilar. As the old adage goes “If itlooks right, it is right.”

So here we stand, at the birth of theconcepts and ideas that will surely one daycarry humanity to the stars. Ships thatburn antimatter for fuel, harness theprocesses at the hearts of stars, or travelon exa-watt lightbeams, hurling collosalmasses at fantastic velocities, on journeysof decades or centuries, out into a vast,dangerous and dark unknown. Take amoment, stand back and consider what anoutrageous, audacious undertaking that is.

What on Earth – or beyond it - wouldthat look like? I read a lot of papers on thephysics of interstellar travel and, though Istruggle with the mathematics, thosegraphs and charts are telling us thingsabout how the Universe works and whatwill be needed to travel through it. Theanswers are truly awe-inspiring.

So the starship must be beautiful! How could we voyage to the stars inrusting hulks, or a thing that looks like acollision between an oil refinery and anaircraft carrier, with old boilers andheating ducts riveted to it? No – thestarship will be a thing of beauty andelegance, because it must be. Theuniquely demanding set of principles willinevitably conspire to make it so.

Finally, I have a personal vision of somefar distant future – imagine, on theobservation deck of one of the firstinterstellar cruise ships, somewhere in thedarkness between the stars, some of thepassengers are listening to a talk on thehistory of interstellar travel, and how theygot to be where they are now. Perhapsright at the start of the presentation, thework we’re doing today will bementioned – we can only hope our fardistant descendants will look kindly on ourendeavours.

Adrian MannDirector, I4IS

Introduction byAdrian Mann

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 3

News from the Institutebe peer reviewed and considered forpublication, this I4IS conference invitesthe submission of further innovative andthought-provoking papers to explore thephilosophy of the starship. All submissionsshould be sent tointerstellarinstitute@gmail, while you can find more details athttp://www.i4is.org/info_events.html. For those simply wishing to attend, ticketsare £55 for non-members of the BritishInterplanetary Society, £45 for membersand £25 for students. To book tickets pay avisit to http://www.bis-space.com/products-page/symposia/the-philosophy-of-the-starship/.

The speaker list currently stands asfollows, with more speakers to come:

• The Invention of the Starship, by Kelvin F Long

• Von Neumann Probes: Close to Reality? by Keith Cooper

• The Philosophical Heritage of the Starship, by Stephen Ashworth

• The Starship as a Philosophical Vehicle,by Bob Parkinson

• Future Geopolitical Scenarios, Their Dominant Philosophy and the Impact Thereof on Deep Space, by Frederik Ceyssens.

I4IS’ First Starship SymposiumI4IS will be holding its first ever one-

day symposium, entitled The Philosophyof the Starship, on 29 May 2013 at theBritish Interplanetary Society in London.Speakers already confirmed include I4IS’Kelvin F Long, Keith Cooper and StephenAshworth, as well as Bob Parkinson whoworked on Project Daedalus and FrederikCeyssens of Icarus Interstellar and KULeuven in Belgium.

Even though the first interstellarmission may be a century or more away,planning for an interstellar future startsnow. What sorts of vessels shall we sendinto deep space, and what will they betasked with? How will they be constructed,financed and governed? What are therisks or benefits inherent in going to thestars? What evolutionary future possiblyawaits those star-faring humans going ona one-way colonisation trip? Indeed, whoamongst us should go, and why? Giventhat a starship will be more than justtechnology but also an artifact of theculture that builds it, what do we trulymean when we talk about starships?

Organised in conjunction with theJournal of the British InterplanetarySociety (http://www.jbis.org.uk/), in whichpapers presented at the symposium will

I4IS Consultant Gerry Webb speaking at a previous British Interplanetary Society‘Worldship’ symposium.

Music to fly to the stars byI4IS’ honorary Interstellar Musician, theexceptionally multi-talented Alex Storer,a.k.a. The Light Dreams, has releasedFuture Worlds, his brand new album ofelectronic space music in the style of JeanMichel Jarre, Tangerine Dream andVangelis. Inspired partly by I4IS, andfeaturing an introduction in theaccompanying PDF booklet written by thespace artist David Hardy, the albumfeatures twelve tracks with themesranging from leaving Earth, star-flightand the colonisation of new worlds, toclimate change, endangered life in theoceans and the ultimate destruction ofEarth as our Sun ages and grows into ared giant. Alex took influences fromscience fiction such as Arthur C Clarke’sThe City and the Stars, Poul Anderson’s TauZero and Karen Thompson Walker’s TheAge of Miracles, or space art from the likesof David Hardy and Chris Moore, andmelded them into his own future tapestry.Indeed, as an accomplished artist himself,the album’s cover is one of his ownpaintings, entitled The World Outside.

Future Worlds is available as a digitaldownload priced £7.99 and, if youpurchase it from Alex’s bandcamp page(http://thelightdreams.bandcamp.com/album/future-worlds) then it comes with twobonus tracks, ‘First Steps’ and ‘Origins’.Alternatively, you can purchase thestandard 12-track album from a variety of Amazon stores around the world, aswell as iTunes and Spotify. Alex has kindly promised to donate a percentage of each sale to I4IS. So if you want afantastic musical experience, what areyou waiting for?

While you’re at it, don’t forget to checkout Alex’s back catalogue of albums plushis artwork on his website,www.thelightdream.net.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 4

Learning about artificial intelligence the interstellar way

Professor Austin Tate, Director of theArtificial Intelligence ApplicationsInstitute at the University of Edinburghand a Senior Researcher with I4IS, hasinfused a Massive Open Online Course(MOOC) on artificial intelligence with adose of interstellar applications.

MOOCs have, in the last few years,become a popular way to make freelyavailable educational materials to tens ofthousands of students across the world.Although many register to just dip in toview the free materials, others partake inlearning the course, watching videolectures, completing assignments andtaking exams to earn ‘Statements ofAccomplishment’. While this is not aformal university certificate, it gives thestudent a sense of achievement that theycan take forward into pursuing theirinterest in the subject further.

News from the Institute

The Cassini space probe at Saturn. Deep space probes could one day be able to make decisions themselves by using their artificialintelligence to critically examine and choose from a range of potential courses of action. Image: NASA/JPL–Caltech.

At Edinburgh, Tate has been running aMOOC in artificial intelligence planningalongside his colleague Gerhard Wickler.The intention of the course is to provide afoundation in the topic, which concernsitself with the execution of strategies andaction plans by artificial intelligence – forexample a robotic space probe acting outprocedures on a deep space mission.Students have the opportunity to learnthe basic algorithms used in robots todeliberate over which courses of action totake, with one week on the syllabusfocusing on applications to space probes.For instance, if a rover on Marsencounters a large rock, can it decidewhether to drive around it or over itwithout waiting for commands on Earth,which can slow the rover’s progress? Aswell as teaching the student how to get togrips with the basics, Tate has includedmodules on planning for interstellarprobes as part of a tie-in with I4IS.

The course ran for five weeks inJanuary 2013 with a total of ten hours ofmaterial and the next course is scheduledto begin on 13 January 2014.

To learn more, visithttps://www.coursera.org/course/aiplan.

Another Edinburgh MOOC potentiallyrelevant to those interested in interstellarstudies is a course given by ProfessorCharles Cockell on Astrobiology and theSearch for Extraterrestrial Life. Thecourse explores what is know about life'sability to live in extreme environments onEarth and how it might have originated. Itlooks at some of the missions to search forlife in our own Solar System and onplanets orbiting distant stars.

To learn more, visitwww.coursera.org/course/astrobio.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 5

COMMUNITY The community pages for the interstellar cognoscenti

Going Interstellar at the Tennessee Valley WorkshopScientists, engineers, journalists and interstellar enthusiasts converged on Huntsville inAlabama, United States, in February for the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, co-sponsored by I4IS. Here workshop organiser Les Johnson and Stephanie Osborn describethe discussions and presentations that took place at the four-day event.

What began in Oak Ridge, Tennesseein 2011 as a gathering of like-mindedTennessee Valley scientists, engineers andspace enthusiasts to discuss reasons,methods and challenges associated withinterstellar travel became an internationalworkshop on the subject in February 2013with the advent of the Second TennesseeValley Interstellar Workshop. Sixty-fivepeople attended the four-day workshop,held this year in Huntsville, Alabama. Itbegan on Sunday 3 February with a pre-workshop reception and culminated onWednesday 6 February with a tour of theUnited Launch Alliance rocket factory innearby Decatur, Alabama.

The theme of the workshop was ‘Let’sGet Started!’, with a focus on near-termsteps that can be taken now to jump-startfuture ultra-deep space exploration,development and interstellar travel. Withthis theme in mind, there were breakoutsessions during the day and into theevening hours to strategise on this topic.The slate of presenters included anastronaut, engineers from NASA, privatespace companies and space advocacygroups, a neuroscientist examining what

we need to know about the human brainbefore we can undertake serious long-term space travel, a lawyer discussing theimplications of developing the technology,an anthropologist speculating on theimpacts that might result from contactwith an extraterrestrial civilisation, and ahigh school student who may haveinadvertently discovered a gamma-rayburst that formed a black hole – just toname a few.

HighlightsIt would be impossible to summarise

each of the excellent papers presented inthe workshop, so here instead is asampling:

• Gerald Driggers, author of The Earth-Mars Chronicles, made the case thatour first interstellar voyagers mightnot be natives of planet Earth, butinstead the potentially genetically-engineered inhabitants of otherplanets within the Solar System –most likely Mars.

• Noted space blogger Paul Gilster builton this theme as he laid out his vision

for humanity’s expansion throughoutthe Solar System as a precursor steptoward interstellar travel.

• Oak Ridge engineer Ken Royproposed the next logical step in thistheme of stepwise outward expansionby suggesting that we may use planetscircling brown dwarf stars as futurehomes and way-stations to the stars.

• Retired NASA engineer Al Jacksonpostulated ways we might be able todetect alien civilisations travellingbetween the stars.

• Robert Kennedy envisioned a futurewhere large ‘Dyson Dots’ block afraction of the Sun’s light incidentupon the Earth to mitigate climatechange and then use onboardphotovoltaics to generate power –power that would then be beamedback to Earth to help run our futureglobal civilisation.

• Kelvin F Long of the Institute forInterstellar Studies and RichardObousy of Icarus Interstellar providedoverviews of the many activitiesoccurring in the field of interstellar

Attentive attendees listen carefully andtake notes during the various talks.Image: Kelvin F Long.

Speakers and attendees at the second Tennessee Valley InternationalWorkshop. Image: Les Johnson.

studies today, prompting one attendeeto comment that we may be living in anew ‘Golden Age’ of interstellarexploration planning.

• Claudio Maccone, Technical Directorfor the International Academy ofAstronautics, provided an overview ofhow future interstellar explorersmight make use of stars’ gravitationallensing properties to establish agalactic internet, allowing interstellarcommunication utilising systems ofastonishingly low power.

• Former National Space SocietyDirector, Gordon Woodcock, keptattendees on terra firma byreminding us that any futureinterstellar travel will be limited bythe known laws of physics andengineering in his talk, called‘Interstellar Travel Without ‘Magic.’’

• Travis S Taylor, scientist and star ofThe National Geographic Channel'sRocket City Rednecks, sent participantsoff on an enthusiastic note byoutlining what needs to be done to laythe groundwork for us to become aninterstellar species, pointing out thatit is well within our grasp to begintoday – now – with currenttechnologies.

Building towards a terawattIn keeping with the gathering’s

workshop status (as opposed to aconference), attendees rolled up theirsleeves in various working sessions toactually develop near- and mid-term plansfor making the dream of interstellarexploration a reality. The outcome wasthe audacious goal of humanitygenerating a terawatt of power from spaceby 2050. The rationale behind this goal isbased on the premise that if we are goingto build a civilisation capable of sendingspaceships to the stars, then we must bemasters of our own Solar System,harnessing the energy from our parentstar to not only power the Earth, but alsoour growing interplanetary presence. Theone key component to all of the viableapproaches to interstellar travel is theavailability of tremendous energy andbeing able to generate a terawatt fromspace before mid-century seems to be areachable goal.

Sponsors of the workshop includedBaen Books, who are the publisher of thebooks Going Interstellar and A NewAmerican Space Plan; developers of the sunshield for the James Webb SpaceTelescope, Nexolve Corporation; theUltimax Group; ORION Astronomy Club;the Huntsville, Alabama Chapter of theNational Space Society; and the Institutefor Interstellar Studies. Selected papersfrom the workshop will be published in aspecial edition of the Journal of the BritishInterplanetary Society.

The third Tennessee Valley InterstellarWorkshop won’t be held for another 18–24months but, in between on roughly eight-month intervals, there will be working

sessions to advance the goals outlined inthe 2013 workshop so that seriousprogress can be reported at the nextworkshop.

You can learn more about theTennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop atthe event’s website,http://lesjohnsonauthor.com/tn_valley_interstellar_workshop/tviw_2013.

Speaker Robert Kennedy makes AlphaCentauri Sunrise, the official drink ofthe Tennessee Valley InterstellarWorkshop, made from one jigger ofTennessee moonshine, two jiggers ofRed Bull, four to six ounces of orangejuice, half a teaspoon of grenadine andthree little red berries representing thethree stars of the alpha Centaurisystem. It’s best served in a martiniglass or a champagne flute. Enjoy!Images: Kelvin F Long.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 6

I4IS members in attendance at theTennessee Valley InterstellarWorkshop, from left to right: AndreasHein, Kelvin F Long and Rob Swinney.Image: Kelvin F Long.

Astronaut Jan Davis was the keynotespeaker, with workshop organiserLes Johnson looking on. Image: Kelvin F Long.

To keep up to date with the latest I4IS news, check out the Starship Log on the Institute’s Interstellar Index

http://www.interstellarindex.com/ blog/

or follow the Institute on Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/InterstellarInstitute

and LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/groups?home&gid=4640147&trk=anet_ug_hm

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 7

Icarus’ Texan Gathering

Icarus Interstellar have announced theIcarus Interstellar Conference, to be heldat the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas,over 15–18 August 2013.

The four-day congress aims to bringtogether the interstellar community tofoster discussion and generate tangibleaction towards the goal of movinghumanity toward becoming an interstellarcivilisation by the year 2100.

The event is organised aroundinterstellar accomplishments over specifictimescales, with each day featuringspeakers focused on one of those timeframes. The first day of the congresscentres itself around the ‘InterstellarNow’, in particular what can feasibly berealised over the next 20 years, includinginterstellar precursor missions,exploration of the Solar System, fission-based energy generation, propulsiontechnology and the necessary social andeconomic factors that need to be in placeto see humanity move towards becomingan interstellar civilisation.

The second day focuses on‘Interstellar This Lifetime’, which covers20–50 years from now, looking at thepotential of fusion rockets, antimatterrockets, colonisation of the Solar System,asteroid mining and the commercialisationof space.

The third day is about our ‘InterstellarFuture’, beyond 50 years and up to 500years from now, looking at such topics asthe exploration and colonisation of nearbystar systems and beyond into the Galaxy,the ethics of colonisation, SETI and first

contact scenarios and exotic propulsionsuch as warp drives, wormholes andvacuum energy as well as slowerworldships and sleeper ships. Finally, dayfour wraps up the congress withnetworking and planning opportunities.

“It’s worth noting that we’re runningthis conference at cost to make the eventas accessible to everyone who wishes toparticipate,” says Andreas Tziolas, who isIcarus Interstellar’s Vice President and aConsultant for I4IS. “Presentations andpapers are welcome from anyone. Allapproaches, be they a technicalinnovation, a programme plan, or a socialendeavour are welcome here. We need toassess exactly where we are right now andcoordinate efforts towards makinghumanity a star-fairing civilisation.

“This is a time of great change. Weare taking deep space and interstellarspace exploration into our own hands. Wewill not wait any longer to see the buildingblocks put into place because we do notneed to wait any longer! This is the MakerMovement taken into space exploration.This is where gamers and game designerswill build associations with scientists,engineers, artists and thinkers forbuilding games that educate andinspire. Icarus Interstellar will not stopuntil it is done. And we know we havefriends everywhere who will support thismission: to build a starship.”

With speakers including scientists,physicists, engineers, researchers, sciencefiction celebrities and authors, andrepresentatives from international spaceprogrammes and present-day commercial

Open hailingfrequencies!If you’re interested in contributing tofuture issues of Principium, you cancontact the editorial team via e-mailat principium@i4is.org. Or perhapsyou’re an I4IS team-member andwould like your research featured inthe newsletter – we’d also bedelighted to hear from you.

Meanwhile, we would be fascinatedto receive readers’ correspondenceon all matters interstellar, yourthoughts on Principium and I4IS andyour suggestions for future topics ofdiscussion in these pages. We lookforward to hearing from you!

The Editor reserves the right to editor shorten letters.

space operators, as well as popular andwell-known interstellar personalities andspace journalists, the Icarus InterstellarStarship Congress is set to be one of theinterstellar events of the year.

A follow-up summit meeting betweenthe Project Icarus Design Team will takeplace at the British Interplanetary Societyin London later in the year.

For more details visitwww.icarusinterstellar.org.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 8

Think of a giant solar collector, tenkilometres across, in orbit or perhapspositioned in the L1 Lagrange point.Soaking up the solar photons, thecollector’s solar panels could generate440 gigawatts of energy, converting itinto a multitude of powerful laser beamsor microwaves emitted from a phasedarray. This is DE-STAR and, say itsinventors Professor Philip M Lubin ofthe University of California, SantaBarbara and Professor Gary B Hughesfrom California Polytechnic StateUniversity, its primary aim is to deflector destroy incoming hazardous asteroidsthat could collide with Earth. However,the spin-offs from DE-STAR could go farbeyond planetary protection.

Lubin and Hughes’ announcement ofthe DE-STAR concept in Februarycouldn’t have been more timely; it wasthe same day that a meteor, 17 metres indiameter, exploded in an airburst 23kilometres above the Russian city ofChelyabinsk. The 440 kiloton blastunleashed a shockwave that blew inwindows, caused roofs to collapse and setcar alarms wailing, injuring 1,491 peoplewith flying glass in the process. It was tobe a fateful 24 hours – that evening, a45-metre asteroid named 2012 DA14also flew within 28,000 kilometres ofEarth, which is inside the ring ofgeostationary satellites.

With the potential danger of anasteroid impact back on people’s minds,there has been much discussion on howto tackle the problem. Many strategieshave been proposed to deal with them,such as attack with nuclear missiles,‘gravity tractors’ that see the smallgravitational pull of a spaceship parkednext to the asteroid slowly pull it offcourse, or even painting the asteroidwhite or black to take advantage ofsunlight either pushing it like a solarsail, or being absorbed and then re-emitted as heat in a different

direction after the asteroid has rotatedon its axis. This provides a thermalimpulse providing enough power to heatthe asteroid, causing a plume ofevaporated material that helps push theasteroid from its hazardous orbit. Thetrouble is, all these strategies are eitherrisky, uncertain of success or requiredecades of advanced warning.

For Lubin and Hughes, DE-STAR is aviable alternative that, once constructed,could act quickly and powerfully. With itsphased array of laser beams targeted at adangerous asteroid, it won’t obliterate theasteroid instantly but, depending on thesize of the DE-STAR system, could eithernudge the asteroid thanks to theYarkovsky effect or vaporise it entirelyover the course of a year.

The different scales to which DE-STARcould be built will determine its power. Forexample, DE-STAR 2 would be a 100-

metre diameter system, providing enoughpower to take advantage of the Yarkovskyeffect and heat the asteroid, causing it todrift off its hazardous orbit. Working to ascale formula where DE-STAR ‘X’ has asize of 10X, DE-STAR 4 would therefore bebigger, 104 metres, or ten kilometresacross. This could impart 5.8576 x 1015

joules per day onto a target asteroid,equivalent to unleashing the explosiveforce of 1.4 megatons onto the asteroid’ssurface on a daily basis. Over the durationof a year, this amount of energy couldvaporise a 500-metre asteroid, whittling itdown to virtually nothing, even from adistance of one astronomical unit (whereone astronomical unit is the averagedistance between Earth and the Sun,149.6 million kilometres).

That’s great for saving the planet, butwhat does this have to do with interstellartravel? DE-STAR 4 is where things get

The DE-STAR: Riding laser beams to the stars

ADVANCES

An artist’s impression of a lightsail, driven by laser beams shone from a phased arraylike DE-STAR. Image: Michael Carroll/The Planetary Society.

Could a new defensive system designed to vaporise hazardous asteroids be adapted to powerinterstellar spacecraft as well as solve the Earth’s energy problems? That’s the claim from apair of Californian scientists who have developed DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targetingof Asteroids and exploRation.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 9

interesting, because now it is large enoughto collect enough energy to do more thanone thing. Diverting the focus of itsbeams, it could target more than oneasteroid, and not always for defensivepurposes but also for scientific knowledge,burning off a layer of an asteroid’s surfaceand allowing telescopes on Earth or inorbit to make a spectral analysis of thevapour and determine the asteroid’scomposition – information that bothscientists and asteroid prospectors wouldpay good money to get their hands on. DE-STAR could also switch to what Lubincalls the SPS, or Space Power Systemmode, in which it beams microwaveenergy rather than laser beams down toEarth, where collectors and transformersconvert it into usable electrical energy.

“A DE-STAR 4 generates about 100gigawatts of electrical power, or roughlythe same as 100 nuclear power planets,”says Lubin. “The average electrical use for2011 in the United States was about 440gigawatts, so this is about a quarter of thetotal US electrical generation. The UnitedKingdom uses a bit less than ten percent

of the United States in terms of electricalenergy, hence a DE-STAR 4 could providemore than twice the electrical energyneeds of the UK.”

Those are highly impressive figures butthe power doesn’t just have to be put touse obliterating asteroids or sating theenormous appetite for energy that wehave here on Earth. DE-STAR 4 could alsofire its beams towards interplanetaryprobes, giving them the energy required topropel them through the Solar System notin years, but in months or even days.Lubin claims that DE-STAR 4 couldprovide power to drive a 100 kilograminterplanetary probe to Mars in just threedays, and a ten ton spacecraft to the redplanet in just a month. If DE-STAR 4 cando that, what could a bigger system, sayDE-STAR 6, do?

A thousand kilometres across, DE-STAR 6 could provide enough energy toaccelerate a 10,000 kilogram spacecraft onan interstellar journey, accelerating at 50 G to close to the speed of light. Lubindescribes this as a ‘photon rail gun’;

basically the photons slung towards thecraft’s reflector (think of a form of sail,catching the laser light like the wind)impart their momentum onto the craft asthey strike it. 50G would be far too highan acceleration for a human crew tosurvive inside, which means the craft musteither be robotic – which the firstinterstellar probes could very well be,perhaps as precursors to potential humanmissions – or by lowering the power theacceleration will be lessened, but eventhen the acceleration would likely beuncomfortable high if you actually wantedto get anywhere at a decent speed.

“Such a system would push the craft tovery close to the speed of light – the finalspeed depends upon the reflector designon the spacecraft – but the travel time tothe nearest stars as counted by a clock onEarth would be the equivalent number oflight years to the star,” Lubin tellsPrincipium. So, a probe driven by DE-STAR 6 towards alpha Centauri, 4.3 lightyears away, would take about that time toreach it, from the point of view of missioncontrol on Earth (in practice it would takea little longer, because of the accelerationphase and also because it will still betravelling less than the speed of light). Forthe probe, thanks to time dilation, thetravel time would be even shorter. Ofcourse, once the probe has got up tospeed, slowing down and stopping wouldstill be a problem. Nevertheless, similarconcepts have been published previously,perhaps most notably by physicist andscience fiction author Robert Forward,

How long it would take to evaporate anasteroid, depending upon the energy ofthe beam and the mass and diameter ofthe asteroid. Image: Philip M Lubin.

How DE-STAR could operate, absorbing sunlight and converting it into laser beams toboth analyse an asteroid’s composition and evaporate an asteroid on a collision coursewith Earth. Image: Philip M Lubin.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 10

who developed ideas such as a laser-pushed ‘lightsail’, as well as Starwisp,which was effectively the same thing butusing a microwave beam instead.Although the beams would disperse overinterstellar distances, a large enoughphased array should negate the need forany intervening optics such as a lens.

The DE-STAR concept certainly soundsincredible, but it is within reach of ourgrowing ambitions in space. Recentlycompanies such as Planetary Resourcesand Deep Space Industries haveannounced their intention to prospect andmine asteroids, ultimately using thematerial in conjunction with 3D printersto construct communications and energyplatforms in the coming decades.Meanwhile, at the Tennessee ValleyInterstellar Workshop this February, theattendees concluded that aiming toproduce a terawatt of energy from powerstations in space by 2050 was a viable, ifambitious, aim. Meanwhile, various spaceagencies such as NASA and JAXA areexperimenting with solar sails, as areprivate organisations such as thePlanetary Society. It may be that aconvergence of these technologies mayprovide an opportunity for interstellartravel in the future.

“This is a futuristic system but requiresno new physics,” says Lubin. “A DE-STAR6 is not a practical system for humanity atits current state of technologicaladvancement but may be in the future.The reason we mentioned a DE-STAR 6was to show that it is a possible path tointerstellar travel.”

So could DE-STAR be pushing probesaround the planets and towards the starswithin the next fifty years?

“This system is not some far-out idea,”added Lubin’s colleague, Gary Hughes, ina press release on the subject. “All thecomponents of this system pretty muchexist today – maybe not quite at the scalewe need and scaling it up would be achallenge, but the basic elements are allthere and ready to go. We just need to putthem into a larger system to be effectiveand, once the system is there, it can do somany things.”

This graph illustrates the amount of dispersion (the spot diameter) at one astronomicalunit versus the array size, as well as the laser power and amount of energy delivered tothe target per day. Image: Philip M Lubin.

An artist’s impression of a lightsail, driven by laser beams shone from a phased arraylike DE-STAR. Image: Michael Carroll/The Planetary Society.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 11

A world first! Legendary spaceartist Jon Lomberg tells theepic story of a worldshiptravelling to the stars over thecourse of a million years offuture history, through his newseries of starship art. Here hetells us about the backgroundbehind his imaginativestarship design as weexclusively present Jon’samazing artwork.

To be a successful space artist, you’ve gotto be able to think big. Planets, nebulae,even whole galaxies with starshipsrocketing to and fro amongst themdemand a large canvas and a bigimagination to boot.

“My mind is a little bit more of a poetthan an engineer,” admits space artistextraordinaire Jon Lomberg(jonlomberg.com), whose work has beenrecognised by organisations as significantas NASA and the Smithsonian Museum,and watched by over 500 million peopleon the television series Cosmos, for whichhe has also received a prestigious EmmyAward. “I’ve always been drawn tothinking about the big vision, the farfuture, the ultimate destiny, those kindsof things a little bit more than the nutsand bolts stuff.”

That far-seeing vision is no moreevident than in Lomberg’s latest artisticproject, a twelve piece extravaganzadepicting a worldship embarking on avoyage that takes us through a millionyears of future history. A project fourdecades in the making, mixingtraditional paintings and silkscreenprinting with modern digital imagery, itsorigin dates back to early 1970s Canada,where he worked with science fictionauthor Judith Merril who had donated agrand collection of science fiction to theToronto Public Library (the collection isnow named the Merril Collection in herhonour and constitutes over 72,000items). Whilst there, Lomberg chartedthe intertwined stories of SF authorCordwainer Smith [real name PaulLinebarger – his day job was an analyst

at the Central Intelligence Agency] andhow his works of fiction related to oneanother, when he was struck in particularby Smith’s description of one of theimmense feats of engineering describedin the novels.

“Cordwainer Smith created this worldof the far future with technologies thatare almost magic as far as we’reconcerned,” says Lomberg. “I describe itas if Lewis Carroll had written ‘Tales of14,000AD’. And [Smith] has thismammoth launch facility calledEarthport, where the idea was that youwanted to separate the ships from theground, so it was up on this enormouspedestal that was like a city.”

Earthport represents one of thosegiant ‘mega-structures’, like Dysonspheres, Matrioshka brains and grandO’Neill stations, which frequentlypopulate science fiction, embodying ourhopes for a prosperous and technologicalfuture for humanity, endowed in afragrance of awe and even a littlemystery as we wonder how suchenormous feats of engineering couldpossibly be achieved.

“Tommy (Thomas) Gold, who workedwith Carl Sagan at Cornell Universityand was a brilliant physicist, doing allkinds of incredible things, said we’veunderestimated the role of really bigengineering in the future, things that arecolossally large,” Lomberg tellsPrincipium. “These can be somehowcombined with the colossally small,through nanotechnology. I imagine thatsome of the starships I’ve painted aregrown rather than built.”

Lomberg made his first sketch ofEarthport while in Toronto and now, fourdecades later, he has revisited it as astopping off point for one of the mostunusual starships that you mayencounter. Riffing off the idea thatstarships could somehow be biologicalrather than nuts and bolts, Lomberg tookinspiration from one of the greats ofclassic science fiction, Olaf Stapledon.

“I was very influenced by Stapledon’svision and a cover of [his novel]Starmaker that I had was a drawing, abiological illustration of a similarstructure to what I ended up drawing,”says Lomberg. From this cameLomberg’s idea of an organic, polyp-like‘petal ship’, a vast multi-generationalworldship that could carry a sampling ofhumanity to the stars.

Melding these influences togetherinto a kind of cosmic tapestry of futurehistory, Lomberg’s starship art depicts

A Living Ship to the Stars

The artist in question at the ‘GalaxyGarden’ that he designed in Hawaii.Image: © Jon Lomberg.

The petal ship, its engine ablaze, in allits glory. Image: © Jon Lomberg.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 12

one of his Stapledon-inspired biologicalpetal-ships departing a massive wineglass-shaped ‘Earthport’ and settingcourse for the stars, where it finds itsultimate destiny out in the Universe.

Living starshipsOrganic ships sound bizarre but,

intriguingly, it is a relatively old andplausible concept, an idea dating back to1972 and physicist Freeman Dyson’s ‘BigTrees’, which he speculated could resultin the “greening of the Galaxy” bybioengineering. The idea forms thebasis of ‘treeships’; a comet tree, grownon one of those icy balls of flotsam andjetsam that lurk in the outer SolarSystem. “There you have a cometnucleus, a cubic mile of ice, and yougenetically engineer these trees that can

exist in a vacuum and grow out of thecomet for miles,” imagines Lomberg.“And the crew live in the trees. Thatbecomes their ship.”

Lomberg’s treeship art has appearedin Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s bookComet and the idea of treeships has alsobeen picked up by science fiction writers,including Dan Simmons in his novelHyperion. Meanwhile, biological starshipsof one form or another have appeared inPeter F Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy,while on television Star Trek: The NextGeneration’s ‘Tin Man’ was a living ship,as were the vessels belonging to theVorlons and Shadows in Babylon 5.

So what would life be like on anorganic, growing starship? Lomberg’spetal-ship, topped by a petal like the

torchships in Robert A. Heinlein's TimeFor the Stars, is divided into six petalsalong a central stem, with each petalplaying a separate role. For instance,the first petal is actually the bud at theforefront of the stem, housing the maincomputer, drive control and guidancecrew. The second petal housesshuttlecraft, workshops, laboratoriesand equipment for landing and possiblyterraforming any worlds the ship comesacross. The next three petals arehabitation modules, starting withstandard living accommodation in thethird petal, an agricultural base offarmland, woodland and lakesunderneath artificial sunlight in thefourth petal and an untamed wildernessinhabited by wild animals in the largefifth petal. The final petal controls theship’s life support systems and the mainengine drive. Each petal forms part ofthe ship’s consciousness – on somelevel, it is aware.

“I tried to come up with the kind ofarchitectural space that humans wouldneed in order to stay sane if they are inthere for generations,” says Lomberg.“What experiences would they crave?They’d need a diversity of experienceand that, I think, would be the realchallenge. I was trying to design aspace that could be carved up in a wayso that the interior space seemed verylarge – mile after mile that you couldroam, where different parts of the shiphad very different character.”

A journeyThe idea behind the wilderness petal

is to provide some degree ofunpredictability for the travellerstrapped onboard, a place where storiesand myths could be woven. “I thoughtyou need some area of wildness, becauseit is kind of a paradox: you’re makingthis starship to explore new worlds butyou’re condemning a few generations init to live in an extremely confined andlimited world,” explains Lomberg, whogoes on to describe how the hero’sjourney in Joseph Campbell’s The HeroWith a Thousand Faces plays intoperpetuating a healthy society. “How doyou keep alive their need for the heroicjourneys and the obstacles that need tobe surmounted? So there are twonarratives in the piece that shows adiagram of the wilderness petal (seepage 14): one is what happens to aperson as he goes from place to place inthis wilderness, but then underneaththis is the technology that supports it all.”

A starship wanders into the universe of Cordwainer Smith, 14,000 years from now – the time of the ‘Underpeople’, the Instrumentality of Mankind, and Earthport. Image: © Jon Lomberg.

Next page: a blueprint of JonLomberg’s living worldship. Image: © Jon Lomberg.

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 13

Throughout his career Lomberg hasbeen able to flex his talent for depictingepic vistas on the grandest of scales,from spacecraft voyaging to the edge ofour Solar System to starship art and atale of future history, one which we willcontinue in subsequent issues ofPrincipium as we feature more of Jon’sart. But while his art tells a story of ahopeful future for humankind, deepdown Lomberg is less optimistic aboutour future than he once was. On theone hand we have the evolutionarytrajectory of an Olaf Stapledon orArthur C Clarke-type future that showsthe potential of humanity to grow into a‘higher’ kind of being, whether that betechnologically or altruistically. “Yet ifyou look at the world today there’s not alot of reasons to be optimistic. Will webe here as a civilisation in a hundredyears, or a thousand years, or tenthousand years?” Lomberg asksrhetorically. “I’d say if we’re here in athousand years then we’ll be here forten thousand.”

Next month we will exploreLomberg’s work on the famous goldenrecords of sounds, words and imagesfrom Earth that now fly on thedeparting Voyager 1 and 2 probes. Thenin issue six we’ll tie things up with aretrospective look at how Lomberg gothis big break when he met Carl Sagan

and subsequently served as Art Directoron the 13-part PBS documentaryCosmos, for which Lomberg won hisprestigious Emmy Award. Plus we’llfeature more of his epic series ofstarship art.

Keep reading!

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 14

A petal ship – a vast worldship – being assembled in orbit. Image: © Jon Lomberg.

A cross-section of the petal ship’s wilderness petal, with twin narratives: one describing what happens to a person as they go fromplace to place in this wilderness, and then beneath that a description of the technology that underlies it all, monitoring theadventurer’s bio-signs. “Essentially it gives somebody in the starship the opportunity to have something like a heroic journey, wherethere is risk, where there is danger, where it is unknown and where they could get killed,” says Jon Lomberg. Image: © Jon Lomberg.

Art copyright Jon Lomberg 2013.Order signed prints of this artwork at http://www.jonlomberg.com/ss_gallery1.html

Principium | Issue 4 | March/April 2013 Page 15

ReviewsThe VisioneersAuthor: W Patrick McCray

The Visioneers isprincipally thestory of twomen. One ofthem is GerardO’Neill, thePrincetonphysicist whoduring the1970spromoted theconcept ofspace colonies,

succinctly described in his book The HighFrontier. The other is Eric Drexler,O’Neill’s former acolyte who, from beinga student at the Massachusetts Institutefor Technology, proceeded to become oneof the world’s leading figures in thearena of nanotechnology, thanks also tohis own book, Engines of Creation.

Author W Patrick McCray, a professor ofhistory at the University of California,Santa Barbara, skillfully tells their storywithin the context of the era of the Clubof Rome’s flawed Limits to Growth, whichcame amidst the growing accessibility ofnew technology to the public in the 1970sand 1980s. As new ideas began topercolate into the popular culture andfind a new and eager audience ofdedicated supporters, for a time anythingseemed possible. And at the heart of itall were people like O’Neill and Drexler,who scorned the doom-laden assessmentsof Limits to Growth and developed theirown visions for a brighter, better,limitless future.

Hence the title of the book. To McCray, a‘visioneer’ is a combination of visionary

and engineer, someone who not only hasbig ideas but also the technical know-howto turn their ideas into reality.“Visioneering certainly embraces aprobing and exploratory approach todesign as technically fluent expertsspeculate as to what can be built,” hewrites on page 152. “Yet visioneering alsoinvolves the popularisation of ideas, theconstruction of networks of supporters andthe cultivation of patrons.” McCarysuccessfully argues that it is thesequalities, which he sees in both O’Neilland Drexler, that are necessary to nudgesociety towards an appreciation andultimately realisation of their visions.

What is most interesting is the parallelthis reviewer sees with those physicistsand engineers who today are pushing foran interstellar future, producing designconcepts for starships or working onideas for new forms of propulsion.Whereas O’Neill and Drexler were thevisioneers of yesterday, those interstellarresearchers are the visioneers of

tomorrow. There is much to be learntfrom McCray’s analysis of O’Neill andDrexler’s visions. For sure, we’re no closerto building space colonies now than wewere in the 1970s and, in hindsight, was itnaive to think that millions of people couldbe living in space by the 1990s? However,the failure to build O’Neill colonies – mostfamously depicted as giant metal cylinderswith towns and landscapes on their innerhull, affixed to the ground throughcentrifugal force as the cylinders rotate –wasn’t a failure of O’Neill’s technicalconcepts or vision, but a failure of politicaland economic will. Often a visioneer’sdreams fall outside of the mainstream andconvincing people in power whose focus ison the things here and now that they cancomprehend can often be difficult.

Nevertheless, during the 1970s O’Neillwas one of the scientific stars of theUnited States, rivalling Carl Sagan’spopularity and appearing on prime timetelevision talk shows, magazine coverstories and newspaper front pages. HowO’Neill dealt with the popularity of hisideas perhaps shows a flaw in his statusas a visioneer. O’Neill was somewhatwary of the fervour that his ideasfostered and of the people on the edge ofsociety – in this case most notablyTimothy Leary – that they would attract.By comparison, today our interstellarvisions are operating under the radar,but one day when popularism does comeit is something that our visioneers oftomorrow will need to be aware of,accept and deal with accordingly.

The Visioneers is exceptionally wellresearched and written, at timesproviding a gripping narrative andinsight into the work of these two menand the people around them, and howthat work was marketed and assessed. Itis surely already a candidate for sciencebook of the year and there is much thatwe can learn from O’Neill’s andDrexler’s stories. A must read.

ISBN: 978-0-691-13983-8

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Price: £19.95 (Hb) 351pp

Find this book on Amazon via our Interstellar Index website.

An artist’s impression of an O’Neill space colony. Image: NASA.

Gerard O’Neill discussing a ‘mass driver’prototype (seen in the foreground) withhis students. Image: NASA.

The open star cluster NGC 2547. In theforeground are hot, young blue starswithin our own Galaxy, stars that may oneday be explored by our interstellardescendants. In the background are faint,distant galaxies beyond our own – foreverout of reach? Image: ESO..

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