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PRINCIPIUM The Initiative and Institute for Interstellar Studies Issue 30 | August 2020 ISSN 2397-9127 www.i4is.org R O F E V I T A I T I N I S T U D I E S Scientia ad sidera Knowledge to the stars ■ Worldship Implications of the BIS SPACE Project ■ 2020 ISU MSS Elective Module ■ i4is-supported ISU MSS Projects - Bussard Ramjet & Deceleration of Interstellar Probes ■ 71st IAC 2020 Timetable of Interstellar Papers ■ Cassidy Cobbs - Bioscientist - Part 2 ■ Interstellar News ■ The Cathedral and the Starship ■ FISW2 videos and presentations ■ Educating i4is: the i4is Education Team ■ Alfred M Worden - A personal reflection Principium | Issue 30 | August 2020 1 Arising from a conversation at the ISU Elective, we have a letter to the editor, India in Space, from Editorial ISU student, Pranjal Samarth, which tells us about the rising space endeavour in his country and his Welcome to issue 30 of Principium, the quarterly suggestion that it may be best-placed to design and about all things interstellar from i4is, the Initiative build the first interstellar probe. and Institute for Interstellar Studies. This is our biggest ever issue, 96 pages. We hope you'll And, as promised last time, we celebrate the life of forgive the omission of some items promised last a great American, Alfred M Worden (1932-2020) A time! personal reflection by John Davies. As the Scots sing "When will we see your like again?" Our lead feature this time is Implications for an Interstellar Worldship in findings from the BIS The full list is in the Contents page following this SPACE Project by one of the BIS project team editorial. Richard Soilleux. In our next issue, P31 November 2020, we will Our front cover image is a worldship fleet have a review of Extraterrestrial Languages by envisaged by Michel Lamontagne and the back Daniel Oberhaus postponed from this issue and cover image is an earth-rise from the NASA Lunar more from our ISU elective. We'll have a report on Reconnaissance Orbiter. Much more about both i4is participation in the Starshot Communications inside the back cover. Workshop and an introductory piece on the tough job of getting data and pictures back from light years We have reports of i4is-supported activities at the away, The Interstellar Downlink. International Space University : ■ The two-week elective module, Interstellar If you have any comments on Principium, i4is or Studies (with video access for our members) - interstellar topics more generally, we’d love to hear there will be more in our next issue. from you! ■ Two MSS Projects - Bussard Ramjet & John I Davies, Editor, [email protected] Deceleration of Interstellar Probes. Patrick J Mahon, Editor, [email protected] We have a summary of the Interstellar Papers announced for the 71st International Astronautical Congress in October. It's a "Cyberspace Edition" open to all and this is a unique opportunity to Membership of i4is see and hear the leading figures in the field at no Please support us through membership of i4is. Join cost. We have part two of our interview with one the interstellar community and help to reach the stars! of our activists, Cassidy Cobbs - Bioscientist. Privileges for members and discounts for students, We introduce an intriguing new paper by our seniors and BIS members - details page 63. More at i4is. Executive Director, Dr Andreas Hein, The org/membership. Cathedral and the Starship and announce Please print and display our posters - in this issue our the videos and presentations from the second general poster on page 81 (black background) the student posters on pages 26 (black) and 62 (white). Foundations of Interstellar Studies (FISW2) - also available to our members. Rob Swinney, our All our poster variants at - Education Director introduces Educating i4is: i4is.org/i4is-membership-posters-and-video the i4is Education Team. We have eight pages of Interstellar News. Keep in touch! Join the conversation by following i4is on our Facebook For Members of i4is page www.facebook.com/InterstellarInstitute. Become part of our professional network on LinkedIn Members have access to - www.linkedin.com/groups/4640147. Networking - i4is.org/members/networking- Follow us on Twitter at @I4Interstellar. opportunities And seek out our followers too! Contact us on email via [email protected]. Principium preprints- i4is.org/members/preprints Back issues of Principium, from number one, can be Videos - i4is.org/videos found at www.i4is.org/Principium. More in The i4is Members Page - page 60 The views of our writers are their own. We aim for sound science but not editorial orthodoxy. Principium | Issue 30 | August 2020 2 Contents Alfred M Worden (1932-2020) - a personal reflection 4 Implications for an Interstellar Worldship in findings from the BIS SPACE Project 5 Richard Soilleux News Feature: i4is-supported ISU MSS Projects - Bussard Ramjet and Deceleration of 20 Interstellar Probes by Patrick Mahon Student poster black 26 71st International Astronautical Congress 2020 - Timetable of Interstellar Papers 27 Cassidy Cobbs - Bioscientist - Part 2 interviewed by Robert Kennedy and John Davies 41 LETTER TO THE EDITOR: India in Space From: Pranjal Samarth 51 Interstellar News 52 Z-pinch fusion - sheared-flow stabilization, Toroidal Solar Sail with emitting coating, 52 BIS Project Orbital Ring BIS West Midlands Interstellar Presentation 53 Recent Interstellar Papers in JBIS 54 Tying the Celestial Reference Frame Directly to Black Hole Event Horizons, Was 55 Oumuamua made of molecular hydrogen ice?, Exobodies in Our Back Yard Asteroid mining with small spacecraft - a "filling station" beyond our gravity well, 56 Inverse design for efficient lightsail propulsion, Limitless Space Institute student competition, LightSail 2 continues Relaying Swarms of Low-Mass Interstellar Probes, Near Term Self-replicating 57 Probes, Manoeuvring using magnetic sails in the solar wind Project Lyra: Laser and Fission Probes 58 i4is and Amateur Astronomy 59 The i4is Members Page 60 Student poster white 62 Become an i4is member - Patrick J Mahon 63 News Feature: The Cathedral and the Starship: Learning from the Middle Ages for 64 Future Long-Duration Projects - John I Davies News feature: FISW2 videos and presentations on the i4is website 66 Educating i4is: the i4is Education Team - What we do and who we are - Rob Swinney 71 The Stars: Humanity’s Destination - the evolution of FTL thinking - Gary L Bennett 75 General poster black 81 News Feature: The 2020 ISU Masters Elective Module - Part 1 of 2 82 John I Davies NEXT ISSUE 94 Cover Images 95 Principium | Issue 30 | August 2020 3 Alfred M Worden (1932-2020) A personal reflection by John Davies In 2020 we marked the passing of Al Worden, Apollo 15 command module pilot. Principium Editor John Davies met him just twice and only briefly on both occasions but he left a strong impression. Here he presents a personal reflection on Colonel Alfred Merrill Worden, US Air Force retired, 1932-2020. I missed the first Moon landing. The date was announced after I and three friends had agreed a holiday in Yugoslavia. We had arranged to borrow a VW camper van from a mutual friend, booked a ferry and arranged two weeks off with our bosses. We had seen the "flyby" of Apollo 8 and the almost "touch and go" of Apollo 10 so we talked about cancelling for the Moon landing but decided to go. Three of us were spacecraft engineers at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics in Stevenage, UK, and, frankly, we were rather immature and a little blasé about the whole thing. As a result we were camping in our reserve tent by the Adriatic, having blown the engine of the VW on the Grossglockner pass over the Alps. All we saw was the flickering of a black and white portable television outside the palatial caravan of some fellow campers. We came home by train and the VW came back on the annual autumn "wreck train" months later. I think the owner forgave us. So when i4is co-founders, Kelvin Long and Rob Swinney, told us that the i4is HQ would be opened by Al Worden the name rang a bell but I had to look him up. His presence was organised by Vix Southgate (who space advocates in the UK and beyond will know well) and, on the appointed day, 8 October 2017, she drove him to our rather remote HQ where he gave us an account of his mission and his vision for the future in space. I exchanged just a few words with him but I was left with a strong impression. This was a man both proud of what he had done and modest in his manner. There is a full account of the occasion in Principium, Issue 19, November 2017 - ‘The Interstellar Space’ Opening of i4is HQ, 8 October 2017. I met him again and had five minutes conversation with him at the New Scientist Live exhibition a week or two later. Again I felt I had met a man who was a gentleman in the broad sense - civilised, modest but having done something he was very proud of. He chatted to a couple of us, smoking a cigarette outside the restaurant where he was having dinner with the rest of the BIS team. He joked "My doctor tells me these things are killing me but at my age I don't see what difference it makes".As it turned out he had a "good innings" by any standards and "died in harness", more or less, not fading away. I last saw him, again courtesy of the BIS, at the Royal Institution, where he was a speaker in a debate, reported in Principium News Feature - Debate: Moon, Mars and Beyond at the Royal Institution (P22, August 2018).
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