RINCIPIUM PThe Newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies ™ Issue 11 | November 2015 n STOP PRESS: Starship Engineer course n Guest Introduction: Photometric SETI n News: Project Dragonfly, i4is at SDSO, Axiom, Starship Congress n Project Dragonfly Competition n Interstellar implications of the New Horizons probe n Starship Congress 2015 n TVIW 2014: i4is SF design workshop n TVIW 2014: Field Report R O n What we did at Eastercon F E V I T n Film Review: The Martian A I T I N I S T U D I E S Scientia ad sidera www.I4IS.org Knowledge to the Stars STOP PRESS! Starship Engineer course at BIS London, 24-25 November 2015 The first running of our Starship Engineer course is happening at the British Interplanetary Society in London, November, 24-25 November 2015, 09.15 through 17.00 hrs. More details in the advertisement towards the end of this issue. Not much time to sign up for this eye-opening opportunity! Principium | Issue 11 | November 2015 Page 2 Editorial n In this edition we start with a access to his recent thinking on this and And for the back cover we have the Stop Press announcing the first Rob Swinney has written a report for this Globular Cluster Omega Centauri (NGC running of our Starship Engineer issue, Pluto and Beyond: Next Steps to the 5139) as imaged by the European couIrse at the British Interplanetary Stars after Voyagers and New Horizons. Southern Observatory (details at Society in London, 24-25 November 2015. http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0844a/ ). As always, we maintain our strong links More details in the advertisement towards At about 16,000 light years distance, it's a with the dreamers of Science Fiction. the end of this issue. This issue of tough target for any of our relatively near We were at this year’s UK national Principium arrives as Rob Swinney and term starships. But what impressed us, Eastercon. Some of our doings there are Kelvin Long are polishing their course apart from the sheer beauty of the image, captured in an account by John Davies and material. Sign up now! is that there is some suspicion that one of Rob Swinney. our nearest neighbours, Kapteyn's Star, Our guest introduction is by Robert G There have been a number of may have originated in NGC 5139. Kennedy III, PE. Robert is best known in relatively technically realistic films set in Kapteyn's Star is about 12 light years away the interstellar community as co-founder space in recent years and the latest is and has at least two exoplanets. and organiser of the Tennessee Valley The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott Interstellar Workshops. Here he applies As always, give us your views on both and based on Andy Weir's novel. Not his wide understanding of the relevant form and content. interstellar but another inspiration to physics and engineering to suggest a novel our species to get out there! We have a John I Davies, Editor Principium approach to the search for extraterrestrial review by John Davies. intelligence (SETI). In this issue we also [email protected] present Robert's report of the i4is SF We have to disappoint readers who design workshop from the 2014 Tennessee were expecting a meditation on the Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW). interstellar implications of the Rosetta Robert also contributes a trip report about comet probe and its Philae lander. TVIW 2014 overall - capturing the We'll do our best to bring it to you in the combination of serious thinking and New Year. convivial enthusiasm of these events. You may notice that our layout has Our News this time includes details made a great leap forward to last year - of our Project Dragonfly video, a recent having welcomed back Adrian Mann in meeting of the core team of i4is and this role. He's a massively talented artist the announcement of a new i4is and practitioner of digital visual media. publication, Axiom. Not least he is responsible for many of Reaction Engines videos; take a look at We have a detailed account of the their website. If, like me, you are thrilled Project Dragonfly competition and at the idea of a take-off and ascent to orbit workshop by Dan Fries with an addendum of their Skylon spaceplane then you will on the way forward for the project by appreciate what Adrian can do. Martin Langer. We will be covering Project Dragonfly in yet more detail in Our front cover feature is the Daedalus later editions. starship of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) as imagined by Adrian Our friends Icarus Interstellar held Mann. His imagining is based on the their big Starship Congress and detailed design developed in the 1970s by "Hackathon" in Philadelphia last month the team led by Alan Bond and Tony and one of the TVIW team, Ken Roy, was Martin. Daedalus remains the most there and gives us a personal view in his detailed design yet produced for a piece "Surviving the Interstellar starship. It is the starting point for the Hackathon in the City of Brotherly Love". Icarus project of Icarus Interstellar and It sounds like he had a great time! the BIS, a new starship design based on One of the keynotes at the Congress fusion principles. We might appropriately was delivered by Dr Ralph McNutt and he have featured Daedalus on the cover of talked about the New Horizons probe to our first issue but it is so well known that Pluto and the Kuiper Belt - and how we we have left it to this, our eleventh issue. might build interstellar precursor We hope to feature a detailed Icarus missions. Dr McNutt has kindly given us design well before our 20th issue! Principium | Issue 11 | November 2015 Page 3 Guest Introduction: A Modest Proposal for Photometric SETI Robert G Kennedy III, PE Background 1 : For good historical to spot a civilization like ours (spacefaring conclusion that interpretation of an and technological reasons, the SETI terrestrial tool-users 5) at interstellar extraterrestrial signal would be a hopeless (Search for Extraterrestrial ranges using optical astronomy? If we task without interacting in realtime with Intelligence) community's roots are limit ourselves to basic photometry the particular somatic embodiment of the in radio astronomy (RA). without new-fangled SP techniques, then intelligence that created the signal. (This we are measuring two simple physical also was the conclusion of a SETI After all, the Big Bang was discovered phenomena that can be adequately conference taking place at the same time at radio frequencies (RF, but technically resolved at interstellar range: optical on the other side of the North American microwaves (MW)), and people began power, i.e. luminosity, and time. continent, unbeknownst to the organizers constructing radios not too long after they 6 of TVIW. ) While the mere detection of built telegraphs and telephone networks. Dr Sara Seager's “Search for Earth 2.0” an unambiguously artificial signal would Also, one of the very first applications of keynote address be a major world-historical event by itself, computers was to perform what we would (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvB understanding means crewed interstellar now call signal processing (SP) on RF 71mHyNA ) at the last Tennessee Valley 2 missions, a very tall order that is at least signals during WW2 . Interstellar Workshop (TVIW) in Oak 7 centuries off . Ridge, Tennessee in November 2014 Thanks to numerous RF transmission presented the progress in finding There are two broad classes of windows in the atmosphere, it is far easier 8 extrasolar planets, and one new approach candidate stars to look for. to build and use ground-based detectors to (direct observation using diffractive observe the sky at RF, than it is at say, The first class would host societies that sunshades). The technical progress in just ultraviolet (UV), optical, or infrared (IR) have mastered space-based solar power the last generation is remarkable. frequencies. So there has been some path (SBSP), perhaps for geoengineering Virtually all of these methods are indirect dependence in the SETI field. However, purposes, on up through Kardashev Type I and optical, including: as a greater fraction of humanity's (defined as using all the available power of exponentially increasing data traffic goes • radial velocimetry (Doppler wobbles in their home world). On Earth, about the by optical fiber or by low-power short- spectra pioneered by Queloz/Mayor/ same amount of sunlight falls on the lit range encrypted wireless comms almost Marcy/Butler in the late 1980s); face in one hour (~600 exajoules) as the indistinguishable from noise, the world is entire human race uses in one year (8766 • photometry (variations in brightness by “going black” from a SETI perspective. hours), a 4-order-of-magnitude ratio. In a eclipses and transits a la Kepler, plus Furthermore, teasing out extraterrestrial 2006 paper, Sandia Labs showed that solar subtler techniques); RF signals from RF noise appears to be a power has by far the most headroom for black hole for spare computing power. So • astrometry (direct measurement of growth of any energy resource that we Terra's unusual brightness at RF may turn stellar motions); know about 9. A fission economy based on out to be a very-short lived “blip” on a breeding plutonium from 238 U, or 233 U • gravitational microlensing; historical timescale, not to mention from thorium is the only other existing geologic and cosmologic timescales. How • direct spectral detection during stellar energy solution of that scale, yet it is still a then to find evidence that “ We Are Not transits of non-equilibrium gases like distant second.