The 8th Interstellar Symposium runs from Monday July 10 to Thursday July 13, with pre-symposium seminars taking place on Sunday July 9.
Unless otherwise stated, most events will take place in Room 26 of the Leacock Building on the McGill University downtown Campus.
Check-In
Sunday: Delta Hotel, OPUS I, 12 pm – 6 pm
Mon-Thu: Leacock Building Lobby, 8:30 am – 5 pm
Sunday July 9 Seminars
Checking-in is not required prior to attending the seminars.
Seminars award continuing education credits and are not part of the main Symposium program. Registration for these seminars is independent from Symposium participation.
Seminars will take place in rooms FDA 3 and FDA 5 of the Frank Dawson Adams building, though entrance will be via the McConnell Engineering building.
| 10:00 am – 1:00 pm | Brent Ziarnick “Vanquishing Dark Skies: The Role of National Space Forces in Security, Safety, and Prosperity through Space Exploration” | |
| 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm | Break | |
| 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm | Laura Montgomery “Space Law: An Overview, Past, Present, and Future” | Alex Ellery “Self-Replication Technology Route to Space Industrialization” |
Monday July 10
| 9:00 am – 9:30 am | Opening Ceremony |
| 9:30 am – 10:00 am | Patron Presentations |
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am – 11:30 am | Keynote Frank Tipler “The Ultimate Rocket and the Ultimate Energy Source, and Their Use in the Ultimate Future” |
| 11:30 am – 12:00 pm | Joseph Gottlieb “Should we colonize (interstellar) space?” |
| 12:00 pm – 12:30 pm | Claudio Maccone “Human Interstellar Expansion driven by Gravitational Lensing” |
| 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm | Lunch University Centre, Ballroom |
| 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm | Panel Presentation Alan Stern, Stephane Lintner, Setthivoine You “Helicity Fusion Propulsion Drive: The Company, the Technology and the Applications” |
| 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm | Coffee Break |
| 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm | Alex Gmerek “Searching for Extrasolar Life – An Astrobiology Payload for Interstellar Missions” |
| 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm | Viktor Toth “Look before you leap: Using the Solar Gravitational Lens to explore exoplanets” |
| 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm | Tour of McGill University Laboratories Laser Thermal Rocket / Shock Tube for Lightsail Dynamics / Implosion Driven Launcher / Magnetized Target Fusion McConnell Engineering Building, Entrance |
| 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm | Welcome Reception Cinq à Sept Delta Hotel Outdoor Patio |
| 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm | Public Outreach Event: Interstellar Travel: Are We Ready? Les Johnson, AJ Link, Alan Stern, Philip Lubin, Erika Nesvold, Trevor Kjorlien McGill – Leacock Building, Auditorium 132 |
Tuesday July 11
| 9:00 am – 10:00 am | Keynote Dr. Rebecca (Becky) McCauley Rench “The Search for Life and Habitable Worlds at NASA—Past, Present, and Future” |
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am | Aradhana Choudhuri “Applications and Design Guidelines for High Power Lasers in Space Exploration” |
| 10:30 am – 10:45 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:45 am – 11:15 am | Philip Lubin “Large Scale Directed Energy for Relativistic Flight” |
| 11:15 am – 11:45 am | Richard Norte “Propelling Interstellar Exploration: Extreme-Aspect-Ratio Metamaterials in a Post-Moore Era” |
| 11:45 am – 12:15 pm | Presentation from Limitless Space Institute Sonny White “Interstellar, the Ultimate Moonshot” |
| 12:15 pm – 1:30 pm | Lunch Michelle L.D. Hanlon “Identifying and Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Outer Space” Thomson House, Ballroom |
| 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm | Sagan Meeting “How would you select a crew of one hundred people for the first interstellar mission?” |
| 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Coffee Break Poster Session 1 |
| 4:00 pm – 4:30 pm | Jerry Carson “Direct Fusion Drive based on Centrifugal Mirror Confinement” |
| 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm | Pascal Lee “N ~ 1: Alone in the Milky Way” |
| 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Science Fiction Author Panel Karl Schroeder, Les Johnson, Eric Choi, Sylvain Neuvel Delta Hotel |
Wednesday July 12
| 9:00 am – 10:00 am | Keynote Stephen Webb “Silence is Golden: SETI and the Fermi Paradox” |
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am | Tom Bone “Bremsstrahlung Power Conversion for Fusion Power and Propulsion in Space” |
| 10:30 am – 11:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 11:00 am – 11:30 am | Robert M Freeland II “Infrastructure Development Leading to the First Long-Duration Interstellar Probe” |
| 11:30 am – 12:00 pm | Jeffrey Greason “Sunbeam: Near-Sun Statites as Beam Platforms for Beam-Driven Rockets” |
| 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm | Lunch Thomson House, Ballroom |
| 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm | Clément Vidal “The Spider Stellar Engine: A fully-steerable extraterrestrial design?” |
| 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm | Gerrit Bruhaug (standing in for Lucas Beveridge) “X-ray and γ-ray Beam Interstellar Communication and Implications for SETI” |
| 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm | Lynn Rothschild “Star Trek meets ET: (synthetic) biology as an enabling technology for space exploration” |
| 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm | René Heller “Maneuvering Interstellar Light Sails” |
| 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Coffee Break Poster Session 2 “Work in Progress” |
| 4:00 pm – 4:30 pm | John Bradford “Prospects for Enabling Human Hibernation for Ultra-Long Distance Space Travel” |
| 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm | James C. Bennett “Development of a Model Framework for Examining Language and Cultural Issues in Human Starfaring Civilizations” |
| 5:00 pm – 5:30 pm | Joseph Cassady “A Near Term Interstellar Mission Enabled by the Space Launch System” |
| 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm | Kirill Zatrimaylov “On the wormhole-warp drive correspondence” |
| 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Banquet Delta Hotel |
Thursday July 13
| 9:00 am – 9:30 am | Presentation from Breakthrough Initiatives Harry Atwater “From Science to Spacecraft and Missions” |
|
| 9:30 am – 10:00 am | Colin Warn “The Promise of Beamed Energy for Spacecraft Propulsion and Power” |
|
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am | Alex Ellery “Hybrid Symbolic-Neural Approaches to Artificial Intelligence for Interstellar Missions” |
|
| 10:30 am – 11:00 am | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00 am – 11:30 am | Stephen Fleming “Multi-Aperture Telescopes at the Quantum Limit of Superresolution Imaging” |
|
| 11:30 am – 12:00 pm | Gregory Matloff “Aerographite: A Candidate Material for Interstellar Photon Sailing” |
|
| 12:00 pm – 12:30 pm | Closing Ceremony | |
| Afternoon | Tour of the Canadian Space Agency Headquarters 1:00-5:00 pm Tour of the headquarters with CSA employees, including the mission control room, Canadarm training facilities, robotics lab, and the indoor and outdoor rover yards Limited capacity, not included in main Symposium ticket | Tour of Space Explorers: THE INFINITE virtual reality experience 2:00-4:00 pm Hour-long VR exhibit putting you in the suit of an astronaut on the International Space Station. 360° footage captured aboard the ISS promises a breathtaking experience of life in orbit. Limited capacity, not included in main Symposium ticket |