8th Interstellar Symposium Program

The 8th Interstellar Symposium runs from Monday July 10 to Thursday July 13, with pre-symposium seminars taking place on Sunday July 9.

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Sunday July 9 Seminars

Seminars award continuing education credits and are not part of the main Symposium program. Registration for these seminars is independent from Symposium participation.

10:00 am – 1:00 pmBrent Ziarnick
“Vanquishing Dark Skies: The Role of National Space Forces in Security, Safety, and Prosperity through Space Exploration”		Joseph Meany
“Mars Agriculture”
1:00 pm – 2:00 pmBreak
2:00 pm – 5:00 pmLaura Montgomery
“Space Law: An Overview, Past, Present, and Future”		Alex Ellery
“Self-Replication Technology Route to Space Industrialization”
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Monday July 10

9:00 am – 9:30 amOpening Ceremony
9:30 am – 10:00 amPatron Presentations
10:00 am – 10:30 amCoffee Break
10:30 am – 11:30 amKeynote
Frank Tipler
“The Ultimate Rocket and the Ultimate Energy Source, and Their Use in the Ultimate Future”
11:30 am – 12:00 pmJoseph Gottlieb
“Should we colonize (interstellar) space?”
12:00 pm – 12:30 pmClaudio Maccone
“Human Interstellar Expansion driven by Gravitational Lensing”
12:30 pm – 1:30 pmLunch
1:30 pm – 2:30 pmPanel Presentation
Alan Stern, Stephane Lintner, Setthivoine You
“Helicity Fusion Propulsion Drive: The Company, the Technology and the Applications”
2:30 pm – 3:00 pmCoffee Break
3:00 pm – 3:30 pmAlex Gmerek
“Searching for Extrasolar Life – An Astrobiology Payload for Interstellar Missions”
3:30 pm – 4:00 pmLouis Friedman
“Real Interstellar Exploration Will Be Virtual”
4:00 pm – 5:00 pmTour of McGill University Laboratories
Laser Thermal Rocket / Shock Tube for Lightsail Dynamics / Implosion Driven Launcher / Magnetized Target Fusion
5:00 pm – 7:00 pmWelcome Reception
Cinq à Sept
Delta Hotel Outdoor Patio
7:00 pm – 9:00 pmPublic Outreach Event
McGill – Leacock Building, 132
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Tuesday July 11

9:00 am – 10:00 amKeynote
Dr. Rebecca (Becky) McCauley Rench
“The Search for Life and Habitable Worlds at NASA—Past, Present, and Future”
10:00 am – 10:30 amAradhana Choudhuri
“Applications and Design Guidelines for High Power Lasers in Space Exploration”
10:30 am – 11:00 amCoffee Break
11:00 am – 11:30 amPhilip Lubin
“Large Scale Directed Energy for Relativistic Flight”
11:30 am – 12:00 pmPresentation from Limitless Space Institute
12:00 pm – 1:30 pmLunch
Michelle L.D. Hanlon
“Identifying and Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Outer Space”
1:30 pm – 3:00 pmSagan Meeting
“How would you select a crew of one hundred people for the first interstellar mission?”
3:00 pm – 4:00 pmCoffee Break
Poster Session 1
4:00 pm – 4:30 pmJerry Carson
“Direct Fusion Drive based on Centrifugal Mirror Confinement”
4:30 pm – 5:00 pmPascal Lee
“N ~ 1: Alone in the Milky Way”
6:00 pm – 8:00 pmScience Fiction Author Panel
Delta Hotel
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Wednesday July 12

9:00 am – 10:00 amKeynote
Stephen Webb
“Silence is Goldern: SETI and the Fermi Paradox”
10:00 am – 10:30 amTom Bone
“Bremsstrahlung Power Conversion for Fusion Power and Propulsion in Space”
10:30 am – 11:00 amCoffee Break
11:00 am – 11:30 amJoseph Meany
“Mapping Nutrient Cycles for Establishing Extrasolar Colonies”
11:30 am – 12:00 pmJeffrey Greason
“Sunbeam: Near-Sun Statites as Beam Platforms for Beam-Driven Rockets”
12:00 pm – 1:00 pmLunch
1:00 pm – 1:30 pmClément Vidal
“The Spider Stellar Engine: A fully-steerable extraterrestrial design?”
1:30 pm – 2:00 pmLucas Beveridge
“X-ray and γ-ray Beam Interstellar Communication and Implications for SETI”
2:00 pm – 2:30 pmLynn Rothschild
“Star Trek meets ET: (synthetic) biology as an enabling technology for space exploration”
2:30 pm – 3:00 pmRené Heller
“Maneuvering Interstellar Light Sails”
3:00 pm – 4:00 pmCoffee Break
Poster Session 2
“Work in Progress”
4:00 pm – 4:30 pmJohn Bradford
“Prospects for Enabling Human Hibernation for Ultra-Long Distance Space Travel”
4:30 pm – 5:00 pmJames C. Bennett
“Development of a Model Framework for Examining Language and Cultural Issues in Human Starfaring Civilizations”
5:00 pm – 5:30 pmJoseph Cassady
“A Near Term Interstellar Mission Enabled by the Space Launch System”
7:00 pm – 9:00 pmBanquet
Delta Hotel
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Thursday July 13

9:00 am – 9:30 amPresentation from Breakthrough Initiatives
9:30 am – 10:00 amColin Warn
“The Promise of Beamed Energy for Spacecraft Propulsion and Power”
10:00 am – 10:30 amAlex Ellery
“Hybrid Symbolic-Neural Approaches to Artificial Intelligence for Interstellar Missions”
10:30 am – 11:00 amCoffee Break
11:00 am – 11:30 amRobert M Freeland II
“Infrastructure Development Leading to the First Long-Duration Interstellar Probe”
11:30 am – 12:00 pmStephen Fleming
“Multi-Aperture Telescopes at the Quantum Limit of Superresolution Imaging”
12:00 pm – 12:30 pmGregory Matloff
“Aerographite: A Candidate Material for Interstellar Photon Sailing”
1:00 pm – 5:00 pmTour of the Canadian Space Agency
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