I have agreed to join in the programme of activities of the Institute for Interstellar Studies (I4IS) as a “Senior Scientist” with specific interests in Artificial Intelligence and remote vehicle operations. See I4IS senior researcher profile page.
The launch of the I4IS was announced in September 2012 and its initial programme of activities and studies is now being planned. Its aims are:
“The Institute for Interstellar Studies (I4IS) will set out to catalyse research and entrepreneurial programs that accelerate our knowledge of science, our application of the technologies, and harmonise our cultures, so that an interstellar capable society can be created this century. Technical credibility, reliability of information and scientific excellence will be essential principles of the Institute.”
An initial trial virtual worlds collaboration facility is being provided at http://openvce.net/i4is by Austin Tate to I4IS for the technical groups during the Institute’s formation period.
This involves an I-Room meeting space for collaboration in the virtual world Second Life (with an option to open a space in an open or closed region in OpenSim). It is designed for brain storming style meetings and as an operations centre. I-Rooms are used in the I-X/I-Room research on intelligent collaborative and task support environments at AIAI, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh.
I4IS is producing a newsletter called “Principium” to communicate about its work to create what will be the equivalent of Starfleet Academy for the Earth.
Some of my Artificial Intelligence community colleagues have worked on aspects of interstellar spacecraft also… I add notes here as pointers to that work…
This is an essay for a NASA visioning team in 1986 by Eric Horvitz, a previous President of the Association for the Advancement of AI, and Research Director at Microsoft Research:
The Spaceleap – Eric Horvitz – March 1986
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/horvitz/leap.htm
Some of my Artificial Intelligence community colleagues have worked on aspects of interstellar spacecraft also… I add notes here as pointers to that work…
Tim Grant published papers on interstellar travel in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, including in the 1978 special issue on the “Daedalus” project led by Tony Martin and Alan Bond, as follows:
Grant, T.J. (1978). Project Daedalus: An Engineering Assessment. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, Special Supplement on Project Daedalus, 1978, S180-S191.
Grant, T.J. (1978). Project Daedalus: The Need for On-Board Repair. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, Special Supplement on Project Daedalus, 1978, S172-S179.
Grant, T.J. (1978). Project Daedalus: The Computers. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, Special Supplement on Project Daedalus (BIS’s feasibility study of an unmanned starship), 1978, S130-S142.
Grant, T.J. (1981). In-Flight Maintenance: Part 1 – The Policy Choice. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, 34, 9, September 1981, 381-391.
Grant, T.J. (1982). Estimation of Reliability and Maintainability Improvement Rates using the Duane Model. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, 35, 3, March 1982, 125-129.
Grant, T.J. (1982). Daedalus Probe Requirements and Deployment Patterns as a Function of Reliability. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, 35, 5, May 1982, 226-234.
Tim says that it was the BIS “Project Daedalus: The Computers” article that got him into AI in the first place. Then in a smaller project he worked on world ships. His contribution was to apply the Club of Rome systems dynamics model to world-ships, resulting in:
Grant, T.J. (1984). The Population Stability of Isolated World Ships and World Ship Fleets. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Interstellar Studies (“red cover”) issues, 37, 6, June 1984, 267-283.
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/files/2013/01/JBIS-1978-Project-Daedalus-The-Computers-Title-Page.jpg
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/files/2013/01/JBIS-1978-Project-Daedalus-The-Computers-p-S130.jpg
Due to restrictions on use of the name “Institute” in formal company names, when I4IS as set up as an incorporated organisation it adopted the name “Initiative for Interstellar Studies in 2014.