1) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Starship Congress 2015 (Message 1719029) Posted 27 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: I see the Starship Congress 2015 kickstarter was recently funded. Cool. I believe they post videos of the presentations online. They have for prior years.

2) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Starship Congress 2015 (Message 1716138) Posted 20 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: I often wonder and hope that the work being done at CERN will produce a breakthrough in our understanding of particle physics that will someday enable the development a propulsion system that is capable crossing an interstellar distance. In addition to SETI@home, I also commit a bit of CPU time to running LHC@home and ATLAS@home in hopes that it might make an ever so slight difference toward this end. Probably not in my lifetime though..

3) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Starship Congress 2015 (Message 1715769) Posted 20 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: And a list of the presenters and topics being discussed during the conference as well: http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/sc2015-papers/

4) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Starship Congress 2015 (Message 1715768) Posted 20 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: There's a group called 'Icarus Interstellar' that is advocating for discussion and engineering proposals that would pave the way for interstellar flight by the end of the century. This group is hosting an upcoming conference called, "Starship Congress", might be worth looking into? Curious if anyone in the SETI@home community is involved? I've always been fascinated with the thought of interstellar travel, since I first saw the diagrams of the Bussard Ramjet (which has since been theoretically disproven as a viable propulsion system..). Icarus Interstellar is currently running a Kickstarter to fund a 'hackathon' to bring together engineers, academics, students and interested people in a venue to come up with new ideas, designs or solutions to the INCREDIBLY difficult problems inherent to interstellar flight. Check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1468630926/starship-congress-2015-interstellar-hackathon?ref=hero_thanks

5) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Solar Mini Sail Project (Message 1714357) Posted 17 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: I'd expect some of those answers to be provided after the test flight where they will attempt 'sailing' in 2016. Patience!!

6) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Solar Mini Sail Project (Message 1713771) Posted 16 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: Hi Klik, The recent solar sail test by the Planetary Society was an engineering shakedown test only to validate sail deployment, test comms and to collect telematics data. According to http://sail.planetary.org/ "We successfully completed a test flight in June 2015 that paved the way for a second, full-fledged solar sailing demonstration in 2016" Not sure if you realized this earlier? If the 2015 solar sail test did not include a requirement for actual 'sailing', then what data would there be to confirm thrust? We'll have to wait until the 2016 flight to see what data they gather from that regarding thrust. Fair enough, right? You post seems to imply that the shakedown mission was a failure because the peer reviewed findings they shared don't discuss thrust. I think you calling it just a 'big sheet in space' is a bit jaded and premature. In your view, the gemini missions must have also just been big tin cans floating in space since they did not go to the moon. I'm kidding of course, and do appreciate your interest in solar sailing! ;-) Cheers, Spencer

7) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Solar Mini Sail Project (Message 1711382) Posted 11 Aug 2015 by Spencer Post: Do a web search for, "planetary society light sail workshop" and you can read more about the findings from their recent test mission. Spencer

8) Message boards : News : Astropulse is generating work again (Message 1706229) Posted 29 Jul 2015 by Spencer Post: Welcome, and thanks for crunching on SETI@home! Spencer

9) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Seti initiative (Message 1703919) Posted 22 Jul 2015 by Spencer Post: That is the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. Jealous! Spencer

10) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Can someone explain a more about what tasks SETI@home is doing? (Message 1703918) Posted 22 Jul 2015 by Spencer Post: Welcome sarcastasaur, Best of luck crunching on SETI and other cool BOINC projects you may come across. Like you, I have a couple laptops that are 'punching above their weight' from a crunching standpoint. Cheers, Spencer

11) Message boards : Number crunching : Not that it matters one tiny little bit, but... (Message 1701639) Posted 15 Jul 2015 by Spencer Post: Nice work, keep on crunchin'

12) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Solar Mini Sail Project (Message 1694259) Posted 21 Jun 2015 by Spencer Post: All very good questions. More of the engineering details can be found on 'sail.planetary.org' if you are so interested to take a moment to read. As stated on their kickstarter brief, I believe the intent if the kickstarter stretch goal is achieved, is to spend more resources on sharing the technological details (warts and all) in a peer reviewed format with other scientists. Seems like a reasonable approach, no? I think this process would be a positive direction, whether or not solar sailing's viability pans out in the long run. It's good that someone (or group) is mustering resources toward understanding it better and doing the requisite research/trials, not just spouting off sci-fi wishes about warp drives, et al. Spencer

13) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Solar Mini Sail Project (Message 1694192) Posted 21 Jun 2015 by Spencer Post: You may want to consider a last minute kickstarter support of the Planetary Society's Light Sail project (just a few days left), which will send a separate LS cubesat for a full attempt at solar sailing. The first lightsail cube sat recently completed its mission, despite some first flight 'shakedown' hickups. This kickstarter has already far exceeded the original funding goal and is nearing $1m in donations. If it meets that threshold as a stretch goal, it will enable further sharing via peer review of the program that could help to further the long term prospects of solar sailing as a viable method of propulsion. Google the phrase, "light sail kickstarter' and take a look! Spencer

14) Message boards : Number crunching : Show and tell your machine. Here's mine. (Message 1618892) Posted 25 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: Nice rig! Jealous.. ;-)

15) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : UK on the Moon!! (Message 1614708) Posted 16 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: Looks like the initial round of public fundraising for this met its target. Thanks to all who contributed. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here. Good luck!

16) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : UK on the Moon!! (Message 1614491) Posted 16 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: sooooo close now, chip in if you can!

17) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Exoplanet hunt and SETI (Message 1612847) Posted 12 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: As I read it, his central theme is the discussion around different approaches for searching for exoplanets that might harbour (intelligent) life. He explains the different schools of thought or approaches with hunting for exoplanets: 1.) Searching for "Earth-Sun" analogs - which is expensive and would require further investment in our ability to detect them. 2.) Searching for "Super Earths, orbiting M Dwarf stars", which is easier and less expensive to do. Since we only know of life on #1, he advocates continued investment to develop the tools required to find those kinds of exoplanets. The challenge is doing that with available resources.. when the easier option is the search for more of the #2 type. Hope this summarizes well enough. Here's the core of the text on this topic, definitely worth a closer read, as it relates to SETI and where might be best to aim our radio telescopes to listen for ET: ----- Space.com: You talked to a lot of scientists looking for exoplanets; what are their hopes for the next 20 or 30 years for the field? Billings: It's interesting to look at the spectrum of opinion that exists about where we should go in the future. Because there are a lot of different paths we could take. You have folks like David Charbonneau at Harvard, who makes the very reasonable, pragmatic argument that we should no longer pay much attention, in the near-term future anyway, to Earth-sun analogs, and we should instead focus the vast majority of our efforts on finding and studying super-Earths around M dwarfs. [Editor's Note: Super-Earths are planets slightly larger than Earth but significantly smaller than gas giants like Neptune. M dwarf stars are significantly cooler and smaller than stars like our sun but are still hot enough to create habitable climates for orbiting planets. Super-Earths have been found in the habitable zones of their M dwarf stars (a region where the planet could have a surface temperature suitable for life).] [Focusing on super-Earths around M dwarfs] makes a lot of sense from the viewpoint of having a flat or declining budget and just not being able to really push the envelope. It is easier to go out and study these systems. Finding and studying an Earth-twin around a sun-like star is much harder. So hard, in fact, that we haven’t done it yet. People forget in all the excitement over the recent explosion in exoplanet discovery rates that we still have not found any planet the size or mass of Earth in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. All that said, I would bet against a strict focus on M dwarf super-Earths being a viable long-term strategy in the search for life beyond the solar system. Space.com: Why would you bet against that? If M dwarf super-Earths are easier (hence, cheaper) to find, why not go after them as hard as we can? Billings: I’m worried about the habitability of these planets, and I’m not alone in those worries.I'm not saying M dwarf super-Earths wouldn't be habitable, they just have a big unknown factor. We have no examples of super-Earths in our own solar system. We don't orbit an M dwarf. There are good reasons to think those planets have very different histories and environments than our own. So if your goal is to go find habitable planets, then to pin your hopes on this thing that's so different from your actual experience is pretty risky. Even though it's seen as the safe option because it's so easily achievable. I think you could actually make the argument that it's riskier [compared] to an Earth-sized planet around a sun-like star, because we could easily have so much more trouble interpreting what we see, if we are fortunate enough to actually see [the super-Earth] atmospheres in the near future. In one of the chapters of the book, I describe an important meeting that was organized by Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, called "The Next 40 Years of Exoplanets." At the meeting there was a great confrontation between David Charbonneau, who is all about M dwarf super-Earths and transit studies, and Geoff Marcy, who is kind of the dean of exoplanet detection and studies in America. Marcy said, 'No, we need to go for a bigger sample, we need to go for Earths around suns, we need to go for direct imaging, and we also need to do that with [technology] that ultimately give you the kind of high-resolution imagery that you need to answer important questions about a faraway planet's environment.' And so it's this great kind of tension. And I'm definitely more in that latter camp. I personally think it makes more sense [to look for Earth-sun analogs]. It also costs a lot more money. It's expensive. So you need more political weight to do that. Space.com: I feel like the tone of the book is both very excited about what scientists are going to discover in the near future, but there's also feelings of frustration, and a fear that maybe the people asking the questions today won't be alive to learn the answers. Am I just focusing too much on the melancholy aspects? Billings: No, that’s an accurate takeaway from the book. You have to remember, I started the project when the near-future of exoplanet studies was relatively bright, certainly brighter than it is right now. I began it back in 2007 before the financial collapse and the government bailouts and all that. People were still talking about launching a Terrestrial Planet Finder, a space telescope that could seek out and image Earths around a representative sample of nearby stars, sometime in the next decade or so, certainly in the 2020s. Now, no one at NASA really talks about doing that until sometime in the 2030s at the absolute earliest. The way things are going, this sort of thing could easily be deferred until the 2050s, or simply become nothing more than a frozen, half-remembered dream. Watching all that potential and momentum crumble and drain away was shocking and saddening. But, you know, things are still very bright. The fact that the James Webb [Space Telescope] is going to be going up in 2018 and that we're going to try to use it to access and study the atmospheres of a handful of transiting M dwarf super-Earths is really, really exciting, and that's great. I just think we should keep pushing and that we shouldn't settle. So as great as this amazing golden age is for all of astronomy, it could go away in the future without sustained support and public interest, and sound policy planning and execution. We need to keep pushing. We can't just settle for “good enough.” I think that this quest for extraterrestrial life, whether within or beyond the solar system, is so profound and exciting and important that it can actually sustain a lot of other investment and development in many other areas of space science. Because I feel like it's something that everyone has interest in. ------- Cheers, Spencer

18) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : UK on the Moon!! (Message 1612813) Posted 12 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: Looks like the kickstarter campaign for this moon mission is close to meeting it goal, but still needs a bit more to hit the threshold to move this endeavor forward. It would be sad if this effort failed to get off the ground. Please take a look and consider making a small contribution. Every bit helps and with 5 days left, it might just make it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarmissionone/lunar-mission-one-a-new-lunar-mission-for-everyone Keep exploring!

19) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Exoplanet hunt and SETI (Message 1612290) Posted 11 Dec 2014 by Spencer Post: http://www.space.com/27953-five-billion-years-solitude-author-interview.html Interesting summary and Q&A about a new book that explores the approach used in the hunt for exoplanets being key to SETI. If the link doesn't work, the article can be found on space.com and is titled, "In 'Five Billion Years of Solitude,' Author Lee Billings Searches for E.T." Your thoughts? Keep on crunching.. Spencer

20) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : UK on the Moon!! (Message 1602894) Posted 20 Nov 2014 by Spencer Post: Looks like they are off to a good start with fundraising via Kickstarter. Good luck!

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