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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, December 11, 2000
Dr. Forward will discuss the engineering feasibility of the many concepts for achieving rapid travel to the nearby star systems, first by fast fly-by probes, then by robotic explorers capable of stopping in the star system and exploring its planetary systems, then by crewed exploration missions with a round-trip mission duration much less than a human lifetime. The main message of the talk is that interstellar flight is not impossible, but merely extremely difficult. We don't need future physics to fly to the stars, all we need is a lot of large scale space engineering
Dr. Robert L. Forward is a science consultant, writer, and futurist specializing in studies of exotic physical phenomena and future space exploration with an emphasis on advanced space propulsion concepts. Dr. Forward obtained his B.S. in Physics from University of Maryland in 1954, M.S. in Applied Physics from UCLA in 1958, and Ph.D. in Gravitational Physics from University of Maryland in 1965. For his Ph.D. thesis, he built and operated the world's first bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation. The antenna is now at the Smithsonian.
Dr. Forward has 46 years of experience in advanced space propulsion, experimental general relativity, gravitational and inertial sensors, low noise electronics, and space sciences. For 31 years, from 1956 until 1987, Dr. Forward worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company Research Laboratories in Malibu, California in positions of increasing responsibility, culminating with the position of Senior Scientist on the Director's staff. During that time he built and operated the world's first laser interferometer gravitational radiation detector, invented the rotating gravitational mass sensor, published over 70 technical publications, and was awarded 18 patents. He left Hughes in 1987 to engage in writing and consulting under his own company, Forward Unlimited.
His 14 published book-length works include three science fact books, Future Magic (Avon, 1988), replaced by Indistinguishable From Magic (Baen, 1995), and Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics with Joel Davis (Wiley, 1988), and eleven science fiction novels -- Dragon's Egg (Del Rey, 1981) and its sequel Starquake (Del Rey, 1985), Rocheworld (Baen, 1989) and its four sequels, Return to Rocheworld with Julie Forward Fuller (Baen, 1992), Ocean Under The Ice with Martha Dodson Forward (Baen, 1994), Marooned on Eden with Martha Dodson Forward (Baen, 1993), and Rescued From Paradise with Julie Forward Fuller (Baen, 1995); Martian Rainbow (Del Rey, 1991), Timemaster (Tor, 1992), Camelot 30K (Tor, 1993) and Saturn Rukh (Tor, 1997). His novels and short stories are "hard" science fiction, where the science is as accurate as possible.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Lloyd Purves
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