[TASC Lunch:] Space Settlement: an Easier Way

[Tian Harter]

Lunch at CAFÉ BAKLAVA MEDITERRANEAN RESTAURANT
341 CASTRO STREET, MOUNTAIN VIEW
September 12th at 11:45 AM

Café Baklava Lunch Options (tax/tip included)

1. Chicken/Beef Kabob, rice, vegetables: $12
2. Chicken/Beef/Lamb Kabob, rice, vegetables: $16

A salad can be added for $4

Price includes Turkish tea, bread and dipping sauce

Al Globus

Space Settlement: an Easier Way

Al Globus is a Senior Research Engineer for Human Factors Research and
Technology
at San Jose State University at NASA Ames Research Center, and co-author
with Stephen
Covey and Daniel Faber of a paper just published in the NSS Space
Settlement Journal
entitled “Space Settlement: an Easier Way”. Al, a member of the board of
directors
of the National Space Society (NSS), has been designing space
settlements off and on
since 1990 and founded and runs the Annual Student NASA Ames Space
Settlement Contest.
Also, at one time or another, Al worked on the Hubble Space Telescope,
the Space Shuttle,
and the Aerospace Plane.

He developed JavaGenes (available under the NASA Open Source Agreement),
a program to
evolve graphs, molecules, circuits, atomic potential functions, Earth
observing satellite
schedules, and antennas using genetic algorithms, simulated annealing,
stochastic hill
climbing, squeaky wheel optimization and related techniques. Al is most
well-known for
his work on Nanogears (he coauthored Molecular Dynamics Simulation of
Carbon Nanotube
Based Gears), and was co-recipient of the 1997 Feynman Prize in
Nanotechnology for
Theoretical Work.

Al earned a Bachelors of Arts in Information Science from the University
of California at
Santa Cruz in 1979 and started work as a contractor at NASA Ames where
is still working today.

Al will describe a relatively easy, incremental path to free space
settlement by taking
advantage of very low radiation levels in Equatorial Low Earth Orbit,
and the fact that
people adapt to rotation rates of 4-6 rpm within a few days, which
radically reduces the
difficulty of building the first space settlements and making launch
from Earth practical.
He will also note the role that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Interplanetary
Transport System could play.

--
Tian
http://tian.greens.org