Icarus Interstellar


Icarus Interstellar is an international organization dedicated to technical achievements enabling interstellar travel. Research is performed by volunteer citizen scientists with a wide swath of backgrounds, ranging from NASA and ESA aerospace engineers to professional scientists, university professors, students, science fiction writers, artists, thinkers and enthusiasts.
Design teams are coordinated around research projects with a central theme, such as Project Icarus, an interstellar probe design study envisioning the design of a mainly fusion propulsion based engine, and Project Hyperion, a human occupied worldship study.
Organizationally, Icarus is a 501 nonprofit organization registered in Alaska, February 2011. The organization was created from members of Project Icarus, initiated in September 2009 in an effort to explore multiple interstellar spacecraft systems simultaneously.

History

Icarus Interstellar was founded by Andreas Tziolas, Richard Obousy, Kelvin Long, Pat Galea and Adam Crowl, all members of the original Project Icarus study group. In an interview, Tziolas stated that the project name was chosen both due to a hint from Daedalus project leader Alan Bond and as a result of a "reshaped" mythos in which Icarus lands on an island and plans to forge steel wings to replace his father's wax wings.
Icarus Interstellar's mission statement reads as follows:
With its hundred-year scale, Icarus seeks to select as destination a star like Alpha Centauri within a radius of 15 light years, or a potentially habitable terrestrial planet if discovered within a radius of 22 light years.

Structure

Icarus Interstellar's board and members are widespread by a variety of geographic locales, backgrounds and areas of expertise. Board members work in a volunteer capacity. The organization has six directors, as follows:
The organization has an experimental committee, a fund development committee, a public outreach committee, an education committee and a Starship Congress committee. It seeks to add interstellar engineering training to American and European aerospace education, and to design games that would attract interest in interstellar exploration for "mindshare" purposes.
Students at Drexel University formed a student chapter of Icarus Interstellar in 2013, founded by Damien Turchi, John Breslin, Michael Daily, Zachary Block, and David Evinshteyn. The student chapter is primarily focused on Project Tin Tin and Project Icarus. Their work on Project Icarus looks at the possibility of a plasma jet magneto inertial fusion propulsion system in the development of a starship. The chapter has recruited over 60 student members as of 2015.
Icarus Interstellar fiscally sponsored the foundation of the Anchorage Makerspace in December 2013, as an open source community-driven space and technical innovation research lab.

Projects

Icarus Interstellar has several projects all relating to the exploration of space. These include:
Icarus Interstellar also researches communications methods such as point-to-point laser, use of abandoned fuel tanks as relay stations, or use of moderated fusion pulses to code as signal communications.
In addition, Icarus Interstellar is supporting experiments into exotic propulsion techniques such as faster-than-light warp drive. As the theory is somewhat speculative at this stage, these experiments are designed to test the theory at a fundamental level to determine whether it is consistent with real physics.

Conference

Icarus Interstellar hosted Starship Congress, an international assemblage of recognized interstellar space proponents, in Dallas, Texas, August 15 to 18, 2013. In April 2013, Icarus Interstellar announced a call for papers, with papers from selected presenters to be published in a special edition of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Starship Congress spanned four days, each with a different focus. Day One was dedicated to "Near Future – The Next 20 Years." Day Two focused on "Mid-Future Interstellar Flight – 20-50 years". Day Three covered "Deep Future Interstellar Flight – 50-500+ years". Day Four included a final assembly with closing announcements, thanks, and a recap. Starship Congress was attended by nearly 200 interstellar scientists, engineers, astronomers, historians, economists, architects, artists, anthropologists and enthusiasts.
Starship Congress 2015 is scheduled for September 4 and 5, 2015, hosted at Drexel University.