Initiative for Interstellar Studies

Working towards the achievement of interstellar flight through knowledge to the stars - Starships in our lifetime

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Starship Blog

With the recent creation of the new i4is website, along with the newer blogs, we have included a selection of previous Starship Blog posts from our archive which we hope you will enjoy browsing.  If you would like to write an article and have it appear on our web site, then get in touch with us.

 

World Ships on Youtube!

i4is’ Andreas Hein has created a short Youtube video to introduce world ships, focusing on the 1984 Bond & Martin designs. Short introduction to “world ships”, possibly the largest interstellar vessels ever designed. They have been proposed by Alan Bond and Anthony Martin in 1984. They are hundreds of kilometres long, house a population the […]

ISU World Ship Module

We are very pleased to be back to the International Space University (ISU) for this year’s MSS21 elective on Interstellar World Ships with several i4is researchers such as Andreas Hein, Rob Swinney, John Davies, Dan Fries, Olivia Borgue. The 2-week elective will provide the students with in-depth knowledge on world ships and they will work […]

i4is Interstellar Object Article makes Headlines

i4is, in collaboration with researchers from the Florida Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Paris Observatory published a paper, in which they estimate that about 7 interstellar objects are entering the solar system per year. The article has been featured in numerous media outlets: Science Alert, Phys.org, Astrobites, Universe Today, Mashable India, Republic World, Fred Zone. […]

i4is Director presents prospects of space resources and settlements to German Federal Ministry of the Environment

i4is Executive Director Andreas Hein has been invited to a discussion on space resource utilization with the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU) on the 25th March 2021. He presented the prospects of space resource utilization and space settlements. The results of the discussion will inform future policy-making of […]

Deutsche Welle – i4is asteroid mining research featured

Andreas Hein presents some of the results form the i4is techno-economic analysis of asteroid mining in this excellent video. The paper: Hein, A. M., Matheson, R., & Fries, D. (2020). A techno-economic analysis of asteroid mining. Acta Astronautica, 168, 104-115.

i4is Article published in Astrophysical Journal Letters

We are proud that our article about a Venus astrobiology mission, based on a fleet of balloons has now been published in the prestigious journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The article can also be downloaded for free via arXiv. We are grateful for the collaboration with Manasvi Lingam (Florida Institute of Technology / Harvard), without whose […]

Missions to Venus

A lot of media attention and interest in the scientific community at the moment centred on Venus in regard to the discovery of phosphine in its atmosphere and therefore potential life. The question now is how do we get there? Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software can be brought to bear on this problem and help answer the question.

i4is Venus balloon concept featured in Forbes

Fast mission to detect microbes on Venus – The joint i4is, FIT, Harvard, Space Initiatives paper: “A Precursor Balloon Mission for Venusian Astrobiology” by Andreas M. Hein, Manasvi Lingam, T. Marshall Eubanks, Adam Hibberd, Dan Fries, William Paul Blase has now been published on arXiv. Thanks to Bruce Dorminey, it has now been featured in […]

Project Lyra on Universe Today

Our Decadal Survey White Paper “Interstellar Now! Missions to and Sample Returns from Nearby Interstellar Objects” has been featured on Universe Today. Thank you to Matt Williams for another awesome article about Project Lyra!