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Initiative for Interstellar Studies

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

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You are here: Home / What we do / Education

Education

The i4is Educational Academy fosters educational abilities and supports research in interstellar studies, associated sciences and the arts.

YR12 School Interstellar Challenge day

The Academy of the Intiative for Interstellar Studies

“Our Place in Space”

The Initiative has created an Educational Academy, bringing scholarships and project work to students, developing courses and working with schools to encourage more people towards a career in space.  The Educational Committee is responsible for the activities of the i4is Academy.

We are always looking for new people to help us with our educational activities, such as creating workshops and presenting talks. If you would like to gain valuable experience in science communication, and help with our work in schools and universities, please email the Education Committee Director Rob Swinney.

I4IS-related Masters Projects

I4is-related Masters projects are being undertaken in collaboration with the International Space University based in Strasbourg, France. Further links are being developed with various other universities. Students and others are funded to attend international space conferences to expand their horizons and gain personal experience; but this is just the start.

Starship Engineer Workshop in London

We are helping the most talented students, encouraging them to stay involved in the space industry and dedicate themselves to studies relating to interstellar flight. But we also provide opportunities for those students who are disadvantaged or may come from humble beginnings, although show potential and a willingness to improve themselves. Our curriculum in interstellar studies will provide students with the training they need to be successful in this field.

Although the Initiative’s mission has a clearly defined goal to achieve interstellar flight the Academy is providing a cornerstone in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) goals of the wider society. We encourage all aspects of understanding; including related social and cultural activities and the arts, and imagination so that our graduates will be able to work cooperatively with anyone from the global community and make a positive contribution.

The Academy fires up the Initiative and is where individuals can better themselves for the benefit of all people; it will be our place in space (on Earth) to secure our place in space.

Members of the Educational Academy Committee

Rob Swinney

Chairman, Director

In the 1980s Rob Swinney completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (achieving a 2:1) and his Master of Science degree in Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester (Jodrell Bank – thesis ‘Kinematics of the Radio Flare star Cygnus X-3′).

After several successful years working as a teacher of Craft, Design and Technology at Sherborne Boys School in Dorset he returned to his studies and graduated from Cranfield University (then the Cranfield Institute of Technology) with a further Master of Science degree in Avionics and Flight Control Systems (thesis ‘Graphical Interface for a hybrid Flight Simulator’).

After Cranfield University he undertook a challenging and rewarding career in the Royal Air Force as an Aerosystems Engineering Officer and he completed his RAF Commission in 2006 having attained the rank of Squadron Leader.

He is a Chartered Engineer registered with the UK’s Engineering Council and a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.

Rob has been published in Nature and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and recently returned to the world of academia and research.

Rob was inspired by Isaac Asimov, first by the great author’s science fiction but later by the non-fiction that opened his mind to the future possibilities. This inspiration encouraged him to undertake a lifelong study of aspects of Cosmology and Astronomy.

As a boy he followed the Apollo adventure and as a young man the Grand Tour of the Voyager spacecraft but after his studies became restrained by the realities of life. As important, the boyhood images of Star Trek and such, some 30-40 years ago, appeared to be no more than pure fantasy.

Now today, he believes the ‘planets are aligning’ again and the i4is will galvanise the population and prove that, although it may still seem difficult, real practical steps on the road to interstellar travel are being taken.


John Davies

John is a lifelong engineer and a Londoner of over 30 years standing with northern English origins and strong Scottish connections. He has been fascinated by space travel ever since he read the Dan Dare stories in the Eagle in the 50s.

He recalls contradicting his father who, despite being an engineer himself, thought that "rockets can't fly in space because there is nothing for them to push against". Once Sputnik One went up his dad became a bit of a space enthusiast too.

John was the first person in his family to go to university, studying Electronics at Liverpool University. He joined Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Space Projects Division in 1968 and worked on the latter stages of the most substantial launch vehicle ever built in UK, Bluestreak. He also worked on satellite projects including a design study for a large space telescope which acquired the name Hubble about 12 years later.

He was fascinated by digital technology and moved to Edinburgh University where he wrote some very early communications software. He took a year off to study Computer Science more formally at Manchester University, taking his M.Sc. back to Edinburgh before moving on to London University doing similar work.

He re-joined the commercial sector as a consultant and in technical sales support and was involved in the early stages of SMS messaging and in packet radio long before we all started using it, as GPRS, for our smartphones.

He has been involved in three start-up companies, one of which survives! His last full-time job was running the IT volunteering programme for the Information Technologists livery company of the City of London.

He's now retired but busier than ever with educational outreach to schools for the Initiative for Interstellar Studies, coordinating work on i4is website and email, and editing Principium, the quarterly newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.

He's a long-established member of both the British Interplanetary Society and the British Computer Society. He was one of the leads for our World Science Fiction Convention 2014 participation.


Terry Regan

Terry Regan lives in Chelmsford, Essex, in England. His love of astronomy began when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and he has since developed a keen interest in planetary spacecraft. He is a passionate and enthusiastic member of his local astronomy club, the North Essex Astronomical Society, and the proud owner of a 10" Dobsonian telescope. He acts as Outreach Officer for the society and is often seen supporting stargazing workshop events with local schools and community groups.

His other great passion is model building. He is a member of the Chelmsford Scale Model Club, having served as its chairman for ten years, and he mainly constructs 1/48 scale models of aircraft flown by the Royal Air Force. Some of his models are conversions from kits, while others are scratch built. Terry is renowned both in his model club and the astronomy society for his amazing, fantastically detailed scale replicas of spacecraft, including Galileo, Magellan, Cassini-Huygens and Voyager 1, all scratch built. His current project is a model of Daedalus for Project Icarus, a joint initiative between Icarus Interstellar and The British Interplanetary Society.

He works for a large truck dealership as a truck technician. In the rest of his spare time he enjoys cycling, clay pigeon shooting and walking. Terry is also one of i4is's Interstellar Artists.


Gill Norman

Gill Norman is a programme and project manager. She has extensive experience in the financial sector, having held a senior role at Morgan Stanley. She was responsible for much of the early financial and
business management of i4is. She is the former Executive Secretary (Chief Executive) at the British Interplanetary Society. Gill has a degree in maths from the University of Bath and a masters in astrophysics from Queen Mary University of London. Here you see her with Apollo 15 Command Module pilot, Al Worden.


Satinder Shergill

Satinder worked with i4is on much of our early schools engagement when he was a teacher at the Space Studio West London. He is now with SolSys Mining (solsysmining.com) and working towards a PhD in In-situ Resource Utilisation (space mining and manufacturing) at the University of Cranfield in Bedfordshire. Satinder and John Davies developed the ‘Skateboards to Starships’ programme for the Royal Institution and is a lead presenter at its third delivery in 2022.

Tam O'Neill

Tam is primarily manager of the team which controls our online presence including the website, membership system and email. He also joined the Education team in 2022. Tam has been an system specialist in companies including HP and M&Co and is currently aSystems Administrator (Linux/Unix) at University of Glasgow.

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  • In the media

Blog

Swarming Proxima

20 November 2023

Adam Hibberd Breakthrough Starshot is the Initative to send a probe at 20% light speed (0.2c) to the nearest neighbouring star Proxima Centauri. But how do we achieve such a high speed? It turns out that if we have an extremely powerful laser (and exponential advances in tech over the next decades will mean that […]

Laser and Sail in Earth Orbit with Evolutionary Neurocontrol

24 October 2023

Adam Hibberd In my last post I explained how my software development, Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software (OITS), seems to achieve miracles of intelligent design in a fashion analogous to evolution, though in fact with both cases evidently no intelligence is involved – instead simple mechanisms combined with iteration are at work. This concept stimulated me […]

OITS Takes on Evolution

10 September 2023

Adam Hibberd The more I think about evolution through natural selection the more I see analogues to my software development Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software. (I should make it clear at this early stage in my post that OITS does NOT employ a genetic/evolutionary algorithm approach, I shall elucidate below.) You see there is NO intent […]

How Close did ‘Oumuamua Approach Each of the Inner Planets?

2 September 2023

Adam Hibberd A view of the distance of ‘Oumuamua from each of the Inner Planets as it rounded the sun, reached perihelion and then sped away again. Mars was just about as far away as it could possibly have been from ‘Oumuamua. ‘Oumuamua came very close to Earth (around 0.16 au). It came no closer […]

Was Loeb’s Bolide Interstellar?

1 September 2023

Adam Hibberd Loeb’s interstellar spherules have caused controversy and indignation amongst experts in the science community. For those of you not-in-the-know, Loeb travelled to the site of a proposed interstellar meteor (his designation: IM1) which he had identified in a catalogue of bolides held by NASA and then discovered in the ocean tiny metallic blobs he […]

‘Oumuamua – a Sci-Fi Story or Reality?

23 August 2023

Adam Hibberd Let me tell you all a story. It is the story of life and its purpose. I ask you to bear with me here as Project Lyra and ‘Oumuamua will make an appearance eventually – I promise. Many of you will be familiar with the idea that the universe might be some kind […]

‘Oumuamua: The Mystery Unfolds

20 August 2023

Adam Hibberd Those of you who have been following my Project Lyra blogs know that I have over the past year or so done some extensive analysis of ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory. You may refer to previous posts on the i4is website to get an understanding of exactly what I have been up to, or alternatively continue […]

Psyche: OITS has Something to Say

18 August 2023

Adam Hibberd Here’s a mission to asteroid Psyche for you. Initial theories favoured Psyche as a core of a failed protoplanet, containing vast reserves of metals. More recent research, however favour alternative origin theories. Whatever is the case, we are about to discover its true nature and this would be a huge step forwards for […]

Project Lyra: Ignore the outlier and miss an opportunity

31 July 2023

Adam Hibberd Wouldn’t you like an answer to the question: What is ‘Oumuamua? There have been many theories, but there is no real consensus. The only way to answer this would be to send a spacecraft to observe ‘Oumuamua in situ but the total lack of will-power to get this question answered, in my view, […]

The Case of Fireball CNEOS 2017-10-09

28 July 2023

Adam Hibberd Around the middle of last year I read an article by Siraj and Loeb in which they analysed closely a database of bolides (which are meteor fireballs) maintained by NASA-JPL CNEOS (Center for Near Earth Object Studies). In so doing they identified at least one bolide as having an interstellar origin (designated CNEOS […]

Project Lyra: The Mission to Resolve a Mystery

4 July 2023

Adam Hibberd Project Lyra is the study of the feasibility of a spacecraft mission to the first interstellar object to be discovered passing through our Solar System, designated 1I/’Oumuamua. I have now authored and co-authored a total of nine Project Lyra papers. The considerable number of science papers (many now peer-reviewed, several still to be […]

Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software: The Secrets Revealed

25 June 2023

Adam Hibberd In the UK Spring of 2017, I derived the theory for solving interplanetary trajectories, which enabled me to develop a powerful software tool for optimising hight thrust spacecraft missions, a tool which I called Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software (OITS). For those of you fascinated by mathematics, in particular mathematical formulae, the two equations […]

Laser Sails: Trajectories Using Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software

16 June 2023

It struck me a while ago that I have developed this extremely effective tool for solving interplanetary trajectories (OITS), so how would I be able to exploit it for alternative applications – applications which would be beyond its originally intended purpose, that of designing trajectories for chemically propelled spacecraft (and in the process assuming impulsive […]

Mars Ride-Share: an Opportunity Not to be Missed

14 June 2023

Adam Hibberd I was recently discussing with my colleagues across the pond, the potential for mounting a cheap mission to some alternative, yet interesting destination in the inner Solar System, by exploiting a ‘ride-share’ with a more important mission, possibly one organised by NASA or ESA. It struck me that since there have been, and […]

C/2014 UN271 the comet which will NOT collide with the Earth

4 April 2023

Adam Hibberd An Oort cloud comet is composed primarily of dust and ice and has spent most of its life in the far-flung distant reaches of our Solar System (2,000 au to 200,000 au from our Sun). It is eventually nudged inward towards our Sun by gravitational influences such as galactic tides or some passing […]

Project Lyra: Falcon Heavy Expendable

27 March 2023

Adam Hibberd Following on from my previous blog where I studied the capability of the up-coming Ariane 6 4 launcher in terms of delivering a spacecraft on a course to intercept the first interstellar object to be discovered, ‘Oumuamua, I continue this logical progression with analysis of a more powerful launcher, the Falcon Heavy. The […]

Project Lyra: Using an Ariane 6

16 March 2023

Adam Hibberd Ariane 6 is the up-and-coming successor to the old Arianespace workhorse, Ariane 5, and may secure its maiden flight later this year. There will ultimately be two strap-on booster configurations from which to choose, one with two boosters, and the more powerful version with four. I thought it might be worthwhile assessing the […]

Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software (OITS)

15 February 2023

Adam Hibberd I started development of this software, OITS, in April 2017 on a holiday near the little town of Cheadle, in the county of Staffordshire, UK. I started from the very basics, deriving the theory during the holiday and continuing shortly thereafter, and then immersed myself in the implementation of the equations I had […]

Music of ‘Oumuamua

30 January 2023

Adam Hibberd If you have a fascination for the mysterious interstellar object ‘Oumuamua and are musically inclined, please check out these two pieces by my musician friend Robin Jax based on recordings of me playing two piano compositions of mine. Whether it be Robin’s neurodivergence, or my own schizophrenia, we have both overcome our respective […]

Things to Come

22 January 2023

Adam Hibberd I sometimes wonder at the short-sightedness of people. The sort of people who scoff and scorn at the far-sighted work which most of my work colleagues and I have dedicated a good deal of our lives to pursue, largely voluntarily. They may argue: We have such and such a problem NOW, how are […]

Project Lyra: Using Jupiter Alone to get to ‘Oumuamua

9 January 2023

Adam Hibberd Here is a ‘pork chop plot’ of missions to ‘Oumuamua using a Jupiter powered gravitational assist (or a Jupiter Oberth Manoeuvre, JOM). Refer to the Figure (1). Essentially, what we have are three coordinates where firstly the horizontal axis shows the launch date, the vertical axis shows the flight duration, and for every […]

‘Oumuamua: The State of Play

30 December 2022

Adam Hibberd In 2017, an interstellar object was discovered, the first ever to be detected. It was observed by the Hawaiian observatory Pan-STARRS, subsequently studied by many telescopes before disappearing into the distance in January 2018. An estimate on the number density, N (how many per unit volume), in interstellar space was determined based on […]

Why the Stars?

24 November 2022

Adam Hibberd November 2022 People may ask the question why we should venture beyond our solar system to explore the stars? Why should we commit precious resources to such an endeavour? I have an answer to this which may to some degree be a personal one. The question boils down to why are we curious? […]

Exploring ‘Oumuamua’s Trajectory – Further Notes

9 November 2022

Adam Hibberd November 2022 In my last blog I reported the progress of my work regarding the intriguing little conundrum of the first interstellar object (ISO) to be discovered, designated ‘Oumuamua, in particular my research into its orbit. In fact ‘Oumuamua is puzzling on many counts and I have also in a previous blog elaborated […]

Exploring ‘Oumuamua’s Perihelion Date

31 October 2022

Adam Hibberd October 2022 This blog may be a bit cheeky but do take heed of the last line before jumping to any conclusions! I’ve been mucking around with ‘Oumuamua’s orbit on my computer lately. Mucking around in the sense of playing with its orbital parameters and seeing what crops up. Those of you who […]

Principium 43

28 November 2023

The November 2023 issue of Principium is now available and has already gone out to subscribers. LEAD FEATUREIRG23: The Summaries FEATURENatural Geo-engineering of the early Earth NEWS FEATURES – IRG 23X-ray and γ-ray Beam Interstellar Communication and Implications for SETI, Applications and Design Guidelines for High Power Lasers in Space Exploration, Silence is Golden: SETI […]

Members Newsletter – November

28 November 2023

I4is Science Fiction AnthologyYou will have seen from earlier Newsletters that we are still looking for short stories for the upcoming “The i4is Science Fiction Anthology.” To ensure a level playing field, submissions must be in Shunn’s Modern Manuscript format, the widespread standard for fiction submissions. https://www.shunn.net/format/story/ (Make sure you click the Modern tab.) Further […]

PROJECT HYPERION: THE HOLLOW ASTEROID STARSHIP – DISSEMINATION OF AN IDEA

1 November 2023

Andreas M. Hein Asteroid starship arriving at an alien world by David A. Hardy Source: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1618045 A large space mirror heats up an asteroid, slowly melting it. Water, which was injected into the center of the body expands, blows up the melted material,  creating the shape of a balloon. After cooling down, rotation is induced […]

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Contact i4is

Initiative for Interstellar Studies
27/29 South Lambeth Road
London, SW8 1SZ
United Kingdom

info@nulli4is.org

Starship Blog

Swarming Proxima

Laser and Sail in Earth Orbit with Evolutionary Neurocontrol

OITS Takes on Evolution

How Close did ‘Oumuamua Approach Each of the Inner Planets?

Was Loeb’s Bolide Interstellar?

‘Oumuamua – a Sci-Fi Story or Reality?

‘Oumuamua: The Mystery Unfolds

Psyche: OITS has Something to Say

Project Lyra: Ignore the outlier and miss an opportunity

The Case of Fireball CNEOS 2017-10-09

Project Lyra: The Mission to Resolve a Mystery

Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software: The Secrets Revealed

Laser Sails: Trajectories Using Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software

Mars Ride-Share: an Opportunity Not to be Missed

C/2014 UN271 the comet which will NOT collide with the Earth

Project Lyra: Falcon Heavy Expendable

Project Lyra: Using an Ariane 6

Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software (OITS)

Music of ‘Oumuamua

Things to Come

Project Lyra: Using Jupiter Alone to get to ‘Oumuamua

‘Oumuamua: The State of Play

Why the Stars?

Exploring ‘Oumuamua’s Trajectory – Further Notes

Exploring ‘Oumuamua’s Perihelion Date

Principium 43

Members Newsletter – November

PROJECT HYPERION: THE HOLLOW ASTEROID STARSHIP – DISSEMINATION OF AN IDEA

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The Initiative for Interstellar Studies is entirely dependent upon the goodwill of its volunteer teams, the minor amounts we receive from our activities and the sale of our merchandise but also the kindness of donors. In order to advance our mission of achieving interstellar flight over the next century, we need your help and support. If you are feeling generous we would very much appreciate your help in moving our mission forward. Make a donation » about Donate

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