Fiction Writers Panel - Envisioning the Starship Era

Fiction Writers Panel: Envisioning The Starship Era

moderated by Gregory Benford
Joe Haldeman
David Brin
Larry Niven
Vernor Vinge
Jon Lomberg

Starship Century is a symposium coordinated by the new Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination in collaboration with Gregory and James Benford, presenting ideas from their anthology of science and science fiction.

[mylifeisnapless]

That remark said not far from the microphone at the end... "We've received emails from three countries of people watching".  Well that number continues to grow.  More of us are watching, and I love what I'm able to learn through watching these.

[granddad]

Its a great age to live in. I find it puzzling that some very credible experts have some very mild complaints about space adventures. The risk & danger factors of going into space is distracting. What we put humans through on Earth... wars, poverty, potential assault and marginalization. Considering the number of actual space travelers, not the percentile... a job in space is a lot less threatening than working an oil platform or a police officer in Baltimore or working in extreme environments of coal mines or the north seas as a fisherman. To me, a military veteran and a medically retired truck driver... being a space traveler doesn't get anymore dangerous than launching & landing. I think space should be developed just for the sake of jobs... not the aerospace factory stuff on Earth, but actually getting people out their to maintain asteroids, fabricate pipes, process oxygen, water and fuels!
We'll need gardeners, structural workers and cooks... because we have them here, we'll need them there. Hopefully, in some future, we'll need sports car salesman and bartenders on Mars? Would I live to be 1 million years old, I'd love to hear what people complain about out there in the Galaxy.

[dominictemple]

Thanks for uploading, enjoyed this talk very much.

[avibrooks]

@22:04 Vernon Vinge discusses culture as driving force for starship era followed by trading culture comments by next speaker where stargazing is way of being

[nehorlavazapalka]

Earth, system-wide and singularity at the same time, quantum foam civilization after that. I doubt that matter based IS ships will be made. We will capture the whole universe, using yet unknown physics.

[DrayseSchneider]

One minor nit pick, throughout this whole presentation series I've been hearing that annoying Windows alert "ping!" Other than that, this was a good series.