The only really new ideas from the POV of physics enabling rapid interstellar commerce was my talk - and of course it remains to be seen whether I am correct or not. Cramer, White, Millis, Davis gave good summaries of the literature on warp drive and wormhole - but nothing new. The rest of the conference was mainly politically correct feel-good quasi-New Age soft topics like should we contaminate the native bacteria on Mars and a discussion that "space is not white";-) There were good talks on medical issues of long stays in space, but with my idea we won't need long stays in space to get to the stars. UFOS are of course data that almost certainly some one is already doing it. At least this should have been debated intelligently, but bleeding hearts worried about the poor bacteria on Mars won the day.;-) The tilt at the meeting was definitely to the left no "drill baby drill", rather "don't use phrases like manifest destiny and conquest of space." This was not a meeting where Heinlein's "Star Ship Troopers" would get a warm reception. ;-)
On Oct 8, 2011, at 3:59 AM,
Gentlefolk,
Regarding the 100YSS conference, Nembo tells me that he attended, got to meet some of you, and took some 200 pictures. He plans to put some of them into an accessible form. (My suggestion is a low resolution Power Point presentation.) I gather from the traffic that the conference was arguably a success, though whether anything of substance comes of it remains to be seen.