Episode description

Micro-spaceships of only a single gram could be propelled at a third the speed of light toward nearby stars. They would be shoved, as tiny lightsails, by powerful external lasers. Accelerating for only ten minutes each would allow tens of thousands to be launched every year. A great cloud of micro-spaceships could then expand in every direction from our solar system to explore all the nearby stars and their potential exoplanets. Arriving for their thousands of flybys after 13 to 20 years--what an astounding leap forward in scientific understanding they would provide.

Dr. Philip Lubin is a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Fellow for his work on laser beamed energy micro-spaceships.

[News Item] This is the ten year anniversary episode of the Future And You. The very first episode went public on December 15, 2005.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 16, 2015 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 46 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on Dec 7, 2015.

Stephen Euin Cobb has interviewed over 350 people for his work as an author, futurist, magazine writer, ghostwriter, and award-winning podcaster. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he has also been a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. For the last nine years he has produced a weekly podcast, The Future And You, which explores (through interviews, panel discussions and commentary) all the ways the future will be different from today. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen is the author of an ebook about the future entitled: Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science.