Guest: Dr. John Cramer. Topics: Dr. Cramer's chapter in "Starship Century," interstellar travel, physics. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. We welcomed Dr. John Cramer to the program to discuss his chapter in the book "Starship Century." Dr. Cramer titled his chapter Exotic Technologies for Interstellar Travel. Remember, if you purchase this book using The Space Show/OGLF Amazon portal, Amazon will contribute to The Space Show. Instructions for doing this are in all archived program summaries on our website and our blog. Dr. Cramer's website is http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer. During the first segment of our 90 minute discussion, Dr. Cramer talked about his chapter, interstellar spaceflight, exotic technologies, and the Quantum Grounded Theory. He mentioned James Woodward and his work with Mach's Principle. I also asked him about the level of interest expressed by his students in interstellar travel and we talked about timelines for realizing interstellar travel. Our guest said we needed breakthroughs and the progress in 100 years would depend on realizing key breakthroughs. Dr. Cramer suggested that our challenges were still in the fields of theory as we needed much better understandings of lots of things associated with interstellar travel. The issue of space settlement came up in terms of Mars and deep space. We also talked about worm holes but we spent more time on that subject in the second segment. I asked if finding the Higgs-Boson was helpful. Dr. Cramer had much to say on this as well as on the LHC and colliders in general. Dr. Cramer was asked about his science fiction works and his writing for Analog. We also talked about the impact of our having cancelled our collider to be built in Texas and the impact of that decision on American science for decades following that political decision. In the second segment, Dr. Cramer went into more detail about worm holes, including an explanation of the "back reaction" issue. Later, we talked about timelines, budgets and our political funding process. Near the end of the program, NASA was discussed as was our reliance on large rockets. Dr. Cramer said we would need to get away from rockets and propulsion thrust if we were to do anything with interstellar travel or deep space. At the end, he was asked about ET based on the comments Dr. Davies made on his interview earlier this week. Please post your comments/questions on The Space Show blog URL above. You can email Dr. Cramer through his website.
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