MODERATOR: Alf Nucifora
The Nucifora Consulting website
PANELISTS:
Robert Cassanova: Director, NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
NIAC website
Penelope Boston: Director of Cave and Karst Studies and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Boston's Institute of Mining and Technology website
Dava Newman SM‘89, PhD ‘92: Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems
Newman's Home Page
Newman's Engineering Systems page
Bradley Carl Edwards: President and Founder, Carbon Designs
Edwards' Carbon Designs website
ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION:
“You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.”
While Dr. Seuss may not have been a direct inspiration, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” seems especially suited to these four “brainy and footsy people” with exceptional reach.
Take Bradley Carl Edwards, who is designing a space elevator 62 thousand miles long, made out of a three-foot wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes, with one end attached to earth and the other sticking out in space. Send up solar panel satellites and you’ve got a constant, inexpensive supply of power for the world.
And there’s Dava Newman, who is working on a spacesuit made out of liquefied polymers and electro active materials. Her “shrink-wrapped” Biosuit system is intended for “extreme explorers” on multi-year missions to the moon and beyond, who need second skins to augment human performance and minimize bone and muscle loss typical in low gravity environments.
Or Penelope Boston, whose investigation of our planet’s harshest caves is leading to models for human habitation in subterranean lava tubes on Mars. Deploy “microbots” to reconnoiter for danger and signs of life in these deep and dangerous places, suggests Boston, then develop life support mechanisms in preparation for human colonies on other worlds.
Are these merely flights of fancy? Robert Cassanova thinks not. His NIAC serves as incubator to these “really good revolutionary ideas,” which he believes stretch the imagination but that will also end up as credible technologies.
NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:30:05.
Following a brief videotaped open by George Public Broadcasting, Joseph G. Hadzima Jr. Esq., Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum, introduces the event, reads a brief message from science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, thanks event sponsors and then introduces Alf Nucifora.
At 7:39, Nucifora provides a brief profile of Robert Cassanova, and then each subsequent speaker.
At 9:59, Robert Cassanova begins.
At 22:40, Penelope Boston begins.
At 37:52, Dava Newman begins.
At 49:44, Bradley Carl Edwards begins.
At 1:01:17, Nucifora invites questions from the audience.
At 1:28:04, Nucifora thanks panelists and MIT Enterprise Forum.
The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2006-01-03.
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