Icarus Interstellar Blog: The final agenda for Starship Congress 2015 is announced. Here are our speakers: First Speaker: Rachel Armstrong Bio: Rachel Armstrong, professor of Experimental Architecture at Newcastle University, innovates and designs sustainable solutions for the built environment using advanced new technologies such as synthetic biology and smart chemistry. Rachel Armstrong’s new science thesis and book, Vibrant Architecture (Matter as CoDesigner of Living Structures), explores prospects for transformations of matter into habitable structures, which prompts a reevaluation of how we think about sustainability in our homes and cities. The open access book can be downloaded free of charge from this site: Vibrant Architecture: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/448453 Talk Title: Prototyping Starships Abstract: The interstellar question is unique and exists beyond the scope of the usual challenges that we’re used to dealing with in the modern age. The concepts are incredibly challenging to evaluate through established methods, as they represent a colossal undertaking that deals with outrageous amounts of uncertainty. To render it even more challenging, the interstellar question is also an intergenerational project that requires us to directly involve our successors in the learning process. Moreover, interstellar challenges are of a different scale and duration than the expectations of modern innovation, having long concept to ...