Recently, two Call for Papers were published that really convinced me that work on space settlement is accelerating.
First, there was a Call for Papers for Space Manufacturing 14. This announcement is a big deal because it seemed that the Space Manufacturing conference was dead, which is sad because this was brain child of Gerard K. O’Neill. It occurred every two years up to Space Manufacturing 13 in 2001, then something happened. It sort of sucks to have the one of the flagship conferences on space settlement die...it kills the spirit of the whole field. However, it's really exciting to see the Space Studies Institute gaining momentum again. The space community should really support them and send a mountain of high quality work to them. Abstracts are due August 16th, submission information is here. I'm serious, I want them buried in the best papers they have ever seen.
Next, we have a Call for Papers from the Journal of Cosmology. The Journal of Cosmology is a fully open source journal that first published in October 2009 and managed to gain 25,000 readers in a short time. The papers already submitted look epic, but I know we can pump out more content. More epic, there are no processing or publishing fees for this issue, so there is no reason why everyone who has an idea shouldn't publish. More information is here and it is due September 1st. These articles will promote more scholarly discussion about space settlement, which we need badly, some of the stuff that comes up on my radar (Google Alerts) is...really bad. However, looking over past editions of the Journal of Cosmology, everything is high quality and juicy; each of the articles are thought-provoking.
Why are you here? Start writing!!!!
