Recent development of new strategies in the composition of timelines now provides an independently replicable and reliable method for forecasting most probable futures into the next century and beyond.

REED RINER
“Timelines Past and Present; How We Represent Experience to Ourselves”

BRUCE CORDELL
“Timelines as Solutions to the Differential Equations of the Global System”

PETER von STACKELBERG
“Footprints of the Future: Using Timelines In Futures Studies”

CHRISTOPHER BURR JONES
Discussant

This special Sunday session features:
Al Harrison
"Mission Crews, Passengers and Settlers: Accommodating 21st Century Spacefarers."

The presentation will be followed by a panel session which seeks to investigate the future of space exploration as a well-rounded human undertaking.  Unlike during the past, the future will involve an interdisciplinary approach that increasingly incorporates the social and behavioral sciences, humanities, and the arts with the traditional approach focused most strongly on engineering issues.  Increasingly, efforts will turn to planning and sustaining space settlements (i.e., “space societies”).  As with other examples to be discussed, this will necessitate the participation of astrosociologists and other social scientists in the form of formal collaboration between the two branches of science.  Astrosociology is poised to serve as a framework for organizing interested social scientists (including students) and their work.  In more general terms, the panelists will discuss issues related to space exploration that involve the inclusion of the social sciences, both in space and within terrestrial societies.

Panelists include:
Jim Pass (organizer)
Marilyn Dudley-Flores (moderator)
Seth Shostak
Albert A. Harrison
Thomas Gangale