Everything about The British Interplanetary Society totally explained
The
British Interplanetary Society (BIS) founded in
1933 by Mr. P.E. Cleator, it's the oldest organisation in the world whose aim is exclusively to support and promote
astronautics and
space exploration. It is a
non-profit organisation with headquarters in
London and is financed by members' contributions. BIS publishes the academic journal
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and the magazine
Spaceflight.
The BIS was preceded by the
American Interplanetary Society (founded
1930), the German
VfR, and Soviet rocket research groups, but unlike these it never became absorbed into a national industry.
When originally formed in January 1933, the BIS aimed not only to promote and raise the public profile of astronautics, but also to undertake practical experimentation into rocketry along similar lines to the organisations above. However early in 1936, the Society discovered this ambition was thwarted by the
Explosives Act of 1875, which prevented any private testing of
liquid-fuel rockets in the United Kingdom.
In the late 1930s, the group devised a project of landing people on the
moon by a
multistage rocket, each stage of which would have many narrow
solid-fuel rockets. Their lander was gumdrop-shaped but otherwise quite like the
Lunar Module. As it was considered that the cabin would have to rotate to provide artificial
gravity by
centrifugal force, the BIS is considered to have invented the first instrument for
space travel - a
navigation mechanism which would cancel out the rotating view.
In
1978, the Society published a
starship study called
Project Daedalus, which was a detailed feasibility study for a simple unmanned interstellar mission to
Barnard's Star using present-day technology and a reasonable extrapolation of near-future capabilities. Daedalus used a pellet driven nuclear-pulse
fusion rocket to accelerate to 12% of the
speed of light.
The latest in this series of far-reaching studies produced the
Project Boreas report, which designed a manned station for the Martian North Pole. The report was short-listed for the 2007
Sir Arthur Clarke Awards in the category of Best Written Presentation.
The science writer
Arthur C. Clarke is a well-known former Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society. The society was presented with the first Special Award, from the 2005
Sir Arthur Clarke Awards. This was a gift of Sir Arthur's choice, independent of the judging panel. In 2008, the Society's magazine, "Spaceflight", edited by Clive Simpson, was the winner of the award for Best Space Reporting.
Charles Chilton joined the society before writing and producing the popular science-fiction radio trilogy
Journey Into Space.
Further Information
Get more info on 'British Interplanetary Society'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://british_interplanetary_society.totallyexplained.com">British Interplanetary Society Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
