The William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics is pleased to announce its Chair’s Distinguished Seminar Series this Thursday with the first speaker, Dr. David Hyland of Texas A&M University.

There is no charge to attend this seminar and preregistration is not required.

Date/Time: November 12, 3:30 to 4:40 pm
Location: UW Seattle Campus, Guggenheim Hall, Room 220 (Map)

From the abstract:

The advance of civilization will require substantially more powerful sources of energy than are presently available. Aside from the Earth’s supply of radioisotopes and fossil fuels, the abundant supply of fusion-based energy produced by the sun remains to be efficiently harvested. The collection of solar energy in space could potentially be an order-of-magnitude more effective than ground-based technology because in space, solar insolation is continuous and not attenuated by the atmosphere. These potential advantages have motivated efforts to design space solar power systems since the early 1960s.