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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
Watch and share interviews with professors, lecturers, researchers, engineers, scientists and astronauts, right here! We talk to the most extraordinary people working on the frontiers for humanity, driving research forwards and changing the world that we live in. We dive deep with thinkers, academics and true icons - many of whom you won't yet have heard of.
Listen to us here and on podcast whilst you drive, exercise, do chores, and be inspired to pursue extraordinary in your own life.
www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:01.23)
Hello there and welcome to another episode of the Polymath World Channel and today we're into something that's very close to my heart. We're going to be talking about the British Interplanetary Society, whom I'm proudly a member, and we're going to be digging into the history, the present and the future of the oldest space advocacy group in the world. I'm delighted to be joined today by Alistair Scott, who's the former president and a proud advocate and one of the first people who introduced this to me when I went along to my very first meeting.
Thank you so much for joining me today Alistair.
Alistair Scott (00:33.993)
Well, I'll do what I can and tell you a little bit about us.
Polymath World (00:38.868)
Excellent, so we're the oldest space advocacy group in the world. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the British Insplinatory Society?
Alistair Scott (00:46.707)
Yes, well it goes back to 1933 when a group of people got together actually in Liverpool to form a society they weren't quite sure what to call it to start with but they were very worried that places like Russia, Germany and the USA were looking to the future and what space could be used for and they felt it was important that the UK participated in this too.
So they formed a group which actually was about six people to start with and then they thought of a name and they thought, we're not just looking at this Earth, we're looking at other planets. So they started with the name of British Interplanetary Society and it stuck. We're now still the British Interplanetary Society and as you can see from the logo behind me, we celebrated our 90th
birthday in 2023 and we're about to line up for our 100th birthday in 2033 so it could be an interesting time. think really what was interesting at the time was that there was a mix of people who thought it important to look to the future and they combined a number of people who were into the science fiction side.
looking at how the future might look and some of them were writing comic strips about it and the others were engineers and scientists who felt that we ought to be participating and so they set up this meeting and in 1933, October the 13th I think it was, they actually got together and formed the society and we've been going ever since.
Polymath World (02:44.238)
A very important name in the beginnings of the British Interplanetary Society is Arthur C. Clarke. Can you tell us about him?
Alistair Scott (02:51.399)
Yes, well I sit on the foundation actually, so I know a little bit about him. He was of course pre-war actually looking at what space could do for us and came up with many ideas that were on the edge of being science fiction and science fact. And why I like him and the writing he's done, because he is a prolific author, is that he sticks
as close to the facts as we can at the time. And so he's really very close to being right. And there's a book actually I've got on the shelf behind me, which actually lists the items that he put into his science fiction books. And it actually explains that some of them have actually happened. And the most recent one, of course, that he said was going to happen and change the world is AI, artificial.
intelligence because he predicted that that was the way that the world was going to go. Slightly worried by it as well but if you look at some of his and probably people know him better for his film 2001 A Space Odyssey where it really did touch on as much as we knew about space at the time and how much we thought the science fiction side would would take the lead.
And I think that really is a bit of an eye-opener to many people.
Polymath World (04:25.496)
Part of what's so incredible here is that people in the British Interplanetary Society were talking about the importance and the possibility of landing humans on the moon a long time before it happened. the British Interplanetary Society seems to have been part of pushing forward a lot of vision and the imagination and painting a picture of what the world could be. How important do you think that was?
Alistair Scott (04:50.079)
I think it's very important because the initial design work was actually, or at least the idea for going ahead with a programme to get people on the moon was actually put into their 1934, the first issue of their JBIS, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. That's a more current version of it, but that's been going since 1934. And in that, the...
the boss man Phil Cleter said we are going to find a project that will get people onto the moon and bring them back and they worked on it and they had this brilliant artist who was able to that's Smith A.F. Smith and he was not only a
He was a draftsman as well as being an artist and worked for the Rockets establishment at Westcott. And so he was able to put these ideas into real pictures and paintings. And they really do paint a thousand words. And they really do tell you what their design ideas were and the detail they went into. To the point that actually when Grumman started to build the...
the lunar lander for the Apollo missions, looked at our design and said, well, you know, some of it's been done for us already. And things like the landing legs were exactly the same as they used on the Apollo missions. And we now know that the moon suit that they had was really the cooling system in particular was based on our designs from about 1951, 52.
but we'd actually done the design work on the lunar lander and the rocket to take it there back in 1938-39. But of course during the war we weren't allowed to do anything and the whole of the BIS was disbanded until 1945 when it was resurrected.
Polymath World (07:02.018)
Yes, the space advocacy goes back a long, long way and people don't know just how many British people were involved as well working at NASA and the various organizations, not just in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo days, but afterwards in the shuttle era and the early space station era as well. So space advocacy is obviously very, important to us. Could you tell us a bit more about what the British Interplanetary Society does today?
Alistair Scott (07:30.516)
Well, I suppose probably most importantly, we look at the technologies available today and we do studies and we do projects which look to the future and the future, one of the biggest ones was Daedalus where we actually looked at how we would get to other planetary structures and other stars in effect and the idea was that we would design something that
could actually take objects, it wasn't going to take people, out to these furthest planets and look to see where life was, if there was life out there. And so these projects have continued. We've actually continued with the second generation of Daedalus now, Icarus, and that work is still continuing. And then we also look at how people would travel to get there. So we've actually looked at
how people could survive a hundred years of transport and wondering whether they have to reproduce on the way, whether we take a whole city's worth of people or whether it's just a handful of people that need to get there. But there so many projects we run. think we were running about eight projects at the time. think we were looking at also where the rockets could launch from in the UK. We did several studies on that.
So there's a lot of work that goes on on the technical side. But I think the rest of our time is actually spent more listening to other people in our evening lectures and our conferences. And we've got our biggest conference coming up in October, 27th to 29th, and that's going to be at the Royal Aeronautical Society. And we're going to be looking at how things appear to be changing so rapidly.
Are we actually keeping up? And that's one of the questions we want to ask. And we've got something like 62, 63 papers already in. Not all of them are tackling that problem, but we will find people that will actually answer those questions.
Polymath World (09:42.575)
Well, I'll be looking forward to seeing you there and hopefully bringing a paper as well. I've been at these conferences and they are absolutely extraordinary because you meet people from all different aspects of the space sector, from engineering, rocketry, physics, earth sciences, life sciences, you name it. If it's involved with space, it's a real melting pot of talent and people coming together. It really...
sparks and fires the imagination. The conferences, you know, I heartily recommend to anyone who's interested or involved with the space sector. They really are a very, very fruitful place to be.
Alistair Scott (10:24.991)
Well, I think that what's incredible about space is everyone thinks they have to be a brilliant scientist or a brilliant mathematician to be in space. But we require so many people. In fact, I believe we need 100,000 more people in the space business in the UK. Over the next, until 2030, we'll still be recruiting. And we need everyone. We need people, linguists, we need lawyers, we need doctors, we need every type of person.
that can lift a hammer probably is best way of putting it is essential. I'm an aeronautical engineer but I'm actually a wing designer by origin. Back in the 1960s I was on the design team for the Airbus wings at what was Hawker Siddeley and then I moved on to weapons systems because I was actually part of the reserve army and then I got sent into space in 1980.
Yes, 1984. And I took on various roles within the space industry for that period. I found that this satellite behind me, I was there for the launch of that. And those are the companies, you can see the logos up above there, of who I was part of.
Polymath World (11:44.77)
That's terrific. At what point were you first involved with the British Interplanetary Society itself?
Alistair Scott (11:50.922)
Well, suppose I, when I came back from, was mainly used in marketing in the Middle East and Far East. And when I got brought back from there to take on the PR role, I found myself actually working very closely with the British Interplanetary Society and helping them to run some of their events. And so I found myself working with them from about 1994.
95 onwards.
Polymath World (12:22.574)
Wow, that's terrific. And in what era were you the president?
Alistair Scott (12:27.103)
My first presidency was from 2012 to 2015. I took over from actually a well-known person, Bob Parkinson, was the designer of the hotel. That's a ground to, well, let's say that it's an air-breathing rocket plane is probably the best way of describing it. And he handed over to me in 2012.
and so I ran the society then and then to my surprise I was re-elected again in 2021 so I've done two stints.
Polymath World (13:09.344)
Excellent. Yeah, for people who are members, there's all sorts of activities that go on, not just the conference or the academic work with the journal. What sort of opportunities come for people who are interested in space who join the British Interplanetary Society?
Alistair Scott (13:26.057)
Well, we'd like a lot more people to actually join our committees because we have an education outreach committee that does a lot of the work similar to yours and we really want them to go out to schools and tell them about what the industry is about and what the society is about. So that's an important one. The other one, we've got the technical committee, which we've already talked about, but we've also got the history committee.
and they produced or helped produce a magazine called Space Chronicle which is probably one of the best magazines to actually list the history of space from the very start to the current day and that's tremendous. Then of course we've got people who look after the library and the library committee and the archive committee because we have one of the best archives in fact one of the best
space libraries in Europe and it's in our headquarters in London and we need people to help us look after that. It's quite a treasure trove and it's got some amazing pieces in it and we need people that know a little bit about preservation of documents etc and are interested in the history. So there are several committees that we could do with more help on.
Polymath World (14:49.42)
Yes, and the space advocacy takes all sorts of shapes and sizes in terms of at the moment, believe under 25s can join for free, can't they? Is that correct? Under 25. Got that right.
Alistair Scott (15:00.351)
that's right yes under twenty-fives can join for free and then we've got a graduated period when they pay quite a lot less to become full-time members and that really I think will help work the system so that they don't find themselves with a massive bill the moment they reach 26 but it's interesting because
we've we've often wondered how to get young people involved and the way i did it within astrium as it was when i was the PR director was i formed the science engineering ambassador team there and immediately within minutes of actually starting opening the books we had fifty engineers and scientists at stevenage who formed the the core group and then another twenty five down in portsmouth
and all the local science engineering groups got hold of us and said right tell us about space tell us what's going on and I found they were the best people to actually even man the stand at the Farnborough Airshow because they knew so much about what space was about and they could talk to people at any level so I used to bring them along as the PR director I used to bring them along as our stand manners at the Farnborough Airshow
Polymath World (16:27.576)
Yeah, and I meet so many young people who are really keen to get into the space sector. It's booming, they're excited, and they just don't know which direction to go. They don't know how to network necessarily, and the British Interplanetary Society is a terrific place to network and to meet like-minded people who are involved with or connected with or researching in the space industry, or just excited to push that science fiction future forward.
We did an episode of this with Patrick Rennie, who's on the committee, also president of the Mars Society. And whenever we've been to schools, young people are enthusiastic. They want that brighter future, the science fiction future. Now we've had some really extraordinary patrons and faces of the British Interplanetary Society from our connections with the European Space Agency and NASA. So Helen Sharman.
the first ever British person to fly in space, as well as Tim Peake, the most recent one. So tell us more about the history of the human spaceflight side of things and our connections with people like them.
Alistair Scott (17:26.751)
you.
Alistair Scott (17:41.438)
well most of my members in fact they are only fellows of the society and so we've got a large number of us know sort of actually being members and also members and we'd like to encourage people to to meet them and they like to come and speak to us so i've actually got but my next lecture is going to be with the pilot of virgin galactic
chief pilot as he was and so I'm hoping that he will bring in the crowds as well because he's one of the few people that have actually flown up into space in a commercial vehicle with wings which is even more incredible. he's coming along on the 11th of September I think it is and that should be fascinating so we'll add another member of the astronaut corps.
What we've got to decide is how we reward people and recognize people that have actually gone up that high but not actually orbited the Earth. Because the silver pin that we give is really for British-born astronauts who've actually orbited the Earth. So we need to get another pin which will allow people to get up into what we call low Earth orbit.
Polymath World (19:07.544)
Yes, and these events are absolutely fascinating. I think the last two I've been to, we had the debate, the discussion between Lord Martin Rees and Dr. Robert Zubrin, who've both been guests on this channel. That was a fascinating discussion. I encourage people to look it up about the future of human spaceflight versus robotic spaceflight. And then of course, at the conference last year, we had Jerry Griffin, who was the Capcom for Apollo 12 and
Alistair Scott (19:18.345)
moment.
Polymath World (19:36.717)
a very recognizable face in mission control during those those glory years. So it's a fantastic opportunity to meet and hear from people in the past, present and future of space. I want to ask you a little more about research because you held up the journal and it's the oldest academic journal in history of spaceflight. I've published in it myself very proudly. Can you talk about some of the research that comes through
the Journal of the British Inch Planetary Society.
Alistair Scott (20:09.203)
Well, a lot of it is way out of my area of technology, but we accept papers on any subject that is connected with space, and we have two versions. We have one version which has the blue band on it, and we have another version with the red band on it. And the red band is interplanetary. So that's the split between general space
and interplanetary space. I think we're looking for any ideas that people have of the future technologies, the future ways of actually getting from A to B. And we've got people that are looking now at how they will actually hibernate on the way possibly or actually just regenerate on the way. There are various people that think we've got to
carry the next generation with us as we go and have them born on the way. I think we're looking for ideas now and of course we've got people writing papers on the space elevator and people looking at science fiction ideas and seeing how real they can be. I think there's so much going on at the moment and all the papers in the journal are peer-reviewed.
So we look for the right people to actually say, yes, this is a relevant paper and we will publish it. And we're hoping more students will also publish their papers because some of them really do look in detail at a way forward. And some of them are linked to energy from space. Some of them are linked to putting all the internet traffic up to satellites and actually having
the main power source in space and these are brilliant ideas but I have noticed that some of them are a bit far-fetched and when you actually do the maths you discover that it's actually going to take hundreds of years to actually achieve and millions and millions of dollars or pounds to actually make it happen. But yes we were looking for technologies that most of us haven't even heard of.
Polymath World (22:36.406)
Yes, and it's the intersection of vision and practical scientific research or technological research. So thinking in big picture, but also conceiving how it can practically happen and where it's viable, as well as addressing a lot of the big questions. mean, I've put in a paper about DNA repair and how people can survive the immense assault on their
that genome from space radiation, which will be a huge problem going anywhere. So there's opportunities for publishing in every single avenue. What are your hopes for the future of the British Interplanetary Society?
Alistair Scott (23:09.183)
Mm.
Alistair Scott (23:21.279)
Well, our motto is, as you suggested, from imagination to reality. And I think that's the way we must go. We must look to see what ideas people have and which ones we must take up and promote. I think we've been to various conferences and lectures where some of them are so way out we can't imagine them happening. But in the last 10, 15 years, some of the way I
way out ideas have come to fruition. We only have to look at how Elon Musk is bringing back all his first stage rockets. You know, incredible. We didn't believe him when he said it is possible. And so when he looked at landing on the moon, yes, the design that he's got looks very like our design from 1938. So, you know, anything's possible. And I think he's proved that things can be real.
and what we'd like to do is encourage people to think off the wall and come up with these ideas and then we will just see whether they are viable or not and then discuss with them. We've had several people that have come to us with ideas come into our evening lectures and afterwards said I'd like to do this but I work with a company that really doesn't let me do this and one of them was with
ideas of nuclear power and we've just put a team together with him and we looked at how it could turn out in the end and some of the ideas that are being used for energy in space have come from people who came to us with these ideas and then have taken them on into a I wouldn't call commercial future but certainly a more practical future.
And I think that's what we'd like to encourage and get more young people involved.
Alistair Scott (25:23.379)
So we're going to create a space within the society which will allow people to work on projects within our own building. It might be classed as a laboratory possibly, but it will have equipment in it that will allow them to bring some of their ideas to reality.
Polymath World (25:23.424)
Amazing. Excellent. Sorry.
Polymath World (25:46.093)
That's terrific. Could you share some of your thoughts on the British space sector? In terms of the past, we've mentioned some of the great contributions, but the present and the future as well.
Alistair Scott (26:01.257)
Well think the present is interesting. think as we find that low Earth orbit is becoming more more cluttered with thousands and thousands of orbiting constellations, we're going to have to find another way of doing it. I don't say we need to go back out to geostationary orbit because that's pretty crowded too, but I think we're going to have to find other ways of controlling
the use of space and i think in this the u k industry particularly the startup companies are looking at how to retrieve debris because i think we could be in for a lot of trouble with the the debris that's being left out in space and they're looking at how to bring stuff back and how to collect debris and bring it back to earth or send it out further i think we've
As I said earlier, we've built the biggest satellites in the world and that was one of them behind us. That's old, well, let's call it Olympus is the way I knew it, but it was a European Space Agency program and it was one of the biggest in the world at the time. But things have improved to the point where the solar arrays that were about 40 meters wide on that one only generated three and a half kilowatts of power.
Whereas now that same solar array would probably generate something like 15 or 20 kilowatts of power. So the improvements are phenomenal and I think the UK has had a lot to do with it and will continue to do so. But industry is now being led probably as a European activity rather more than as a UK activity. The small startups are in fact doing very well.
and are supported very cleverly by the UK Space Agency. But I do find that the space conference that we started way back in 1999-2000 as the BROP conference at Charterhouse was then taken on in 2010 to be the UK Space Conference and it used to have a lot of papers.
Alistair Scott (28:22.695)
looking to the future and the way things should be done and that doesn't seem to be quite the case now and I'm hoping that the Reinventing Space Conference will do just that to actually allow people to put their ideas forward and let people listen to what they've got and see if any of them are realistic enough to become real.
Polymath World (28:49.154)
What do you think the greatest contributions of people in the British Interplanetary Society can be to space in general?
Alistair Scott (28:59.903)
That's a good question. think the first of all those people that have done it are currently members and they ought to be able to give some sort of guidance to those people that want to be in it and Some of these people that want to be in it particularly the younger people still at school some of them have the most brilliant off-the-wall ideas Which reminds me of what happened at Astrium one time we got a school to look
quickly at how to cut MLI, multi-layer insulation, to actually allow 11 or 12 layers to cover the sides of the satellite. And they came up with a brilliant idea and a piece of equipment that we didn't know existed that would do it all for us. And it was only because they had this blank sheet of paper that they came up with the idea. And I think the younger people
have these blank sheets of paper that they can actually scribble on and come up with ideas and I think we need more people to do that.
Polymath World (30:06.188)
Yes, I've had the pleasure of working a lot with the International Space School Education Trust and I oversaw a team that won the competition one year and we were very lucky to have our experiment flown to the International Space Station and performed by NASA astronaut Nicole Mann and a few others as part of the research rotation. those students have come up with an absolutely incredible
experiment brief and I said do that every year and it's it's amazing. If people listening young or old want to join or get involved or find out more about the British Interplanetary Society where should they go and what should they do?
Alistair Scott (30:47.805)
well the website is the first place because most of us actually use the internet i'm just wondering whether it's on the front of these is on the front of all our magazines and this is all our monthly magazine sometimes you can pick it off the shelf but we've fewer and fewer places where they actually stop them because a lot of people prefer to to see them electronically so they can go into our website which is www dot
I'll just try and see whether we've got it on, used to be on the front page. Doesn't seem to be anymore.
Polymath World (31:22.336)
It's bis-space.com.
Alistair Scott (31:25.119)
Yeah.
that's right it is it it is in here and there are various reference to it references to it in the various sides here but yeah I think the best thing is to go into the website and look for the how to join signs and that will take you right the way through it also I keep up to date I run the event side and I keep up to date online with all the events that are about to happen and so it's important that people
know where to go and when to go because I think there's some interesting talks coming up.
Polymath World (32:06.348)
Yes, and you can also find the British Interplanetary Society on Instagram and Facebook and X, every kind of social media. So I really encourage people to check it out. Don't feel like just because you're not a rocket scientist, you can't come to the conferences. Come along and be inspired. I love seeing university students. I love seeing 18 year olds and those who are just taking their first steps into the worlds of STEM coming along, but also meeting people who are just
hugely passionate about space and want to see humanity head in that direction who are fans and enthusiasts there as well.
Alistair Scott (32:46.451)
Yes, I used to go out to schools and one of the questions I used to be asked was, how do I get into your company? And luckily one time I went with our human resources director and he actually held up a sheet of paper which was the application form and he said to the youngsters in the audience, said, how would you complete this? Which is the most important bit here? And
They all said, qualifications, qualifications, qualifications. He said, no. He said, first of all, I need to know your name and I need to know who your parents are because we're a secure organization. We have to know a little bit about you. And then they said, well, what next? What next? And he said, education, well, pretty well every application I get has roughly the same information. The number of A levels they've got, the number of degrees they've got.
and it's very difficult to judge. said, no, the most important section to me is on the bottom of the back page and it says other interests. And if you have something in there that actually excites people and says, I'm a member of the British Interplanetary Society, I want to get into space, this is what I want to do, then it makes it the top notch for you applying for a space job. And I think anyone that does
a hobby like Boy Scouts, Girl Guides or Cadets, they really are essential to actually get you up the first layer, the first rung of the ladder. And so it's not just what you get at school, but it's what you do out of school that's as important.
Polymath World (34:33.782)
Yes, it's not too late to join. I didn't join until I was in my 30s. And yeah, let's let's keep advocating for space and trying to make it more of a priority so that humanity can really have the brightest possible future. So many of the technologies that develop a space have incredible benefits for people on Earth. You know, they all do, really. And and thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing something about the history of the prestigious organization and
and hopefully building more towards the future.
Alistair Scott (35:06.067)
Looking forward to it. Thank you.