Steve
Kilston
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
(303) 939-4998
(303) 939-4430 (fax)
To search for the unknown and unexplained. Looking around the universe to see how it ticks. The usual beginnings, helped by parents, friends, and teachers: a 4th grade teacher made a magnetized needle sit on a cork floating in a dish of water; thus she illustrated the influence of Earth's magnetic field rendered visible by its effect upon a compass. Thrilled that the stars in the celestial Orion matched the drawing in Field Book of the Skies. In 6th grade a friend's 40 mm aperture refracting telescope revealed sunspots and double stars. My father taking me to the desert to view Sputniks, Explorer 1, and Echo. The same friend and I did a 9th grade science project using bits of clay representing nuclear and elementary particles to illustrate the sequences of nuclear reactions that are sources of the immense power released in stellar interiors. (Our teacher said that this wasn't original and gave us a C.)
A
brilliant high school math teacher, Florence Weston, prepared me for Harvard,
where I was blessed to have additional fine, nearly iconic, teachers and mentors
such as Owen Gingerich (history of modern astronomy), Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
(variable stars), and Carl Sagan (solar system 
astrophysics
and my research culminating in "A Search
for Life on Earth at Kilometer Resolution", serving as a comparison study
to the Mariner 4 observations of Mars). In grad school at UCLA, I got to
spend one summer at Lick Observatory and discover a comet by being impatient
with my photometry project. I worked on X-ray and radio astronomy too, and then
my dissertation "On the Nature of the
Carbon Stars" determined the abundances of products of stellar nuclear
reactions to prove that stars manufacture the chemical elements we think life
needs.
I
didn't get to do much more real astronomy for the next quarter century, but a
continued doing a fair bit of teaching to all ages, planetarium lectures, a
weekly "Science Connection" radio talk show for ten years, special courses on
our place in the universe, and a national
symposium on "Seeing Ourselves in the Stars: Our Universe in Philosophical
Perspective." After I began working in the aerospace industry,
developing laser communications systems and anti-satellite weapons, I taught a
course on the science of nuclear war at UCLA, and then began designing a wide
range of fanciful systems for the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars").
My
best aerospace accomplishment so far was working with Vera, my wife and colleague, to design, and
get Lockheed to fund and build, the
IKONOS satellite, the first high-resolution commercial remote sensing
satellite, called in the New York Times "one 
of
the most significant developments in the history of the space age." Together
with the QuickBird satellite built by Ball Aerospace, my current employer, such
satellites have given us views of our own planet at least as remarkable and
revealing as those NASA gathers of other planets in our solar system.
At
Ball Aerospace, my main activity has been developing the Terrestrial Planet Finder
(TPF) program. We worked with a very fine international team to convince NASA
that, to capture the first images of Earth-like planets in other solar systems, a
visible-wavelength coronagraph (TPF-C), with a mirror 8m x 3.5m, could be ready before
the infrared
interferometer that had been the previously preferred concept. Our current
efforts are helping toward the goal to launch TPF-C by 2016. Work with the
Almost
my first thought after starting work on TPF was, "what if we find another
habitable planet?" The answer that came to me was, "we should go there." So
I've developed in some detail the plans for "The
Project," a physically plausible interstellar spaceship humans could launch within 500 years. Working
on the future large telescopes that will help us find such destinations, I realized
the potential use of such technology for research in Optical SETI, and hope to
look at data from missions such as Kepler, JWST, and TPF for possible evidence
of signals from other beings, perhaps bearing lessons we need to absorb. And,
recognizing that for carrying out a space journey lasting thousands of years
the greatest human challenge will be learning to live wisely and harmoniously,
I have worked to understand the philosophical and psychological bases for
creating such improved interactions in our society.
Education
|
|
Astronomy |
BA |
1965 |
|
|
Astronomy |
MA |
1967 |
|
|
Astronomy |
PhD |
1973 |
Professional Societies
American Astronomical Society
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
International
Astronomical
Some Publications of Interest
Kilston, S. & Noecker, M.C., 2003 "A
Coronagraphic TPF: System Options and Challenges" Proceedings, Toward
Other Earths: Darwin/TPF and the Search for Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets, ESA
SP-539, 475
Ebbets, D., & Kilston, S., 2002 "Phenomenology
of Extrasolar Planets in Reflected Starlight and System Level Requirements for
Detection and Characterization", SPIE Proceedings, 4860, 120
Kilston, S., & Bally, J., 2002 "Potential
Paths in Space Astronomy over the Next 50 Years", SPIE Proceedings,
4835, 98
Kilston, S.,
& Begley, D. 2001 "Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST) and Space-Based
Optical SETI", with David L. Begley. SPIE Proceedings, 4273, 136
Kilston, S.,
& Friedman, E. 2000 Space -- How Far We've Come, How Far There is to Go", Proceedings
of the IEEE, 88, No. 3, 429
Kilston, S., 1998 "Capabilities of New
Remote Sensing Satellites to Support Sustainable Development", International
Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 32, No. 1, 183
Kilston, S., & Knopoff, L. 1983 "Lunar-solar
Periodicities of Large Earthquakes in
Kilston, S., 1975 "N-type Carbon Stars and the 3-a Process".
Publications, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 87, 189
Kilston, S., Drummond, R., & Sagan, C. 1966 "A
Search for Life on Earth at Kilometer Resolution", Icarus, 5,
79