Part of Words on Monday
Curated by Nature
Host
Nick Campbell, Managing Editor, Nature
Panellists
Kevin Fong, Chair, UK Space Biomedical Advisory Committee
Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor, Nature and author, Mapping Mars
Professor Martin Sweeting, CEO, Surrey Satellite Technology
Chair
Christine McGourty, Science Correspondent, BBC News
Four decades after the first Moon landings, the original space-racers have been joined by China, India, South Korea, even Nigeria. Why do we still need manned missions? Does space exploration need countries to cooperate, or does it benefit from the oxygen of international conflict and mistrust?
Join a lively debate on colonizing the Moon between scientists, historians and commentators. This is the first of two King's Place summer events organized by the weekly science journal Nature.
Panellists
Kevin Fong, Chair, UK Space Biomedical Advisory Committee
Kevin Fong is an anaesthetist and honorary lecturer in physiology at University College London. He chairs the UK Space Biomedical Advisory Committee and co-directs the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme environment medicine (CASE). Kevin holds degrees in medicine and astrophysics and is currently working at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston investigating the effects of long-term space flight on the human body. He has spent the last six years working with British National Space Centre in an attempt to further UK involvement in the international space programme.
Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor, Nature and author, Mapping Mars
Oliver Morton joined Nature in late 2005 - twenty years after he began his career as science writer with an internship at The Economist. In the years in between he has edited The Economist's science and technology pages, worked as editor of the UK/Europe edition of Wired, and has also written for The New Yorker, Prospect and the Hollywood Reporter. His books include Mapping Mars and Eating the Sun, on what photosynthesis means for plants, people and the planet.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, Founder and Chairman, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting is the Director of the Surrey Space Centre and chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, a company he founded at a time when the satellite business was a duopoly between NASA and the Soviet Union. His original staff of four has since grown to 300. He says that the new space-rush can be compared to the gold rush in 1880s America.
Chair
Christine McGourty, Science Correspondent, BBC News
As science correspondent, Christine McGourty covers a diverse range of subjects from astronomy to genetics and palaeontology for a wide range of outlets from BBC Radio 4's Today programme to BBC Television's One O'Clock News. She joined the BBC as technology correspondent in 1995, after six years reporting on science and technology news for the Daily Telegraph, where she also edited a science and technology "Innovations" section.
Choose your seat on arrival.
Date: Monday 11 May
Time: 19:00
Venue: St Pancras
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
