ESP Biography



BRAM STERLING, ESP Teacher




Major: Biology

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Bram Sterling

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Not Available.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

X13342: Patrol in Splash 2019 (Nov. 23 - 24, 2019)
Shoot your friends!! Its Patrol!! Patrol is a game sponsored by the MIT Assassins’ guild. Participants are divided into a number of teams. Each player is armed with a dart gun and a small number of rubber darts. Each player also wears a colored headband denoting what team they are on and whether or not they are currently alive. The object of the game is to shoot members of the other teams without getting shot. If shot, the player can resurrect by visiting the resurrection floor. The main goal, however, is to have fun. Please bring a signed permission slip available here: https://assassin.mit.edu/web/Permission_Slip


X5560: Introduction to Interstellar Warfare in Splash! 2011 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2011)
Defense of a gravity well against a first strike countervalue attack by an interstellar known-physics adversary with a substellar mass economy Or, dodging rocks Analysis of methods that might be used in a real interstellar war, without unexplainable technologies such as faster than light travel and energy shields. Topics include relativistic bombardment, singularities, Von Neumann devices, innocuous antimatter weapons


S4671: Engineering Projects for your Kardashev 1+ civilization in Spark! 2011 (Mar. 12, 2011)
Can your civilization make effective use of all the solar energy incident on a single planet? Need some ideas for ways to use all that mass and energy? Then this class is for you. We cover many of the projects that might be attempted by a large and technological civilization within the bounds of known physics (so no hyperspace or energy shields). We mostly cover the “guns and butter”, namely methods of warfare and expansion. Topics include: Methods of relativistic space flight, Dyson spheres, Giant Lasers, Uses of Black Holes, Stellar Mining, Ramscoops and more… Subject matter will mostly consist of things covered in our Interstellar Warfare and Interstellar Empires classes, but we will hopefully have time to get into more details of the physics involved and answer more questions. This will be much the same class as last year.


X3819: Introduction to Interstellar Warfare in Splash! 2010 (Nov. 20 - 21, 2010)
Defense of a gravity well against a first strike countervalue attack by an interstellar known-physics adversary with a substellar mass economy Or, dodging rocks We analyze methods that might be used in a real interstellar war, without unexplainable technologies such as faster than light travel and energy shields. Topics include relativistic bombardment, singularities, Von Neumann devices, innocuous antimatter weapons


X3823: Introduction to Interstellar Empires in Splash! 2010 (Nov. 20 - 21, 2010)
We discuss models for exploitation of extrasolar resources, with consideration for the difficulties of interstellar communication and travel under real physics.


S3264: Engineering Projects for your Kardashev 1+ civilization in Spark! 2010 (Mar. 13, 2010)
Can your civilization make effective use of all the solar energy incident on a single planet? Need some ideas for ways to use all that mass and energy? Then this class is for you. We cover many of the projects that might be attempted by a large and technological civilization within the bounds of known physics (so no hyperspace or energy shields). We mostly cover the "guns and butter", namely methods of warfare and expansion. Topics include: Methods of relativistic space flight, Dyson spheres, Giant Lasers, Uses of Black Holes, Stellar Mining, Ramscoops and more... Subject matter will mostly consist of things covered in our Interstellar Warfare and Interstellar Empires classes, but we will hopefully have time to get into more details of the physics involved and answer more questions.


S2631: Introduction to Interstellar Warfare in Splash! 2009 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2009)
Alternate title: Defense of a gravity well against a first strike countervalue attack by an interstellar known-physics adversary with a substellar mass economy Or, dodging rocks Topics include relativistic bombardment, singularities, Von Neumann devices, and innocuous antimatter weapons. Material largely overlaps with previous years.


S2639: Introduction to Interstellar Empires in Splash! 2009 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2009)
We discuss models for interstellar empires compatible with known physics. In particular we discuss methods of dealing with the difficulties of interstellar transport and communication. Topics include: interstellar colonization, ramscoops, stellar mining, tame von Neumann machines, and ballistic dyson spheres.


S1687: Introduction to Interstellar War in Splash! 2008 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2008)
Covers topics relating to means of interstellar warfare in a known physics universe. Possible topics include lazer weapons, kinetic bombardment, gray goo, and interstellar empires. Will likely have a large overlap with last year's course.


The basics of interstellar warfare in SPLASH (2007)
Real title: Defending a gravity well against a first strike counter-value attack from an interstellar known-physics adversary with a sub-solar ...