VIP Panel & Happy Hour → Visions of Our Interstellar Future

Join us for an intimate panel with industry leaders & builders starting at 5p in SoHo during Deep Tech Week NYC 2026! The long-term goal for humanity is to become a true Type I civilization — one that can harness and responsibly manage all of the energy available on our home planet. Achieving this requires foundational systems for space proliferation: moving real intelligence and autonomous decision-making into orbit, building resilient communications and compute infrastructure that operates independently of Earth, and developing the technologies for sustainable planetary habitation. These are the practical engineering realities that will determine whether we remain a single-planet species or successfully expand into the solar system and beyond. This panel morphs into a larger happy hour starting at 6p with more friends from the space industry. Panel: Sian “Leo” Proctor, Ph.D. → Inspiration4 Astronaut & Artist Daniel Inocente → AIA - Principal & Space Architect, DIA Rob Auchincloss → Founder, Equinaut & AFOCAL Ari Eisenstat → Human Spaceflight Expert James Schalkwyk → Founder, Azora This event is part of Deep Tech Week. Create a free profile at deep-tech-week.com/register to help hosts approve your registration and build your schedule for the week.