by Paul Gilster | May 18, 2012 | Culture and Society |
Today was to have been devoted to antimatter, continuing the discussion not only of how to produce the stuff on Earth or harvest it in nearby space, but how to create the kind of propulsion system that could tap its enormous energies. But the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence released its first public announcement about the 100 Year Starship yesterday, and I want to go right to that story given the interest that grew out of last year’s starship symposium in Orlando. I’ll get back to antimatter, then, and particularly the provocative work of Ronan Keane and Wei-Ming Zhang on magnetic nozzles for propulsion systems, on Monday.
For today, though, let’s talk about pushing out into the galaxy. The Tau Zero Foundation has a particular interest in the 100 Year Starship organization because our friends at Icarus Interstellar, who are re-thinking the 1970s Project Daedalus design, were partners in the winning proposal, which was called “An Inclusive, Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth and Beyond.” I have no experience with the Dorothy Jemison Foundation or, for that matter, the third partner in the winning proposal, the Foundation for Enterprise Development, but our long relationship with Icarus Interstellar has demonstrated the expertise and commitment this band of scientists, engineers and enthusiasts brings to the task.
You’ll recall that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put up the seed funding for what was to become a non-government entity with a focus on the long term, one that is designed to promote advanced capabilities for interstellar flight over the next hundred years. The 100 Year Starship name refers, then, not to a mission that lasts a hundred years but to an entity robust enough to grow the interstellar idea through the coming century, the hope being that somewhere around the early part of the 22nd Century, our technologies may have reached the point where we can launch a mission to another star.
Mae Jemison, a former astronaut who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, puts it this way:
“Yes, it can be done. Our current technology arc is sufficient. 100 Year Starship is about building the tools we need to travel to another star system in the next hundred years. We’re embarking on a journey across time and space. If my language is dramatic, it is because this project is monumental. This is a global aspiration. And each step of the way, its progress will benefit life on earth. Our team is both invigorated and sobered by the confidence DARPA has in us to start an independent, private initiative to help make interstellar travel a reality.”
Whether you were able to get to the 100 Year Starship symposium last year in Orlando or not, be aware that a second symposium is in the works for Houston on September 13-16 of this year. The organization’s press release says that the symposium will from here on out be an annual event that will examine not only the scientific and engineering challenges of starflight but the multidisciplinary questions starflight raises in economics, philosophy and culture. You can sign up to be notified about further symposium news here. And the call for papers has just gone out as well.
I’m pleased in particular to see that the 100 Year Starship is to include a scientific research institute called The Way which will place an emphasis on long-term science and technology issues. Readers of Centauri Dreams know that long-term thinking is an obsession of mine, as the necessity of looking beyond immediate material and financial returns to the kind of future we can build through sacrifice and dedication has never been more clear. On that score, I appreciate the quote from columnist and critic John Mason Brown that’s found on the organization’s website: “The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.”
Indeed, and what a purpose it is. A starship is the ultimate in long-term thinking, a challenge to our science, our engineering, our conception of ourselves. What interstellar flight asks of us is whether we are prepared to make a commitment that reaches well beyond our own generation, to take the first steps forward on a journey whose end most, if not all of us, will never see. It is gratifying to see the idea moving forward, and the Tau Zero Foundation sends congratulations to all involved in the new organization.
Related: 100-Year Starship: Mae Jemison reaches for the stars, in BBC Future. From which this quote from Mae Jemison:
We are not saying our organization, is going to be the one that necessarily launches a mission to the stars in a next 100 years. We want to be the little piece that crystalizes out, the effort, the energy, and the capacity to make sure that the capabilities exist within in the next 100 years in case somebody wants to launch a mission.
And this:
I think that people need an adrenalin rush. Folks need something aspirational, they need to do something that is hard. That’s what ignites the imagination. I grew up during the Apollo-era, in the 1960s. When I was a little girl: I thought when I had an opportunity to go into space, I thought I would at a minimum be working on Mars, or another large planet because we were doing all of these incredible things. But we stagnated, because we didn’t continue that push. We started to get a little bit timid. Timidity does not inspire bold acts.
by Paul Gilster | Apr 24, 2012 | Culture and Society |
You’ll want to bookmark the 100 Year Starship Initiative‘s new site, which just came online. From the mission statement:
100 Year Starship will pursue national and global initiatives, and galvanize public and private leadership and grassroots support, to assure that human travel beyond our solar system and to another star can be a reality within the next century. 100 Year Starship will unreservedly dedicate itself to identifying and pushing the radical leaps in knowledge and technology needed to achieve interstellar flight while pioneering and transforming breakthrough applications to enhance the quality of life on earth. We will actively include the broadest swath of people in understanding, shaping, and implementing our mission.
And check here for news about the 2012 public symposium, which will be held in Houston from September 13-16. Quoting from that page:
This year, 2012, DARPA gave its stamp of approval to and seed funded —100 Year Starship (100YSS)—a private organization to achieve perhaps the most daring initiative ever in space exploration: human travel beyond our solar system to another star!
Meeting the challenge of 100YSS will be as or even more transformative to our global world as Sputnik or DARPA’s commercialization of the ARPA net that became the Internet. Make no mistake; this is not your grandfathers’ space program. 100YSS—An Inclusive, Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth and Beyond.”
Join us in Houston, September 13-16, 2012 at the 100YSS Public Symposium as the journey begins!
by Paul Gilster | Jan 6, 2012 | Culture and Society |
These are good times for Icarus Interstellar, which teamed with the Dorothy Jemison Foundation and the Foundation for Enterprise Development to win the 100 Year Starship proposal grant. Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut to fly into space, founded DJF in honor of her late mother. As lead on the proposal, her organization now takes on the challenge of building a program that can last 100 years, and might one day result in a starship. Centauri Dreams congratulates the winning trio, and especially Kelvin Long, Richard Obousy and Andreas Tziolas, whose labors in reworking the Project Daedalus design at Icarus Interstellar have paid off. While the award was announced to the winners at the end of last week, I held up the news here while the three parties involved coordinated their own announcement. But I see that other venues are picking up the story, as in this Sharon Weinberger piece for the BBC and now a similar article in Popular Science, so it seems time to go ahead with at least a mention on Centauri Dreams while we await the official announcement from Jemison.
by Paul Gilster | Oct 10, 2011 | Culture and Society |
I’ve got an out of town speaking gig today and am pressed for time, so this may be a good occasion for something I needed to do anyway for the record, which is to highlight the papers given by Tau Zero Foundation and Project Icarus people at the recent 100 Year Starship Symposium. Most of the following were delivered as individual talks, although some were presented in panels. If you’re interested in reading the papers each author prepared for the conference, many (but not all, evidently) are to be published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. I’ll deliver publishing details when they become available.
Here are the presentations of those associated with Tau Zero:
- E. Davis, “Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps”
- K. Denning, “Inertia of Past Futures” (anthropology)
- P. Gilster, “The Interstellar Vision: Principles and Practice”
- G. Landis, “Plasma Shield for an Interstellar Vehicle”
- C. Maccone, “Sun Focus Comes First, Interstellar Comes Second (Mission concept)”
- J. Maclay, “Role of the Quantum Vacuum in Space Travel”
- G. Matloff, “Light Sailing to the Stars”
- M. Millis, “Space Drive Physics, Intro and Next Steps”
- M. Millis, “Cockpit Considerations for Inertial Affect and FTL Propulsion”
- R. Noble, “Small Body Exploration Technologies as Precursors for Interstellar Robotics”
- S. White, “Warp Field Mechanics 101”
You may also be interested in Slate‘s take on the Symposium, which focuses on some of the breakthrough propulsion concepts at the far edge of the speculative frontier. The Smithsonian’s blog also carried an update about the conference, while MSNBC offered up a look at possible starship destinations, a major interest as we continue to lack planetary data for nearby stars. Finally, I loved Gregory Benford’s article describing the 100 Year Starship Symposium: The First Hard Science Fiction Convention.
Papers and presentations from the Icarus team in Orlando were plentiful indeed:
- J. Benford, “Recent Developments in Interstellar Beam-Driven Sails”
- B. Cress, “Icarus Interstellar’s New Icarus Institute for Interstellar Sciences”
- A. Crowl, J. Hunt, “How an Embryo Space Colonization (ESC) Mission Solves the Time-Distance Problem”
- J.R. French, “A Review of the Daedalus Main Propulsion System”
- R. Freeland, “Fission-Fusion Hybrid Fuel for Interstellar Propulsion”
- P. Galea, “Machine Learning and the Starship: A Match Made in Heaven”
- A. Hale, “Exoplanet Studies for Potential Icarus Destination Stars”
- A. Hein, “Technology, Society and Politics in the Next 100-300 Years: Implications for Interstellar Flight”
- A. Hein, K. Long, “Exploratory Research for an Interstellar Mission: Technology Readiness, Stakeholds and Research Sustainability”
- R. Obousy, “A Review of Interstellar Starship Designs”
- R. Obousy, “A 21st Century Interstellar Starship Study”
- M. Stanic, “Fusion Propulsion Comparison”
- R. Swinney, “Initial Considerations in Exploring the Interstellar Roadmap”
- R. Swinney, “Navigational and Guidance Requirements of an Interstellar Spacecraft”
- A. Tziolas, “Long Term Computing”
- A. Tziolas, ” Starflight Academy: Education in Interstellar Engineering”
Also, be aware that Ian O’Neill is continuing his coverage of the Icarus study, the latest article being a look at sex in space that circles around to starship design. Icarus team member Tiffany Frierson gives us her personal perspective on the conference (and it was a pleasure to meet Tiffany, who was often to be found circulating near the Icarus and Tau Zero tables snapping photos). Athena Andreadis presents an insightful look at the conception and preconceptions of the conference in If They Come, It Might Get Built. Finally, Centauri Dreams contributor and Astronomy Now editor Keith Cooper offers up his own take on starship design and fusion propulsion in an excellent essay that delivers helpful background and segues into the Icarus team’s thoughts on fusion’s future between the stars.
by Paul Gilster | Sep 30, 2011 | Culture and Society |
Arrived yesterday afternoon at the Orlando Hilton for the 100 Year Starship Symposium. I’ll try to get updates out on my Twitter feed @centauri_dreams when possible. The WiFi here has been mostly good but it did go down this morning for a time, so bear with me.
