DARPA Building Futuristic Space Exploration Group 141
coondoggie writes "What started out as an idea about how to further explore the outer reaches of space is now beginning to take more serious shape as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today issued a call for industry information on how to form such as cosmic entity. Specifically DARPA said it issued a Request For Information intended to solicit ideas and information on structure and approach, and identify parties qualified and interested in furthering what's known as the 100 Year Starship project."
Space-XKCD (Score:2, Interesting)
http://xkcd.com/893/
Re:Just paper (Score:4, Interesting)
Close, but not quite. Unlike religious dogma, which is pretty much all fiction (it has zero real evidence supporting it), space age dreams are completely feasible and possible. The problem is that it takes political will, hard work, and a lot of money, over a long time (not just one election cycle) to make them happen. That's why they'll never happen here in the USA. The populace doesn't want to pay for it (though they'll happily pay over half their tax revenues to invade other countries), the corporations don't want to invest in it (because there won't be a big ROI within 5 years), and frankly, the populace just isn't capable of it any more because there aren't enough people with technical (science/engineering) educations able to pull it off.
The USA dreaming of large space projects is a lot like Zimbabwe dreaming of large space projects. It's just ridiculous to think about it. Now China, OTOH, is a different matter. While it'll be a little while before they're ready to do anything big in space, they're getting there quickly, because they have the political will and the money, and don't mind putting in hard work unlike Americans these days.