DARPA Chooses Leader For 100-Year Starship Project 180
Hugh Pickens writes "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical officer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.' Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled 'An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.'"
My Awesome Bio (Score:4, Informative)
Political Correctness News? (Score:2)
Out of the Hundreds of Thousands, if not Millions, of qualified candidates, from all races, men and women, is it mere coincidence that they choose a black female to lead this program?
The news-worthiness of the entire article boils down to Political Correctness
The word I'm thinking of is: (Score:2)
Fool. Yeah, that about sums you up, AC.
I have the advantage of having met Jemison, albeit only talking to her for a few minutes.
Race wasn't a factor. She could be yellow with purple polka dots and still be highly qualified for anything.
Extremely bright gal.
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"Race wasn't a factor."
Sure. But then, why somebody feel necessary to mention it?
Do you know how can we know ours is not an eye-color hating society? Because nobody mentions the eye color of somebody when stablishing that person's achievements. And we don't do it because nobody gives a damn.
We can't have a truly egalitarian society till the same happens with the skin color too.
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The guy is right. Why must they mention her race twice? Race wouldn't even have crossed the minds of those of us not familiar with the person, had it not been highlighted. Forget loud-mouthed bigots; this is true racism. For these people, race is considered relevant in everything as a matter of course, as long as the person of interest is a minority.
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No, actually the guy is a racist moron. No where is that OP lamenting the fact that her race had to be pointed out. He's saying the reason the manned space program went to hell was because of "diversity" which is dog whistle language for "affirmative action". We say "the first man in space, the first Israeli in space, etc; so what's wrong with pointing out that this was the first black female to go in to space?
I see no evidence of it of the above post. It's probably meant as sarcasm, which is often misinterpreted here.
The point is, race is not valid in this case : expertise is.
So the people who say : 'Look : we have a first African American astronaut ' , are making a distinction based on race, which is also racism.
A real problem would be, if they start selecting people on the basis of race ( quota ) , instead of expertise . I'm not saying that's what happened here, but it does happen in other places. This is
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Imagine if we head towards a sector with aliens who have been in conflict with our project leader for millennia?
That's why we do background checks. It catches most of these intragalactic scandals before they start!
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that comparison is insulting to sewers. ;)
Stormfront is a Mos Eisley Cantina of the Internet (wretched hive of scum and villainy)
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Agreed on both counts:
* I don't know about Jemison in particular either.
* Yeah, AA makes less sense in such a small elite group. The sample size is small enough that a low percentage of blacks might not mean much. Making sure X percent of astronauts are black won't make much of a difference in a population of millions. Also, one less-qualified person getting in would have more of an impact.
Re:My Awesome Bio (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea as to exactly how qualified Jemison is. She may fit the bill on her own merits.
However, it is true that the foundation of Affirmative Action is the suspension of hiring standards in order to fill racial quotas for ethnic groups with lower mean qualifications, especially IQ. It cannot work any other way if it is to be implemented across the board in a society. If AA is enacted, it follows that most (not all) black people in highly qualified positions did not get there solely because of merit. It also follows that organizations like NASA that exist to pioneer very difficult things will be adversely impacted by AA.
Jesus Christ. OK, sure, the fact that she added some variety to the space program after a parade of white men in the 1960s and 1970s undoubtedly helped her career and opened some doors. But read her bio on Wikipedia. She entered Stanford at 16 and majored in chemical engineering, she has an MD from Cornell, she worked in the Peace Corps, she was an astronaut, she was a professor at Dartmouth for seven years, now she's hired by DARPA... yeah, sure, maybe you could get one or two lucky breaks as a diversity hire. But you don't have a career like that without being the smartest kid in your class and working amazingly hard. You don't have a career like that by being below average, you don't have a career like that just by being good, you have a career like that by being better than 99% of everyone else out there, and I guarantee this woman didn't bring down the average IQ of the astronaut program.
To do all of those things and to have some bigoted, asshole internet troll like you say that maybe she's not really qualified, and to suggest that perhaps she just got a pass because she's a black woman... well, what the hell have you ever accomplished with your life, other than to write perhaps the single most racist, sexist comment I've ever seen on Slashdot? Although perhaps you could argue that this is an accomplishment, in a perverse sort of a way. If nothing else, it's eye-opening about just how far we all have to go. Maybe we've got black astronauts and a black president, but we're still a damn long way from the color-blind Star Trek universe that inspired Jemison to become an astronaut in the first place.
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This should have been done a long time ago (Score:1)
Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit.
The private sector STILL can't get a man into space. If it had been left to the private sector "from day one", the US would never have had anyone try, because the private sector never would have put forth the R&D money to get anything done.
Scaling back NASA is a result of small-minded fools from the right wing who scream "cut cut cut everything we like yeah military!!!" They want to kill PBS, they want to kill NASA, they call numerous things "government waste", but they never want to admit that the biggest waste of government money is sending the US military everywhere to be the world's policeman, wasting $500 billion a year to invade countries, set up military bases, and bomb the fuck out of places where nobody wants us.
PBS gets $422 million currently. That is 0.084 PERCENT of what we waste on the military.
NASA's annual budget is only $19 billion in 2011. And for that you get all this stuff that you fucking take for granted [thesun.co.uk].
We should say fuck the military, stop buying them new toys, and spend the money on NASA instead. We'd be to Mars in 5 years if we budgeted it.
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Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Informative)
The waste isn't necessarily the military.
It's General Dynamics and Fluor and countless other DOD contractors. My time in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine Infantryman was beyond understandably austere. Larger bases has clean flush toilets, clean showers every day, fresh cooked food every day including pop (soda) and ice cream. They had Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway, Green Beans coffee, movie theaters, dance night... Reliable communication back home. Mail delivery every day. Gyms. And electricity. We shat in bags and burned it. We were able to shower at most once a week. Our Staff NCO's had to pay out of their own pocket to get a water pump that worked. We usually lacked air conditioning or heat in our bunks...
All that we lacked is understandable and doesn't bother me at all. What bothered me was that the POG's had it, and bitched if they lost it like it was their right to have it while we ate stuff I wouldn't feed to my dogs.
When it was suggested by a Marine General in charge of such things that they cut back on these MWR (Morale, Welfare, Recreation) activities in Stars and Stripes, there was outlandish backlash from POG's (Person Other than Grunt) about how it would affect them and how they needed these services. Nevermind that he wanted to cut them back to divert the funding for these activities to us that were farther deployed and had practically none of that.
Virtually all of these services are provided by civilian DOD contractors. I think the largest compound in Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan was the Fluor compound.
While there IS waste in military spending, it dwarfs compared to what is spent on unnecessary contractors. Hell, they built a golf course in Baghdad for the Generals to play golf!
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I think most people who complain about military waste are (should be) referring to the horrendous waste spent on no-bid contractors. At least, I hope they are aware of how bad it has become.
Most of the people I know and associate with are under the impression that almost any push for military action is 50% to accomplish some strategic goal and 50% to funnel tax payer money to campaign contributors and/or companies that are directly or indirectly connected with some politician. Cheney-Haliburton for exampl
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WTF, don't talk down to your soldiers like that.
WTF indeed... I thought Marines didn't appreciate being referred to as "soldiers" like that.
Further, GP has a point. If Scarred Intellect didn't like USMC's disparity of treatment, he should have chosen a more equitable or all-POG branch.
Finally, every American's comment in this thread is (currently) protected by the first amendment, including those that offend your bullshit self-righteousness. If you want to order people how they can and cannot speak or write, you're in the wrong fucking place, asshole.
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Scaling back NASA is a result of small-minded fools from the right wing
Except that the people who actually scaled back NASA were left-wingers who wanted to give the money to people who produce nothing but more children.
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Eh? Democrats eviscerated NASA almost 40 years ago.
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> The private sector STILL can't get a man into space.
Perhaps you mean "can't get a man into orbit"? Suborbital flights above the altitude defined as the edge of space have happened.
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The private sector STILL can't get a man into space.
They actually have several times with SpaceShipOne. I know you mean in Earth orbit now. In a few years, you'll mean beyond Earth orbit. Then it'll mean landing on the Moon. Then some time after that, beyond cislunar space. Then it'll be beyond the asteroid belt. Then it'll be beyond the orbit of Neptune, another star system, the local galactic spiral, whatever.
I don't know what the fascination is with telling us somewhat difficult things can't be done, but it has to be one of the more futile pursuits eve
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2011 military budget, actually $683 Billion. I took off personnel ($154 billion) and rounded down to the nearest $100 billion since SOME maintenance of bases, equipment, and so on would be necessary. The rest? Oh yeah, first we WASTE money bombing someone back to the stone age, then we WASTE more money putting a military base in their country and WASTE more money sending "foreign aid" to rebuild the place we just WASTED money bombing the shit out of.
Welfare, medicare, SS, Education $2.7 Trillion - but unlik
Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
but unlike the military that actually cycles right back into the economy
Where exactly does military spending go, if not right back into the economy?
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Wasted resources.
Bombing someone = wasted resources.
Fired bullets = wasted resources.
Crashed planes, fuel, all the rest = wasted resources we're not going to get back.
Military spending is almost ALL wasted resources. You think 3500 Tomahawk missiles, a cost ot $2.6 Billion, is anything but wasted resources? And that's JUST the Tomahawks, not all the bombs and missiles (most of which cost significantly more).
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Except that people (presumably Americans) get *paid* to make (from mining the ore to writing the software) those Tomahawks. That money goes into the economy.
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Except that people (presumably Americans) get *paid* to make (from mining the ore to writing the software) those Tomahawks. That money goes into the economy.
Except that the "pay", labor, is an infinitesimal fraction of the "cost" of those Tomahawks. And the material resources placed into them are destroyed, rarely recovered. Just as the lives that they take are unrecoverable, and the things that they are used to destroy - which usually amounts to a village, house, or the water supply for the immediate regio
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Precision guided weapons were designed for the sole purpose of not having to bomb villages, houses and water supplies.
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And we've seen how often they actually worked as designed.
And how often the retarded "blow everything up" Rambo fucktards of the US military just targeted villages, houses, and water supplies anyways.
Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you, an asshole?
Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [wikipedia.org]
It's not the cost of a missile. It's the opportunity cost of a missile. As well as the cost of human life. Do you have any idea how many civilians have been killed by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last ten years?
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"Precision guided weapons were designed for the sole purpose of not having to bomb villages, houses and water supplies."
May I suggest a third option? What about trying not bomb them -at all?
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we would be less likely to launch strikes on defenseless countries.
That "defenseless country" needs, like all of us, to know who it's getting in bed with before it gets in bed with them.
better accomplished with a couple dozen SEALs on helicopters.
But we're all so terrified of American casualties!! (Oh my, I think I'm going to faint.. [girlish swoon])
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Broken window fallacy.
Of course, the other fallacy is stating that killing people has no value. Somebody wanted those people dead, and the weapons were made and used to do so, so they must have been worth their cost.
The problem is... who the fuck values killing people in third world shitholes so highly, and why are they calling the shots for our military instead of the American people?
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who the fuck values killing people in third world shitholes
People who are pissed of at what the shithole's guests do. (Remember that "we" don't just wake up each morning and decide to bomb some random shithole. Otherwise, large swaths of China, India and Africa would be depopulated by now.)
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"Except that people (presumably Americans) get *paid* to make (from mining the ore to writing the software) those Tomahawks. That money goes into the economy."
Yes, but it doesn't create wealth, which is what matters.
Again, the broken window falacy in action.
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"Where exactly does military spending go, if not right back into the economy?"
Broken window fallacy.
If it were so simple we could end all the world's economic problems today: just pay half the population for digging holes and the other half to cover them.
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"You don't earn a single penny bombing out places in Afghanistan.
They don't even have oil."
But they do have rare earths. You didn't really believe they were doing it for free, do you?
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2936 [usgs.gov]
Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Do we need to bomb Iraq back to the stone age in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to invade Libya in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to have soldiers in over 1000 military bases in countries around the world, most of who don't want us there, to defend Alaska, Hawaii, and the continental US from invasion?
No. That's what I mean by WASTE. The military, to fulfill its actual, Constitutionally mandated role of protecting the borders of the US against actual enemies, needs less than 10% of the toys they have WASTED taxpayer money on since WW2.
Re:This should have been done a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
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so very true. Government agencies can train people with specialities that private industry would look at as wasteful - but thats because private industries' involvement ends at their front door. There are some things you /cannot/ accomplish alone. Humans are communal. Government is a given.
Privatize-everything-people are either stupid, or control freaks - but they are not as efficient as they want to think in accomplishing greatness. It takes a whole /people/ to do that - Not any one company.
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Government agencies can waste money because they have a captive revenue stream.
FTFY. The number one reason that private industry would look at a government action as wasteful is because the government action is wasteful.
Privatize-everything-people are either stupid, or control freaks
"Stupid" is possible. Relinquishing control as would be done with privatization is not the symptom of a control freak. So "control freak" is not possible.
but they are not as efficient as they want to think in accomplishing greatness. It takes a whole /people/ to do that - Not any one company.
Pardon me for rolling my eyes at this nonsense. But the real answer here is several competing businesses. Not "any one company" nor a "whole /people/".
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The private sector does stuff for money. The only "Space" thing with a ROI is satellites.
Currently. Once things change, then statements like this become false.
The moon and probes would never have happened.
More accurately, they wouldn't have happened until private industry got to the point where they're feasible on modest budgets.
Americans have this strange mind set where they think everything should be done by "not the government", even stuff like this where the government is the ONLY realistic solution.
A "realistic solution" without a problem.
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How do you get to that point? Who pays for basic research with no immediate gain but which may, eventually, lead us to a point where private entities see revenue-making opportunities and jump in?
I can think of two kinds just off the top of my head: non-profits and business labs. For example, the Keck Observatory is a state of the art, non-profit observatory. And there are numerous famous examples of business-oriented labs that produced a lot of research without immediate gain.
It's also worth noting that research which was intended to produce immediate gain often produces research with gain over longer time frames.
Looking past these abstractions to the specific case of development of space and
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I always wonder if the people who put forward that idea have actually worked in research before. I have been on both sides (public and private) and have generally found th
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I've heard arguments that the space program should have never been put in the hands of government in the first place. If it had been left to the private-sector from day one, space travel would be the norm by now because of the competitive aspect of the private sector and the ability to raises more capital than going the bureaucratic route.
And what, exactly, has prevented the private sector from putting a man in space the last 50-60 years?
My guess is, a lack of government subsidies.
What can't she do? (Score:1)
Seriously. This woman reads like "Also she built a time machine, killed Hitler, and fought back the entire Napoleonic army from Moscow." I know a lot of smart people make me feel stupid. This woman just makes me feel lazy.
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You and me both, AC. And I've met Jemison.
Believe me, compared to her I feel like a bumbling moron and an utter layabout.
And she topped it off by being the cutest person in the room.
For those wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the episode where the Enterprise finds Riker's transporter-accident created duplicate that was abandoned on a planet several years earlier. The new Riker, dubbed Thomas, eventually goes on to leave the ship before one day ending up at DS9 where he steals the Defiant to help the Maquis and is captured/imprisoned by Cardassians. Fun fact: TNG writers briefly considered killing Riker Classic in the episode to have Riker II take his place in the show, but at a lower rank.
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Thanks for the information. I was wondering why the submitter included a link to that shitty Peace Corpse page instead of one to Memory Alpha.
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Ha, watched the DS9 episode on Netflix just yesterday.
The private sector won't wait for 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
The private sector will not finance anything like this. They want quick, guaranteed profits. This is why governments should pioneer space travel: the private sector will never go further than LEO unless they are sure it's profitable.
Re:The private sector won't wait for 100 years (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The private sector won't wait for 100 years (Score:4, Informative)
So (overwhelming technical hurdles aside) the business case (especially for investors on earth) is extremely hard to imagine. Sure, corporations can outlive humans, so investors today can be paid in the hopes of returns in the future. But there is no corporation, no government, NOTHING manmade that has any creditworthiness over that time period.
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Hmm, my calculations show ~30400 years as seen from Earth, but only 20 years foe the crew.
Of course, noone is interested in going to the center of the Galaxy. I think we'd settle for Alpha Centauri first. 3.5 years for the crew, 6 years from our PoV on Earth.
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The point of the operation, I think, is to consider the changes required for human society to implement plans requiring decades/centuries/millenia to complete.
Right now, we have a hard time holding our focus for one Congressional Election cycle, much less a decade. Much less a century.
So some fundamental changes will have to go down to even make an interstellar trip possible to plan, much less implement.
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You need to decelerate halfway. 20 years to the core is if you go full throttle all the way and don't brake.
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Nope. ten years subjective to accelerate 15,000 light years, another ten to decelerate the other 15,000 light years.
And yes, I did recheck my math. 10.0234 years acceleration and the same deceleration, rounded to 10 for lack of signifcant digits in the distance....
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They will go for profit. It is already profitable, which is why Branson, Allen, etc are all trying to get in on the ground floor. The cost of shipping a 'thing' to orbit is astronomically high. Lower the costs and you have a guaranteed profit.
IMO, this project is a waste of time and money. We have space around our own star that we have not figured out how to exploit. I would much rather see us try to build automatic mining/extraction probes for asteroids or recyclers to clean up some of the junk i
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You sir, are apparently unfamiliar with the newly discovered element unobtanium.
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Think about the profits possible to the first company that builds an interstellar ship...
it will likely be the culmination of thousands of other advancements along the way, the kind that the private sector is very good at making
What profits? It's going to go into space and never come back.
Exploration of near space wasn't "profitable" at the time. Not a dime of "profit" was made by any company in going to the moon.
All the "Profits" from space exploration have been from companies being subsidized far beyond 1
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I'm having trouble thinking of any such profits. I mean, seriously, what's the business model? Put a few trillion dollars into space and wave goodbye, hoping that it'll by some miracle come back with discoveries that'll make your great-great-great-great grandchildren rich?
There are much safer investments to make if you're only caring about getting a return generations after you're dead. Compound interest, after all, is
That is pretty much nuts (Score:5, Interesting)
$500,000 isn't exactly a lot of money by U.S. government standards, but for a country that currently can't even get to people in to LEO spending money on interstellar space travel is completely nuts.
So, how about you get to Mars first, maybe then we can talk.
There is pretty much zero chance anyone in the private sector is going to sink any money in to interstellar space travel unless there is a juicy cost plus government contract funding it. If you dangle one of those Lockheed and Boeing will be on it in a heart beat, especially if the contract runs for a 100 years before they have to deliver anything.
This "foundation" will just be used by the DARPA haters in Congress, mostly Republicans and Tea Partiers, as further evidence of how far DARPA and the Obama administration has gone off the rails, and after reading this I can see their point.
DARPA does some amazing things but they need to exert a little self restraint and focus on things that will payoff in less than a millenium. It will be unfortunate if the good R&D DARPA does gets cuts because they seem to have gone completely nuts on this. The U.S. doesn't do enough R&D as it is.
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Agree.. to put in perspective, you can't even buy a house in San Diego for $500,000.
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Better PR: slashing a few failing projects (of which DARPA has many).
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Interstellar Human travel is the only way to ensure survival of the human race beyond any one single cataclysmic event.
A journey has to have a destination; there is only pie-in-the-sky hand waving crap in interstellar travel.
Starship Project (Score:2)
Well, this project may not build a colony on another world... but it might just build a city on rock 'n' roll!
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Actually no Mars is the only rational place to put a colony in the foreseeable future. At least it has some water, some CO2 for greenhouses, a barely tolerable temperature and some atmosphere. As Mars is a desert compared to Earth, the moon is a vast desert by comparison to Mars.
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There is pretty much zero chance anyone in the private sector is going to sink any money in to interstellar space travel
There's a fair amount of private sector money flowing into space travel now (not specifically interstellar, but have you to walk before you can run). Bigelow Aerospace [bigelowaerospace.com] in Las Vegas is one example (although they've had some cutbacks recently thanks to what Bigelow refers to as the "Obama recession").
It would be hard to argue that working towards private space flight/exploration won't have a vast effect on interstellar study. It would be equally hard to argue that focusing on interstellar travel (one of many
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" It would be equally hard to argue that focusing on interstellar travel (one of many, many things DARPA is doing right now) won't have vast"
Actualluy it would be EXTREMELY easy to argue that focusing on interstellar travel wont have vast, ongoing short-term effects on space flight.
It will most probably be extremely counterproductive.
In the current hyper critical budget environment in D.C. this will just be a dart board for all the politicians who want to kill off science and R&D funding.
Re:That is pretty much nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, $.5M is a lot of money, but... (Score:5, Informative)
... damn, you should have gone to the symposium. These people were not nuts - they were capable engineers and sociologists and educators and authors and astronauts, who well understood the enormity of the challenge (which does in fact edge into astronomic scale).
There were reviews of existing technologies, reports on current research, proposals ranging from modest to blue-sky, discussion about the science that would have to be done. Social engineering was also prominent - any future colony would be a microcosm of human society after all.
Without the Dreamers, you wouldn't have the Planners. It was awe-inspiring to be among the Dreamers for a couple of days, and I begrudge not one dime of the money DARPA spent on it.
Right you are.
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Yeah, because Mars rocks will totally pay dividends that engineering won't.
Maybe you need to exert a little not whining to your betters about what they should and shouldn't be doing.
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DARPA does some amazing things but they need to exert a little self restraint and focus on things that will payoff in less than a millenium.
You don't feel the research and development would create anything useful in the short term? The space program of the 60's didn't achieve anything for us in the last 30 years?
Let's just keep focusing on our own short-term gain. That seems to be working out well.
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The moon program acheived its goals in 10 years. Politicians could rationalize the expenditure especially in the context of the cold war and the space race. Getting to the Moon was trivial compared to this. Von Braun was already planning for it in the 40's. Colonizing Mars is trivial comparted to this. When we successfully colonize Mars, come back and we will talk. This is seriously out of sequence on what we need to be doing in space exploration right now.
It will be a challenge to land on a planet and
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"what was the ROI motivation of the moon program in the 60s?"
Are you kidding?
1) For the contractors: obviously, the contracts.
2) For those signing the bills (the politicians): the bribes from the contractors and the warm feeling for the American citizenship "we are the good ones, we are in a crusade and we are going to win it" that would insure the statu quo both for the contractors and the politicians.
Do you imagine the catastrophe if the Americans would even hinted that some thing might be learnt from the
Star Dancer (Score:2)
"Jemison ... is a professionally trained dancer".
Spider Robinson must be thrilled.
Don't Blame Me! (Score:2)
I voted for George Clinton! [wikipedia.org]
Getting Real About Capitalism (Score:2)
But no one with wealth wants that to happen even though just about everyone who has high incomes would want it to happen.
So, due to political economic considerations, capitalism cannot be made to work.
This is not to say that socialism can be made to work, since in order to do so it would require that the
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Charles Murray of the CATO Institute later wrote a book on an idea related to the citizen's dividend [aei.org].
Interstellar garbage skow (Score:2)
Funding... (Score:2)
Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort
"All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for."
G.
Money Awarded to a Track Chair and Organizer? (Score:4, Informative)
Hopefully the money is put to good use, as it looks like she partnered with Icarus, who are at least motivated and active.
intersteller = nukes = governments (Score:2)
1. Interstellar missions require thousands of nuclear bombs.
2. Governments are the only ones how have nuclear bombs.
3. Governments are required for interstellar missions.
Until we rewrite the laws of physics the only practical interstellar propulsion is going to be Freeman Dyson's Orion pulsed nuke system. IOW interstellar travel is all about nuclear bombs.
Here are the steps:
1. Start a small permanent lunar base (Moonbase Alpha) whose immediate goal is to set up mining/smelting operations while seeing if lon
African-American (Score:3)
Slightly off-topic, but since TFS mentions it, am I the only one that finds the designation "African-American" stupid? I have heard of Native Americans, yes. But no "European-Americans", or "Caucasian-Americans". And somehow, Asians are just Asians.
This for a point: http://snarkyintuition.blogspot.com/2011/11/p-p-p-pass-mic-yo.html [blogspot.com]
It used to be simple, now I have no idea what the frak is going on.
Do we want it? (Score:2)
Has anyone thought about what would happen if we seeded an extremely profitable business to outer space for private companies to suck the life out of? The government is paying for the groundwork and they're paying to get people interested, why are they even doing that in
Missed Opportunity (Score:2)
"Jemison Starship" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Re: (Score:2)
The other elephant: collision. If we get any significant fraction of c, how are we going to know when a rock the size of a marble is in our path? At that velocity, it's bye-bye charlie when it hits you.
Re: (Score:2)
I do believe I just heard something go " WHOOOOOSH! ".