14 DAY TRIAL // The American space agency has a new and simple plan – to become capable of flying among the stars by 2100. Working together with a Pentagon agency, NASA has already began the study phase for the 100-Year Starship project.
Flying to other stars is not a very easy task, and there are monumental challenges to be surpassed before this becomes possible. This is why NASA and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have already begun to take in interest in what it would take to get there.
For all intents and purposes, the project is intended to be the next step in space exploration. DARPA is well familiarized with such plans, as some of its staff already include science-fiction writers and philosophers, whose job is to think about what crazy thing could actually be invented.
Experts with the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) have also joined in on the 1-million study, which has already been set in motion. One of the primary objectives that experts will seek to achieve with this research is determine which business model would make the project most successful.
Based on this business model, experts will then plan how to reach, develop and mature the technologies necessary for allowing long-term space travel. All the innovations would need to be up and running by 2100, according to the agency, Space reports.
“The year-long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed,” DARPA announces.
“Looking at history, most significant exploration, like crossing oceans or continents for the first time, was sponsored by patrons or groups outside of government,” adds the director of the agency's Tactical Technology Office, Dave Nevland.
Completing a starship by 2100 would require steady investment from a wide variety of sources without the certainty that the money will be returned within this life time.
Experts therefore need to find a way of extracting this project "out of the government, and make sure it is an energized and self-sustaining enterprise,” that can also be supported by the private sector.
“The meeting and the DARPA funding is about creating an organization that could last for 100-years, rather than about the technological and sociological advancements necessary to eventually create starships,” says former NASA scientist Marc Millis.
“In fact, the funding is not allowed to be spent on any research or educational activities related to interstellar flight, but instead can only be used to define that organization,” he adds.
“As much as I really like the name, '100-year starship,' this study should instead be called the '100-year organization study,” adds the expert, who is a worldwide leading authority on breakthrough propulsion physics concepts.