Nerds! Darpa Wants Your Advice on Interstellar Flight

"Remember how you read those issues of Silver Surfer from
the 60s and reflected long and hard about the possibility of
pacifism when all an intergalactic traveler encounters is
warlike aliens? The mad scientists at Darpa want you to put
those musings to advise its most cosmic project yet.

Darpa recently launched a program called the 100 Year
Starship, which is exactly what it sounds like: an effort to
achieve interstellar flight by the year 2111. This being Darpa,
they’re dead serious. And they also recognize that 2011-era
technology probably isn’t good enough to forecast the state
of the art over the next 100 years."

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...tellar-flight/

On 16/06/2011 12:45 PM, wrote:
"Remember how you read those issues of Silver Surfer from
the 60s and reflected long and hard about the possibility of
pacifism when all an intergalactic traveler encounters is
warlike aliens? The mad scientists at Darpa want you to put
those musings to advise its most cosmic project yet.

Darpa recently launched a program called the 100 Year
Starship, which is exactly what it sounds like: an effort to
achieve interstellar flight by the year 2111. This being Darpa,
they’re dead serious. And they also recognize that 2011-era
technology probably isn’t good enough to forecast the state
of the art over the next 100 years."

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...tellar-flight/

Why would it take 100 years to design and build an interstellar
spacecraft? It depends on how fast you want to travel (and then,
perhaps, stop at the destination). If you only want to travel at 0.1%
of Light, it should be easy enough, but take 430 years to get to
Centauri. So, what mission time-line are the thinking of?

In article . com,
Alan Erskine wrote:

On 16/06/2011 12:45 PM, wrote:
"Remember how you read those issues of Silver Surfer from
the 60s and reflected long and hard about the possibility of
pacifism when all an intergalactic traveler encounters is
warlike aliens? The mad scientists at Darpa want you to put
those musings to advise its most cosmic project yet.

Darpa recently launched a program called the 100 Year
Starship, which is exactly what it sounds like: an effort to
achieve interstellar flight by the year 2111. This being Darpa,
they¹re dead serious. And they also recognize that 2011-era
technology probably isn¹t good enough to forecast the state
of the art over the next 100 years."

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...-advice-on-int
erstellar-flight/

Why would it take 100 years to design and build an interstellar
spacecraft? It depends on how fast you want to travel (and then,
perhaps, stop at the destination). If you only want to travel at 0.1%
of Light, it should be easy enough, but take 430 years to get to
Centauri. So, what mission time-line are the thinking of?

Maybe it will take that long to reverse engineer the Roswell (and other)
craft. ;)

On 6/16/2011 12:47 PM, Orval Fairbairn wrote:

Maybe it will take that long to reverse engineer the Roswell (and other)
craft. ;)

Not to mention setting up the lunar dilithium crystal mines. ;-)
If all they want to do is launch something out to the stars, we've
already done that four times with Pioneer 11/12, and Voyager 1/2.
But this gives me the perfect opportunity to present my "Vegative
Starship" concept to them:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...2dbce274268532

"I hereby nominate my idea- The "Vegetative Starship": a truly wonderful
device that puts starflight within our reach even today - as any good
medieval herbalist knows, each species of plant has a affinity for a
certain star, whose influence draws its sprout forth from the soil
after it germinates...this is a small, but very real, force, which
like an ion engine can generate a great deal of velocity over a period
of time - the Vegetative Starship resembles one of the greenhouse domes
off of the "Valley Forge" of "Silent Running" fame. It is assembled in
GEO, and its crew of carefully selected award-winning
gardener/scientists put onboard...then the planting of the correct type
of plant for the target star ensues - the domed top section of the ship
is aimed toward the destination, and the seeds begin to feel the
influence of the distant target sun - but as they try to draw themselves
toward it with their sprouting, their roots are locked squarely into a
artificial soil matrix screen, and they begin to slowly pull the whole
ship along with themselves as they are drawn starward - bit by bit the
speed increases as the plants continue to grow (if in a somewhat stunted
state, due to the acceleration of their garden environment) and after
two or three generations have been planted, the ship is moving at a good
fraction of lightspeed - now the plants are harvested for the last time,
and another species sown, which has an affinity toward a star at the
antipodes of the celestial sphere, thereby braking the starship's
velocity and allowing it to enter orbit around it's destination...other
species of plants can be planted in small amounts to serve as a
maneuvering system for the ship changing its attitude and modifying
its trajectory as they are moved around in its interior and are
attracted to their kindred stars.
But one of the real advantages of this type of starship is that it's
self homing; pick the correct species of plant, kick back, and let
mother nature do all the work...no fuss, no muss...and no annoying,
almost weekly, imminent breach of the matter/antimatter containment
field! ...and, with a little forethought and careful choice of
destination stars, edible species of plant can be used, and sustain the
crew with their harvesting and oxygen producing ability. "Ad Astra Per
Asparagus" may well be the motto of these harvesters of the heavens;
these gardeners of the galaxies; these sower's to the stars!
But we must ask ourselves...is there anything wrong with this idea? Is
it perhaps unworkable? I need only point out one staggering argument in
its favor- I mean of course - that Great Enigma; That Mysterious
Manuscript; That WONDER Of WONDERS...THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT! LOOK AT
THIS, YOU DOUBTING SWINE!!!!!!!!!*
http://www.crystalinks.com/voynich.html
An entire book of star charts, written in a language no one has ever
been able to decipher, with loads of pictures of plants no one has ever
seen on Earth....and, as a special bonus, and incentive to make you
look at the site above...PICTURES OF NAKED LADIES ALSO!
Naked Ladies that were probably being lusted after by some priapic
aliens in a Vegetative Starship when they dropped by our Solar System
round about 1400 or so, sick and tired of having eaten Sunflower Seeds
for twenty odd years (One of the few plants that IS recognizable in the
manuscript is the Sunflower; now revealed to be a Triffid-like
contaminant upon our blessed Earth, and most aptly named; for this was
the fuel that brought these adventurous Botonauts to our planet - you
will note that there is no mention of the Sunflower plant in the
Holy-Bible-Book, sure proof that it didn't exist on Earth until it was
brought here!)- they got drunk, got laid, and lost one of their tech
manuals, as they puked their hung over way back into the sky....
ready to eat grass for the next twenty years, on their way to the star
Aldebaran...in Taurus the Bull. "

* I may take that part out of the DARPA submission.

Pat

It's not just about how you build a starship.

You need to read what DARPA and NASA Ames have put out. A starship
project would cost (using the midrange estimate from the Icarus group)
some $20T. You can't simply treat that as another engineering project:
no agency in the world can raise that kind of money for a space
program. DARPA asks how you could create an organization which, over
the notional century-long period, could evolve the technology,
society, and economics needed to create an interstellar spacefaring
civilization. In other words, how do we encourage a long-term effort
whose scope needs to be global?

Matt Bille
www.mattwriter.com

On 6/18/2011 3:23 PM, Matt wrote:
It's not just about how you build a starship.

You need to read what DARPA and NASA Ames have put out. A starship
project would cost (using the midrange estimate from the Icarus group)
some $20T. You can't simply treat that as another engineering project:
no agency in the world can raise that kind of money for a space
program. DARPA asks how you could create an organization which, over
the notional century-long period, could evolve the technology,
society, and economics needed to create an interstellar spacefaring
civilization. In other words, how do we encourage a long-term effort
whose scope needs to be global?


I think DARPA trying to work out something a hundred years in the future
is about as futile as trying to predict what our technology would be
today back in 1911.
Here's what spaceflight in the future was thought to look like in
1914-1918: http://modcult.org/image/1392 ...when giant airplanes that
could fly at 120 mph set out for the planets.

Pat

The largest space organization in the world today has a budget of
$18B, out of which only a few billion is available for exploration. A
global effort creates all kinds of headaches and will require some
really innovative thinking. Certainly no current international
organization is up this challenge. But that's DARPA's point in
specifying it wants organizational and political and financial, not
just technical, solutions: we can't just solve the workings of a
Bussard ramjet or whatever. Solving the riddle of how to get
governments, corporations, and NGOs on board a century-long effort to
transform us into an interstellar civilization will be the most
difficult thing in the history of the world. But it's still more
likely to work than getting any one nation to devote an average of
$200B a year. We as a species have to WANT to do this. It's a
challenge with as much in common with the great religions as with
Apollo and ISS. It's the sheer audacity of the thing that makes it
beautiful.

Matt
www.mattwriter.com

On 16/06/2011 12:45 PM, wrote:
"Remember how you read those issues of Silver Surfer from
the 60s and reflected long and hard about the possibility of
pacifism when all an intergalactic traveler encounters is
warlike aliens? The mad scientists at Darpa want you to put
those musings to advise its most cosmic project yet.

Darpa recently launched a program called the 100 Year
Starship, which is exactly what it sounds like: an effort to
achieve interstellar flight by the year 2111. This being Darpa,
they’re dead serious. And they also recognize that 2011-era
technology probably isn’t good enough to forecast the state
of the art over the next 100 years."

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...tellar-flight/

Tell them not even to think about it. There's nothing the big aviation
manufacturers would like more than a project where they're not required
to deliver within the lifetime of most humans. A perfect excuse for
being paid for activity rather than results.

Sylvia.

On Jun 19, 4:45*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
I think DARPA trying to work out something a hundred years in the future
is about as futile as trying to predict what our technology would be
today back in 1911.

So, you're in favor of it, is what you're saying.

Predicting long-range technologies accurately is effectively
impossible. But the process of doing so rigorously, with enthusiam and
ingenuity, leads to progress.

People in 1911 who tried to predict what the spaceships of 2011 would
look like were not even close to accurate. But in the attempt, they
determined that it was *possible.* and so the efforts of a century ago
led to the actual spacecraft of half a century ago. Sadly, the
politics of half a century ago led to the lack of spaceships today,
but that's a different matter.

On 6/19/2011 8:45 PM, wrote:
On Jun 19, 4:45 am, Pat wrote:
I think DARPA trying to work out something a hundred years in the future
is about as futile as trying to predict what our technology would be
today back in 1911.

So, you're in favor of it, is what you're saying.

Not at the moment; I think it would be best to wait around about 80
years, see what physics and technology looks like then, and then start
on it if you want to build a starship on around a hundred year timeline.
At the incredible uphill pace things are moving at the moment regarding
those two things, by 2090 you might have a FTL drive powered by
antimatter that could get you out to 100 LY in a year; by 2111 you might
have a wormhole generator powered by dark energy that could get you to
the Andromeda Galaxy in under a second.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if both those technologies came around
inside of 50, not 100, years.
If anyone had told me they were going to be slowing light down to around
30 MPH, figuring out how to optically cloak things via quantum dots, and
creating quantum black holes in a nuclear collider by 2011...twenty
years ago, I would have said they were completely insane. :-D

Pat