I spent two days at a 100-Year Starship Study workshop this month. The workshop was organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA’s Ames Research Center. To be clear, neither the Department of Defense nor NASA is thinking of building a starship or conducting an interstellar flight, but the questions raised by studying such projects are relevant to current space program planning, both for considering directions for research and for analyzing the motivations for exploration.
Are we closer to interstellar flight than da Vinci was to the airplane? Are there steps and milestones now in space programs (or should there be) that could meaningfully engage the aerospace community and the public in the “ultimate” goal of interstellar flight? In my view, the creative and sparkling discussion of the workshop answered “yes” to both of these questions.
The workshop organizers talked about creating a business model for a hypothetical organization to advance interstellar flight. I don’t quite understand the “business” aspect, nor do I share some of the assertions at the workshop about government space exploration being uncertain and that we should look for more private sector involvement. After all, the United States has been steadily exploring planets in the solar system for 50 years; private businesses have a long way to go to show such consistency. But I do agree with many good ideas presented of ways that government and private sector can both make advances, and how even private entrepreneurs can get involved in the technology development. After all, my own Planetary Society LightSail effort is a private sector, entrepreneurial, early step toward interstellar flight.
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