There’s no shortage of grandiose ideas when it comes to space: colonizing planets, building space elevators, and terraforming Mars all come to mind. Among the most grandiose, perhaps, is the idea of interstellar travel, particularly with people: at a time when only two nations—neither of them the United States, at least currently—can send humans into space, the idea of sending people light-years to another star sounds like, well, science fiction.
Perhaps the fact that interstellar travel is such a staple of science fiction can explain the broad interest in a project started nearly two years ago by DARPA and NASA called The 100 Year Starship. The goal: to develop the technologies over the next century needed to enable interstellar travel. DARPA, the lead agency for the project, ran a competition for a $500,000 grant to help set up this effort, and held a symposium last fall in Orlando (see “The journey of 100 years begins with a single weekend”, The Space Review, October 10, 2011).
Since last year’s conference, though, the effort has largely been hidden from view. It wasn’t until May that the winner of the $500,000 grant was announced: a group led by the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, run by former astronaut Mae Jemison and named after her mother. The first major public milestone for the new 100 Year Starship team since that award was earlier this month, as the organization hosted a second symposium in Houston. That event demonstrated that the idea of the 100 Year Starship faces both near-term and long-term challenges.
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