Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Building Futuristic Space Exploration Group
coondoggie writes "What started out as an idea about how to further explore the outer reaches of space is now beginning to take more serious shape as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today issued a call for industry information on how to form such as cosmic entity. Specifically DARPA said it issued a Request For Information intended to solicit ideas and information on structure and approach, and identify parties qualified and interested in furthering what's known as the 100 Year Starship project."
I'm just gonna download the entire Baen Library, reformat it and send it to DARPA.
Profit!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Wait a minute, how can DARPA get money to *invest*. Remember the reason Umurikans voted for Tea Party folks is to *cut cut cut* government spending. Shouldn't this really be carried out by a private business -- particularly those private businesses that don't worry just about quarterly profits and share prices--- now don't everybody rush for the opportunity --- line forms to the left for all those interested businesses --- .
Helloooooo....SpaceX. Or were you thinking of outsourcing it to China?
I am glad to see someone else help pick up the long-term research slack.
NASA is on the top targets of the tea party mood under the misconception that is accounts for a large percentage of federal budget. Plus one president terminating the shuttle and the next president terminating its replacement.
This is just paper shuffling. How is this different from all the other grandiose Space Age fever-dreams from the '60s and '70s? They didn't happen then, and they certainly won't happen now, or in a hundred years. These dreams are just our modern-day religious dogma and equivalent to medieval church stained glass and ceilings.
Starfleet? The organization could be a United Federation of Planets. No, nevermind, that's stupid.
The only way for humans to travel to the outer regions of space is to control time. It doesn't matter how fast you go if time stops.
Wormhole or quantum state teleportation might work too.
But it sounds more like subsidies to SciFi writers at this point. Or if they want to figure out what all you would need to build a 100% self-sufficient space station/ship, that would be an exercise for NASA.
Amazing at how well-timed the previous XKCD turned out to be.
http://xkcd.com/893/
From the fine article
Methods to incentivize researchers,
Ummm, I'd try money.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Starfleet - you knew it was coming.
Said organization must comply with the following requirements: - Uniforms should be brightly colored, vaguely indicating role, and adaptable to look good while allowing for command-level officers to engage in hand-to-hand combat on a regular basis. - All senior officers should be skilled in everything. Yes, everything. We'll decide who does what based on who's standing around at the moment, not based on some specialized set of skills or designated responsibilities. - The organization should construct a fleet of vessels, with one vessel getting all the priority assignments while the rest of the fleet does Sudoku until needed for a well-intentioned but otherwise ineffective show of support. - The organization should be composed of scientists and explorers who just so happen to run around with the most powerful weapons currently available. Asteroids can hurt, right?
It's called Starfleet! It's formed by gathering up civilizations after they develop warp drive technology. Everybody knows that!
I8-D
I want to be optimistic. When I chose engineering as a career, my goal was to aid humanity in colonizing space, because I could see that we've run out of terrestrial expansion room.
But TFA is Michael Cooney's Layer 8 blog. Cooney mines the Federal Business Ops website for RFIs and RFPs and then writes entire articles based on conjecture and conclusions reached by means of Boots of Springing and Striding. I've worked on programs that have received Cooney's attention and was amazed at how wrong he was on so many points, and how he presented his erroneous assumptions as facts. It's hard to take anything I read on Layer 8 credibly.
For instance, Cooney regularly glosses over the transient nature of the RFIs he cites. Keep in mind that an RFI is merely a "Request for Information." It's an unfunded solicitation of ideas and white papers, used to identify whether there's anybody credible out there who has an idea plausible enough and attractive enough to warrant going back to the DARPA Director and, eventually, Congress with a budget request for a real RFP and phase I study program. Many RFIs result in either nothing, or an RFP for an unfunded IDIQ or a shoestring SBIR type contract. They're fishing expeditions. And sometimes they're done for internal projects just to get new ideas for free, or for programs hardwired for an existing contractor just as a sort of threat. (But on the other side of the coin, DARPA is usually not tricksy like that... but there's still no guarantee of any money available.)
Still, I'm very glad that DARPA is soliciting ideas, at least... there's a phrase in the R&D world: "DARPA Hard." DARPA doesn't consider ideas that are just matters of engineering -- making existing tech lighter/faster/cheaper. They want to push the state of the art and hope to sponsor real, fundamental science that opens up new possibilities. Starships are indeed DARPA Hard.
I can see the fnords!
Remember Jefferson Starship?
Are they still waiting for the first star ship to Hijack? It has been so many years that the original bunch may be too old now but I wonder if they trained their kids?
The star ship stonies rocking their way across the stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUT1xvdrlDA
If bars don't serve drunk people, then McDonald's shouldn't serve fat people...
"100 Year Starship Project"
Do your part and join the Mobile Infantry now to save the world!
# 1: Female uniforms must include mandatory Shiny Purple Sexy Wigs.
http://fortresstakes.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/ufo_moonbase_girls_purple_wigs.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UFOTVDVDnew.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)
Said organization must comply with the following requirements:
- Uniforms should be brightly colored, vaguely indicating role, and adaptable to look good while allowing for command-level officers to engage in hand-to-hand combat on a regular basis.
- All senior officers should be skilled in everything. Yes, everything. We'll decide who does what based on who's standing around at the moment, not based on some specialized set of skills or designated responsibilities.
- The organization should construct a fleet of vessels, with one vessel getting all the priority assignments while the rest of the fleet does Sudoku until needed for a well-intentioned but otherwise ineffective show of support.
- The organization should be composed of scientists and explorers who just so happen to run around with the most powerful weapons currently available. Asteroids can hurt, right?
The energy to send a description of an object to another star is roughly a million times less than the energy to send the object itself. So the right answer is to send a small nanotech factory which builds a receiving station at your destination. Then you scan a person at an atomic level here, transmit the data, and build a copy at the other end. Besides being frugal from an energy standpoint, it allows you to travel at the highest possible speed (that of light), and the trip time from the traveler's point of view is zero. The nanotech factory still is limited to some sublight speed, but it is likely to be much smaller than a starship carrying humans.
As to when will we be able to do stuff on an atomic scale, Intel announced their 22 nm chip process today. That's roughly 64 atoms across. At the rate things are going, they should be down to single atoms in about 20 years.
FTL travel requires bypassing the energy required to move a mass through normal space.
The moment you have FTL, you have a method for adding infinite energy to the universe... say by using FTL to boost a mass out of the middle of a solar system, then letting it fall back in via traditional Newtonian methods from the outer edges of it.
I'm pretty sure the universe doesn't like that.
What we have been witnessing, for some time now, is the militarisation of the world of long term research; even worse, the secret militarisation of such. This is entirely the wrong path to take, if those of us with an interest in such are to be encouraged to follow.
For a start, I will absolutely NOT place my name or voice towards any such ongoing militarisation of long term research into space travel.
Period.
We are coming to an end of a long thought thread that started before the advent of the Cold War with Russia and which extended on into absolutely idiotic secret military adventures into just about every aspect of the freedom of thought of many other societies on the planet. Secret military organisations dominate the foreign policy of the United States and it is only now, with the advent of the new wave for a push for freedom in the Middle east, that it can be seen that these foreign policy adventures; supporting all forms of military dictatorships, all over the planet, are now falling through their fingers like dust.
Now they want to be able to control the future exploration of space; using the same organisations. Give me strength!
I will have nothing to do with such an ongoing attempt to dominate the long term free research of the planet with military funding for long term military purposes. As things stand, the majority of long term research money now comes from military sources. This must stop.
As also the use of the thoughts and aspirations of the free people to continue to be used to support long term research using military money for the long term interests of the United States dominated Military and Industrial complex. The urge to create a new “Star Wars” must be stopped in its tracks here and now.
I want to be able to see out my life in a more peaceful world, not dominated by military interests, not constantly pushed hither and thither by secret military money.
As such, I call on the rest of the free world to act now to create a completely new, long term research dominated organisation; that can be, indeed, must be, seen to be free of the influence of secret military and industrial money and influence.
DARPA must be told, from the top down, to stand back and not proceed with this further militarisation of long term research.
Cool story, bro.
You don't seem to get how DARPA works dude.
They think of if things are possible. then they think of how that stuff can be used militarily (and we hairless apes can use anything to neutralize threats, if we didn't, we wouldn't have survived long enough to avoid being lion food). They then fund the research to see if it can be done. Once the research is done, they allow civilian groups to do their own research to figure how to practically do the thing DARPA researched. The civilians then take the next step and build the systems that do what DARPA researched. The military then uses this knowledge to design things to use. However the civilian market also uses the fruits of this research (C4 was originally meant as explosives for combat. The civilian market found it very useful for construction, demolition, and mining).
So in short, if the military wants to research into the science of deep space travel, let them. The science and technology we get out of it will be more then worth it. Without defense research from work on missiles, we wouldn't even have space travel and all the technology that we take for granted. (and don't give bullshit about private groups doing it, basic research has left the round of interesting experimentation decades ago)