Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Chooses Leader For 100-Year Starship Project
Hugh Pickens writes "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical officer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.' Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled 'An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.'"
This reads like a bio of Jemison and her funding opportunities. News?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That's the episode where the Enterprise finds Riker's transporter-accident created duplicate that was abandoned on a planet several years earlier. The new Riker, dubbed Thomas, eventually goes on to leave the ship before one day ending up at DS9 where he steals the Defiant to help the Maquis and is captured/imprisoned by Cardassians. Fun fact: TNG writers briefly considered killing Riker Classic in the episode to have Riker II take his place in the show, but at a lower rank.
The private sector will not finance anything like this. They want quick, guaranteed profits. This is why governments should pioneer space travel: the private sector will never go further than LEO unless they are sure it's profitable.
$500,000 isn't exactly a lot of money by U.S. government standards, but for a country that currently can't even get to people in to LEO spending money on interstellar space travel is completely nuts.
So, how about you get to Mars first, maybe then we can talk.
There is pretty much zero chance anyone in the private sector is going to sink any money in to interstellar space travel unless there is a juicy cost plus government contract funding it. If you dangle one of those Lockheed and Boeing will be on it in a heart beat, especially if the contract runs for a 100 years before they have to deliver anything.
This "foundation" will just be used by the DARPA haters in Congress, mostly Republicans and Tea Partiers, as further evidence of how far DARPA and the Obama administration has gone off the rails, and after reading this I can see their point.
DARPA does some amazing things but they need to exert a little self restraint and focus on things that will payoff in less than a millenium. It will be unfortunate if the good R&D DARPA does gets cuts because they seem to have gone completely nuts on this. The U.S. doesn't do enough R&D as it is.
@de_machina
Bullshit.
The private sector STILL can't get a man into space. If it had been left to the private sector "from day one", the US would never have had anyone try, because the private sector never would have put forth the R&D money to get anything done.
Scaling back NASA is a result of small-minded fools from the right wing who scream "cut cut cut everything we like yeah military!!!" They want to kill PBS, they want to kill NASA, they call numerous things "government waste", but they never want to admit that the biggest waste of government money is sending the US military everywhere to be the world's policeman, wasting $500 billion a year to invade countries, set up military bases, and bomb the fuck out of places where nobody wants us.
PBS gets $422 million currently. That is 0.084 PERCENT of what we waste on the military.
NASA's annual budget is only $19 billion in 2011. And for that you get all this stuff that you fucking take for granted.
We should say fuck the military, stop buying them new toys, and spend the money on NASA instead. We'd be to Mars in 5 years if we budgeted it.
The private sector does stuff for money. The only "Space" thing with a ROI is satellites. The moon and probes would never have happened. Americans have this strange mind set where they think everything should be done by "not the government", even stuff like this where the government is the ONLY realistic solution.
2011 military budget, actually $683 Billion. I took off personnel ($154 billion) and rounded down to the nearest $100 billion since SOME maintenance of bases, equipment, and so on would be necessary. The rest? Oh yeah, first we WASTE money bombing someone back to the stone age, then we WASTE more money putting a military base in their country and WASTE more money sending "foreign aid" to rebuild the place we just WASTED money bombing the shit out of.
Welfare, medicare, SS, Education $2.7 Trillion - but unlike the military that actually cycles right back into the economy. Money spent on welfare goes straight to food and housing for actual humans. Money spent on medicare goes to the medical care of actual humans. Social Security goes into food and housing for elderly humans.
Education goes into raising the next generation of humans to be (hopefully) functioning members of society - though in your case it appears not to have worked. Oh and yeah, it pays mostly for the money to pay the teachers to teach the kids (though I personally would say fuck high school/ college sports, especially the basketball and football programs that are the government wasting a fucking ton of money subsidizing the hell out of the NBA and NFL by running their minor leagues for them).
As for the Wall Street bailouts, I agree. Put all that money to NASA instead and we'd be far better off than if it were in bankers' pockets.
The waste isn't necessarily the military.
It's General Dynamics and Fluor and countless other DOD contractors. My time in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine Infantryman was beyond understandably austere. Larger bases has clean flush toilets, clean showers every day, fresh cooked food every day including pop (soda) and ice cream. They had Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway, Green Beans coffee, movie theaters, dance night... Reliable communication back home. Mail delivery every day. Gyms. And electricity. We shat in bags and burned it. We were able to shower at most once a week. Our Staff NCO's had to pay out of their own pocket to get a water pump that worked. We usually lacked air conditioning or heat in our bunks...
All that we lacked is understandable and doesn't bother me at all. What bothered me was that the POG's had it, and bitched if they lost it like it was their right to have it while we ate stuff I wouldn't feed to my dogs.
When it was suggested by a Marine General in charge of such things that they cut back on these MWR (Morale, Welfare, Recreation) activities in Stars and Stripes, there was outlandish backlash from POG's (Person Other than Grunt) about how it would affect them and how they needed these services. Nevermind that he wanted to cut them back to divert the funding for these activities to us that were farther deployed and had practically none of that.
Virtually all of these services are provided by civilian DOD contractors. I think the largest compound in Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan was the Fluor compound.
While there IS waste in military spending, it dwarfs compared to what is spent on unnecessary contractors. Hell, they built a golf course in Baghdad for the Generals to play golf!
but unlike the military that actually cycles right back into the economy
Where exactly does military spending go, if not right back into the economy?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Wasted resources.
Bombing someone = wasted resources.
Fired bullets = wasted resources.
Crashed planes, fuel, all the rest = wasted resources we're not going to get back.
Military spending is almost ALL wasted resources. You think 3500 Tomahawk missiles, a cost ot $2.6 Billion, is anything but wasted resources? And that's JUST the Tomahawks, not all the bombs and missiles (most of which cost significantly more).
Do we need to bomb Iraq back to the stone age in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to invade Libya in order to defend Alaska?
Do we need to have soldiers in over 1000 military bases in countries around the world, most of who don't want us there, to defend Alaska, Hawaii, and the continental US from invasion?
No. That's what I mean by WASTE. The military, to fulfill its actual, Constitutionally mandated role of protecting the borders of the US against actual enemies, needs less than 10% of the toys they have WASTED taxpayer money on since WW2.
I've heard arguments that the space program should have never been put in the hands of government in the first place. If it had been left to the private-sector from day one, space travel would be the norm by now because of the competitive aspect of the private sector and the ability to raises more capital than going the bureaucratic route.
And what, exactly, has prevented the private sector from putting a man in space the last 50-60 years?
My guess is, a lack of government subsidies.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
so very true. Government agencies can train people with specialities that private industry would look at as wasteful - but thats because private industries' involvement ends at their front door. There are some things you /cannot/ accomplish alone. Humans are communal. Government is a given.
Privatize-everything-people are either stupid, or control freaks - but they are not as efficient as they want to think in accomplishing greatness. It takes a whole /people/ to do that - Not any one company.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
What are you, an asshole?
Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
It's not the cost of a missile. It's the opportunity cost of a missile. As well as the cost of human life. Do you have any idea how many civilians have been killed by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last ten years?
... damn, you should have gone to the symposium. These people were not nuts - they were capable engineers and sociologists and educators and authors and astronauts, who well understood the enormity of the challenge (which does in fact edge into astronomic scale).
There were reviews of existing technologies, reports on current research, proposals ranging from modest to blue-sky, discussion about the science that would have to be done. Social engineering was also prominent - any future colony would be a microcosm of human society after all.
Without the Dreamers, you wouldn't have the Planners. It was awe-inspiring to be among the Dreamers for a couple of days, and I begrudge not one dime of the money DARPA spent on it.
Right you are.
I deeply enjoyed attending the 100 YSS symposium, and actually presented in the economic track that Jemison headed. However, awarding the final seed money to one of the track chairs and program organizers makes the whole process seem like collusion. Note the Education, Social, Economic and Legal Considerations track in the 100 YSS Symposium Agenda. Having worked program allocation, this is the kind of stuff that could spark lawsuits if it weren't for such a small sum (in gov't terms). Also depends on whether she was funded by DARPA in her track chair duties. (Note: I did not submit a proposal to the RFP)
Hopefully the money is put to good use, as it looks like she partnered with Icarus, who are at least motivated and active.
The private sector STILL can't get a man into space.
They actually have several times with SpaceShipOne. I know you mean in Earth orbit now. In a few years, you'll mean beyond Earth orbit. Then it'll mean landing on the Moon. Then some time after that, beyond cislunar space. Then it'll be beyond the asteroid belt. Then it'll be beyond the orbit of Neptune, another star system, the local galactic spiral, whatever.
I don't know what the fascination is with telling us somewhat difficult things can't be done, but it has to be one of the more futile pursuits ever engaged in.
Slightly off-topic, but since TFS mentions it, am I the only one that finds the designation "African-American" stupid? I have heard of Native Americans, yes. But no "European-Americans", or "Caucasian-Americans". And somehow, Asians are just Asians.
This for a point: http://snarkyintuition.blogspot.com/2011/11/p-p-p-pass-mic-yo.html
It used to be simple, now I have no idea what the frak is going on.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
You and me both, AC. And I've met Jemison.
Believe me, compared to her I feel like a bumbling moron and an utter layabout.
And she topped it off by being the cutest person in the room.