To boldly goDARPA seeks to build interstellar space ship in 100 years

DARPA wants an interstellar vessel in 100 years // Source: weebly.com

;The Pentagon’s advanced research arm is currently exploring the technology to build a spaceship capable of travelling to distant stars in the next 100 years.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans on awarding as much as $500,000 in seed money this fall to the company with the most promising ability to develop interstellar travel technology, but if the submissions are not up to par, DARPA will not award any money. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, David Neyland, the director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, explained that the 100-year starship project is designed as way to spur innovative thinking and to motivate a generation of new scientists and engineers. 

“When I came to DARPA about three years ago, I was looking for ways to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers to become involved with research and development, like I was inspired when I was a kid,” Neyland said.

Drawing heavily from science fiction, Neyland said the idea for the program stems from Robert Heinlein’s story “Time for the Stars,” which featured an organization called the Long Range Foundation that invested in things that no one else would like rockets and interstellar travel.

Meanwhile the 100 year deadline was inspired by “From the Earth to the Moon,” a Jules Verne story.

“That book inspired generations of folks to think about space travel,” Neyland said. “It was 100 years later when we were launching Saturn rockets and 104 years later when we were actually landing human beings on the moon.”

The project is not necessarily aimed at creating a spaceship, but rather to drive people to push technological boundaries to the limit.

“A lot of folks think that we’re asking for somebody to come in with a plan on how to build a starship. That’s actually the wrong answer. What we’re looking for is an intuitive understanding of the process of inspiring research and development that comes up with tangible products,” Nelyand said.

“’Products’ doesn’t mean physical products, but might be a new computer algorithm, a new kind of physics, a new set of mathematics, a new philosophical or religious construct, a new way of growing grain hydroponically. The organization needs to have the gestalt of how to inspire that kind of research.”

“What Jules Verne postulated in terms of a cannon firing people to the moon is about as impractical and unrealistic as you could get, but he inspired people to think about building space vehicles,” he added. “He didn’t actually ask the specific questions, much less postulate the right technologies. But he got people thinking about it. So that’s the motivation of the 100-Year Starship Study.”

The end result may not be clear, but Neyland said that hardly matters.

“We can hypothesize where we want to get to, but it’s a pretty broad target that we’re aiming for.”