The 100 Year Starship Session at the EU Parliament

[LongTomH]

The 100 Year Starship program is a joint DARPA/NASA venture to do Black Sky thinking (a step beyond Blue Sky thinking) centered around the idea of building a starship by the beginning of the next century. The person heading up this initiative, and leading the 2013 EU panel, is Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American Woman in space.

The videos for the 100YSS sessions are posted on the YouTube Channel for the Tau Zero Foundation, one of the organizations partnered with the 100 Year Starship Foundation to research interstellar flight. Check out the playlist for more talks.

Why can't we have panels like this testifying before the US Congress? Oh, I forgot: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.

For my fellow nerds: Dr. Mae Jemison is also known as 'Lt. Palmer' on one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

[LongTomH]

1. One of the most interesting speakers.....

.....is Marc Millis, who headed up the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program at NASA Glenn:

Described as “a rock star in the world of space geeks” [Slate, Oct 2011], Marc Millis is best known for creating NASA’s visionary “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project” and for his subsequent book, Frontiers of Propulsion Science (AIAA 2009). This book is the first scholarly compilation of research toward interstellar space drives and faster-than-light flight. When NASA went retro with “Apollo on Steroids” and on a “Food Stamps” budget, Millis decided to take an early retirement (2010) to devote full time to his nonprofit Tau Zero Foundation. Tau Zero uses the long-range goal of star flight to provoke revolutionary advancements. With a network of fellow pioneers and scouts in technical, journalistic, and artistic venues, incremental studies have begun, and that progress is conveyed to the public via their Centauri Dreams news forum. On the more conventional side, Millis has designed ion thrusters, electronic instrumentation for rocket engines, and even a cockpit display to guide aircraft microgravity flights.

I attended a session at the 95 International Space Development Conference led by Marc. His talk was titled: "Warp Drive When," which also happens to be the title of his webpage at the NASA Glenn center.

[rwsanders]

2. Too bad DARPA is involved. With them in the game, the future may look more like a Borg invasion...

than the USS Enterprise.
Shouldn't take that long. Was just reading a Discover magazine article last month describing a prototype engine that should be able to do Mars in 6 weeks. Sorry can't link (now a subscribers only for full text).
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/may/12-rocketman
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/

[MillennialDem]

3. The distance between Earth and Mars is between 0.5 AU and 2.5 AU

The alpha centauri system is 270,000 AU...

6 weeks to Mars (assuming 2.5 AU) = 600,000 weeks to Alpha Centauri = 11,530 years to Alpha Centauri. If we assume 0.5 AU it's even worse.

The sad truth of the matter is we have one working concept that would have gotten us to Alpha Centauri in 20-50 years already but no one wants to use it and moreover it's illegal by the nuclear test ban treaty. But shaped nuclear charges dropped behind a space craft can get us to 0.1-0.2c. There is no other concept that we know of that we can actually make work right now.

[LongTomH]

4. Listen to the Marc Millis talk and go to the Tau Zero link.

Or try: Icarus Interstellar. There are many more possibilities than the old Project Orion nuclear bombs concept.

[MillennialDem]

5. I don't know about Tau Zero but Icarus is still theoretical with an estimated launch time of

the year 2100......

Now unless I live to be 120 years old I won't even see that launch - and unless indefinite human lifespan is achieved I certainly won't see it reach a star.

Project Orion/Daedalus could be launched 5 years or less from RIGHT NOW and I would probably still be alive to see the signals beamed back from Alpha Centauri...