It's long past time to start thinking about interstellar travel and actually build the first starships.

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All things considered, these things need world cooperation. Until we stop shooting each other over religion, oil, power and land; not to mention pepper-spraying a dozen people for a christmas present....yeah, not gonna happen.

Eltex, she is leading the effort to see what it will take to make such a voyage, not part of the crew that is actually going. This probably won't happen for another 20-30 years.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of peoples in this world that will always argue fight and kill. It's never changed and never will. We should not let their religious and other war mongering beliefs to stop the rest of the coherent world from moving forward. The space initiative is a great thing for man and woman kind and should move forward. I gotta find me a way to live long enough to see some long voyage space flight!!

While you guys are at it, can you also get a sequel to Pandorum made? Would love to know what happens to the survivors and the limitless possibilities of a brand new unexplored planet.

Also, great story! Would love to be part of a program like that.

I'm psyched, this is awesome.

One criticism....don't name a vessel Icarus :P

BP, I bet it'll be more like 200-300 years, if it's even possible. Hope I'm wrong, but I think even Mars will be more than 30 years in the future. Regards....

Dan Webster

the information came straight from the NASA chief himself ... Charles Bolden

i am sure you can add the beginning of the links since MSNBC doesn't want anyone to see them as links

foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05nasa-chief-frintier-better-relations-muslims

and the

washingtonexaminer.com/politics/nasa039s-new-mission-ties-muslim-world

@Derek

One criticism....don't name a vessel Icarus :P

Bwahahahaha!~ That just made my day. Good catch!

This gives NASA a real mission that the entire country and world can stand behind. It's bold steps, such as this, that will bring everyone together as a nation in hope of their success. In fact, it's about the only thing that will bring the nation together in this political climate.

The major hurdles are certainly producing food, water and oxygen. While science has yet to evolve to place people in "stasis," their multi-generational approach makes use of the human's ability to reproduce.

I'm actually shocked that this is actually being given some thought. But I will tell you that I am inspired by taking bold moves forward. NASA exists for far more than looking at rocks on Mars and landing on the moon. It's time for a new mission that can benefit all of humanity.

Its going to be a bit differnt when we find a new world and have something to motivate us alittle more!

While we spend our time fantasizing about deep space, the Chinese are going to get the choice spots on the moon and we will come up so far short of anything of value that we will just have to quit. Going to Mars first is just too stupid. If we can't manage on the Moon first, it will be a suicide mission to Mars. Didn't we learn anything from the shuttle accidents? It looks to me like the man that jumps off the cliff with the wooden wings and dies on the rocks below. When we have the technology and a base on the Moon to build the deep space rockets, only then will we be ready.

Matt: There are so many lies from the right about Obama, it's astounding. This is yet another one. He told the director of NASA, Charles Bolden to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Here's why:

Citing substantial contributions to the International Space Station by Russia and China as an example, Bolden added, "It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations)."

Observing that no single nation, including the United States, would ever be able to travel beyond low-earth orbit or go to Mars without the help of other nations, administrator Bolden denied that diplomacy had driven President Obama's directive for NASA to "reach out" to the Muslim world

What Does NASA Have to Gain? Besides scientific and engineering knowledge, several Muslim nations have lots of something NASA does not have as much of as it used to - money.

Just another victim of the recession, NASA has so far suffered a 16 percent cut in its annual budget for manned space exploration, with more cuts probably on the way. The budget cut led to the cancellation of NASA's Constellation program for sending astronauts back to the moon and ultimately to Mars.

In addition, Obama's just released U.S. National Space Policy stresses the necessity of international cooperation in future missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

-usgovinfo.about.com

That is a far cry from "to make appeasing Muslims their top priority". It seems like the first step to get more nations and more money on board to launch big, expensive missions to other planets and star systems that no one nation can do alone. Many Muslim nations have plenty of cash. Western nations, who currently make up most space programs, are broke.

Further, anyone notice how China is progressing in space? Notice how they are aligning politically with many Muslim nations. Now, who's space program do you want Muslim countries pouring money into?

This isn't about "appeasing Muslims" no matter how much the Right wants it to be, which is ludicrous. It's about alliances and sharing cost.

Just think; another planet somewhere that we can destroy!!! Whoopee!! We should just stay here and die off as the foul, poison accident of nature that we are.

And why doesn't the US have as much as money as it used to? Maybe because we burned through a trillion dollars on a failed porkulus package among other things.

@Bruce stratton-1616971

You first man, go ahead and make your contribution to "planet earth" and jump off a cliff, I am sure other econuts will follow you.

One teriffic waste of time. No design, no lifting vehicle, no craft, NO MONEY. etc etc. You want to play Star Trek do it entirely on donations.

Congratulations, Dr. Jemison. Well done! You are an EXCELLENT choice for this exciting endeavor, and your country is proud of you.

Yes, Devil. The real money let's give it to the corporations so they can donate the money to the project and profit out of it.

Kudos to Jemison. Beautiful, smart, proven worth. I would much rather spend trillions of dollars on these types of missions than one bullet, murder, of one human being in these criminal wars we are dying in. My only question is why the pentagon is involved in this project. Pentagon is synonymous to war and corruption. Space should start from and for peaceful human endeavors. In reply to some of the comments I read on this thread. The moon is a given. Missions to it in order to create moon bases is a given and a shorter term project. Not worried about the Chinese. Our flag is already planted on the moon. Anything else is mere copy cat technology, of which, the Chinese are famous for. Mars is probably a little further down the road.

Ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money. We won't even be able to get to Mars for decades, and with the technology we have available today, couldn't even go back to the moon right now. What's the point of wasting scarce funds planning for travel beyond our solar system? They are talking about a 100-year program. Do they realize that when the program nears the end of its 100-year lifespan, the technology developed in the early years of the program will have long ago become obsolete and totally useless? So they'll have to go back and reconfigure everything from beginning to end. It will be a never-ending process as new technology continues to be developed. Totally unworkable.

Technological progress is not a zero sum game. Taking money away from space exploration will not magically create progress in some other, more immediately practical field. It will just slow down space exploration and any potential spin-off technologies.

The Pentagon's think tank has selected the group that will manage its "100 Year Starship" project to explore what it would take for a multigenerational mission beyond the solar system, and sources say the leader will be Mae Jemison, who became the first black woman in space in 1992.

The Pentagon???????

Oh yeah, this’ll happen. Here's a small example of how well our government runs things.

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

Yeah, this little wet-dream of interstellar travel will only cost about a GAZILLION Dollars. We can confiscate ALL the worlds’ wealth and we won’t have enough money to fund this. If the above example of our governments waste, fraud, abuse and corruption isn't bad enough, how about this?

A federal judge in Columbia, South Carolina, accepted the guilty plea of the company and one owner, Charlene Corley, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said.

But wait, it gets better!

Corley, 46, was fined $750,000. She faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each count and will be sentenced soon, McDonald said in a telephone interview from Columbia.

So, this company extorted over $20 million and pays a fine of $750,000.

We might as well get Bernie Madoff to run the funding for the project, at least we’ll know how badly we get fu**ed.

Save your tax dollars and watch some Star Trek reruns, we might be able to afford that.

While science has yet to evolve to place people in "stasis," their multi-generational approach makes use of the human's ability to reproduce.

A multi generational ship seems like a waste of time and effort; what we need is to go fast. At half the speed of light we’d easily be able to reach other galaxies within a lifetime and at around ¾ the speed of light we’d be talking about the edge of the seeable universe.

Backcountry164 you better check your figures again. Even at the speed of light you couldn't reach the edge of the seeable universe in 1000 lifetimes much less one. The Milkyway Gallaxy it's self is 100,000 light yrs. wide.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,

It's a hundred thousand light years, side to side.

this is exactly why it will never (not in the next few thousand lifetimes anyway) happen

Backcountry164 isn't wrong. For a starship crew traveling at relatavistic velocities, due to time dilation, they certainly could chew up a good bit of the Universe during their lifetime. Meanwhile, during the same time frame, billions of years would have passed on earth.

softdude If we can't manage on the Moon first, it will be a suicide mission to Mars. Didn't we learn anything from the shuttle accidents?

I agree that we should put manned moon missions, and setting up a moon base, as a high priority. I only have a problem with your statement that I quoted.

I fail to see the connection between the shuttle accents and suicidal Mars missions. What did we learn from them that would cause us to change minds about future Moon or Mars missions or bases?

Backcountry164 you better check your figures again. Even at the speed of light you couldn't reach the edge of the seeable universe in 1000 lifetimes much less one.

As 90caliber said, the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time. Until we have the capacity to warp spacetime (millennia from now, if ever) deep space travel won’t be what we see in the movies. It will be a one-way trip, much like the journey to the new world was for many people 500 years ago. At ¾ the speed of light we could reach the Andromeda Galaxy in something like 20 years, that means the crew could turn the ship around and return to Earth within their lifetime. But when they got back 400 million years would have passed making the return journey as much a mission of exploring the unknown as was the trip out.

Of course no one will be going anywhere until we can get stuff into orbit much, much more cheaply than we do now. Personally I’d like to see a space elevator built within my lifetime but I suppose that’s a topic for another day.

Of course no one will be going anywhere until we can get stuff into orbit much, much more cheaply than we do now.

Or until humanity has a large mining/manufacturing capacity in space.

Or until humanity has a large mining/manufacturing capacity in space.

How are we going to get that large mining and manufacturing capacity INTO space to begin with? At the going rate of 10k per pound put into orbit, starting out such a program would be cost prohibitive now. Although I do agree that ultimately that is what we'll be doing, starships will be built entirely in space.

Mining and manufacturing what? Pipe dreams?

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, it's been repeated throughout the history of humanity whenever someone dared to look ahead and dream about what could be. Luckily people with that attitude were mostly ignored, if they hadn't been many of us would still be living in Europe, Africa or Asia and riding around in horse drawn buggies.

It won't be easy, Backcounrty. It will take determination, commitment, sacrifice and enormous investments of time and money. It will be a lot like the colonization of the Americas. After all, the mining and manufacturing base in North and South America didn't happen over night. Neither was Rome built in a day.

It is a dream, indeed! A dream worthy and fitting the talents of humanity.

Sorry kids, people in space die from zero-g gravity sickness in a couple years. Even if you could have artificial gravity by dynamic weight distribution spinning, radiation from ultra powerful photons and hyper accelerated atomic and subatomic particles with energy magnitudes of order greater that the Large Hadron Collider can produce would kill the people in less time and degenerate the ship into useless scrap long before it could reach the protection of another star system.

In our current form, humans are stuck.

Sure...what a great idea! Another way to steal funds. The Dems and Repubs can add it into their bank accounts, while their pushing for more austerity measures. Dream BIG folks, cause THEY are.

Or better yet, they're trying to get millionaires involved so they can catch a ride before that new comet slams into us. NASA has started warning their employees to "Be Ready for DISASTER...BruuuuuHaHaHa", LOL

One thing you can bank on, it's surely for some other scheme they've got up their sleeves.

We haven't managed to reach "breakeven" with fusion reactors, let alone produce enough energy to drive a starship - and they're considering using one for a century? Wildly premature, it will be a century or more before we can seriously consider it.

Lets concentrate on more practical goals first.

What's wrong with having a project that takes 100 years, or 1000 years for that matter. I'll tell you what. Human selfishness is what's wrong. Most people want instant gratification, instant results. Most of the human race is very hard pressed to have a project that takes 10 years to complete. If they don't get, or see benefits in their life time, forget it.

So lets have two teams. One team start now, the second team waits 100 years to even seriously consider it. Who would win the race, team one or team two?

I think this multi-generational idea is the wrong way to go... to be honest. Our human bodies are the #1 obstacle to long distance space travel. We require food, oxygen, space, comfort, amenities - all sorts of things that would add extra weight and size to a spacecraft that serves really no other purpose than to keep our squishy bodies alive and content.

I think the future of space-travel.. real productive space travel... is technological advances in neurotechnology and biology. For example, if we can map the brain as to upload a person's 'mind' into a construct... we could totally bypass all the obstacles of the human body. If we could advance biology to the point of realizing the ability to put a person into stasis for long periods of time... we could at least minimize the obstacles our body must face. Maybe a combination of the two.

I think these two options are far more realistic (and far closer than we think) than a long-term multi-generational space voyage.

if we can map the brain as to upload a person's 'mind' into a construct

I would think that the hurdles we must jump to achieve interstellar travel would be easy compared to transferring human consciousness into a computer. We may be able to make a computer that mimics the human mind in another 25 years or so, but to transfer the mind is far off in the future, and may not even be possible.

It's a good thing Obama wants to make this effort a "multicultural" one. That way, we can bring along all of the claims of racism and discrimination into space. Yeah, that's just what we need.

We may be able to make a computer that mimics the human mind in another 25 years or so, but to transfer the mind is far off in the future, and may not even be possible.

Mimicking the human mind will happen within the next decade, and transferring the mind(at least a person's memories and thought process) by the end of the 2050's. Thats at the current rate of tech advancement, which only ever speeds up.

Thats assuming the human mimicking computer doesnt kill us all.

timetraveler100,

So are you calling for an all white male mission? Going to be pretty hard to be multigenerational with no women on board.

Wow! The GOPtards and their, nevermind the truth, Just repeat FOX and the minions of Murdoch, are out in force today.

There are more trolls on here than there are under the bridge.

The occupants of the multi-generational will be met by the explorers/settlers that got there before them. Due to the rate of technological increases in the 100 years or more they spend in transit humanity will see faster ships drives invented. It's possible that because of the time dilation effect at traveling at fractions of the speed of light, they could in fact arrive to find human civilization and cities.

If we still exist in just 5 thousand years, we will be quite spread out already.

If the human diaspora happens at all, it will be well before the Sun exhibits significant changes (and assuming that we don't also learn how to move Earth to a safe distance, and/or alter the process of fusion in the sun and other stars)

I for one agree on that. I like that idea of yours too, it would be wonderful to save our planet from its ultimate end even if for sentimental reasons by then.

In approx 5 billion years the sun will run out of fuel and Earth will be consumed and destroyed. So we better get the show on the road!!

Unfortunately, there is zero chance we'll be here or anywhere 5 billion years from now. If our descendents are still around, they would've gone through multiple evolutions that would've turned them into something as far different from humans as we are from a pine tree. A lot more, actually, since 5 billion years is about 10 times as long as the time separating us from the cells that branched off into into plants vs everything else.

But it won't come to that - even the most successful species in the fossil record tended to evolve and go extinct within a few million years.

Gee - that's kind of depressing. Still, let's do interstellar travel anyhow - probably let our species hang around a couple million years more. Too bad I won't be around for all that cool flying space cars and going for a spin around the galaxy, or even the universe, on Sunday afternoons :D

FIVE BILLION years? All things considered since the 'Age of Technology' began roughly 150 years ago, FIVE HUNDRED more years would be a miracle.

Backcountry164' wrote:

" ... at around ¾ the speed of light we’d be talking about the edge of the seeable universe."

REPLY: Wow, you must have gotten your calculator out of a cereal box! You had better toss that thing and redo your math. ;)

The "observable" universe is about 93 billion light years (the three-dimensional observable universe is about 28 billion parsecs). The radius of the observable universe, relative to man's starting point on Earth would therefore be 46.5 billion light years.

So traveling at 3/4 the speed of light it would take 62 billion years to travel to "the edge of the seeable universe." (but because the universe may be infinite, as far as we know, by relativity the edge of the observable universe would always be 46.5 billion years away, no matter how long you travelled or how fast!

That's one, long, single lifetime, dude!!! :)

The radius of the observable universe, relative to man's starting point on Earth would therefore be 46.5 billion light years.

For you to have an observable universe, you have to be able to observe it.

Please explain how we can observe something that is 46.5 billion light years away, when there hasn't been enough time since the beginning of the universe for the light to reach us from that distance.

Because the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Could you please elaborate, James? The furthest object humans have detected are approximately 13.5 billion light years away. We have never observed anything further away than that.

The expansion of the universe has nothing to do with how much of it we can see. It does have something to do with how far light is red shifted when it arrives at our detectors. If I am incorrect, I would like to know why.

'JamesP-874029' wrote:

"Could you please elaborate...."

REPLY: Hi James. Here's a very good on-line read for you and anyone else interested in 'looking further into this' (pun intended); which discusses "Observable Universe" far better than I could.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/universe.html

It's a fascinating subject, and quite humbling, too.

Enjoy! ;) Robert.

'JamesP-874029' wrote:

" ....The furthest object humans have detected are approximately 13.5 billion light years away. We have never observed anything further away than that."

REPLY: This is where it gets REALLY interesting, James. You are correct that human beings have detected the light/radiation of objects in the Universe approximately 13.5 billion light years away, but those objects aren't still there. What we actually observed is light/radiation emitted 13.5 billion years ago, and which took 13.5 billion years to travel through the Universe before being observed in our telescopes. That emitted light/radiation took 13.5 billion years, and traveled 13.5 billion lights years' distance to reach us. But the objects which emitted that light/radiation have been moving away from us, and the matter which eventually coalesced to become the Earth has been moving away from them, at an accelerating rate for 13.5 billion years! And due to Hubble's Law, regions sufficiently distant from us are expanding away from us much faster than the speed of light (special relativity prevents nearby objects in the same local region from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other but there is no such constraint for distant objects when the space between them is expanding).

Humbling, huh?

Indeed it is! I hadn't taken the expansion of the universe into account, except for explaining the red shift of the detected light. I had never considered that the object was still moving away from us after it had emitted its light.

Even though it seems that I can grasp the infinity of time and space, my knowledge is way less than perfect.

Thank you guys for helping me understand the importance of the universal expansion, and its effects.

'JamesP-874029' wrote: " ....Even though it seems that I can grasp the infinity of time and space, my knowledge is way less than perfect."

REPLY: HA! Well, James, if you ever DO get it all figured out then please come back and explain it to me! My intellectual grasp, when it comes to the Cosmos, and theoretical physics, seems to come in fits and starts; ... but mostly fits (sigh).

However I learned many, many years ago that complete befuddlement and frustration is just a good excuse to pour myself another Bourbon.

Cheers! Robert

Politics....another reason we may not live longer than the Dinosaurs and they were just unlucky with that asteroid......

It does not matter how many departments or investments you make. As long as the lefts agenda of dumbing down higher education to admit the group of the month, public schools place more importance on a student feeling "included" and "feel good about themselves" than on the self respect of the expectaion of success of learning nothing will get better. You can not build a successful program when mediocrity is the result of graduating to meet a quota rather than standard.

Dennis-387683, stop with your Fox dribble.

The GOP has time and time again paid nothing but lip-service to education. They start hollow programs and then fail to approve any real funding. And the first thing the GOP cuts is education. People are fed up with it.

.

U.S. 1776 ........ sounds like your indoctrination took. You poor misguided citizen. Left agenda has failed in civilization after civilization throughout recorded history, it is not anything new.

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."-- Thomas Jefferson

He was right.

@AB-1981 - Yeah? That's what they said about Apollo and the Shuttle. See you up there....

AB-1981,

We also didn't have the technology to go to the moon until we went. Your comment is baseless, negative rhetoric. Not to mention all the technologies that were derived from the moon program that we now use and take for granted every day. You want a better world... think (and do) positive. Just sayin'.

EDIT: Think about CCD's (look it up) which are used in all modern video cameras (including your mobile phone), oh and back lit control panels which are now in all the vehicles we drive... just to name two.

Yes, but AB-1981's point is that we made it a priority and made the investment to develop the technology to get to the moon. If you don't make the investment, it never happens.

You can not build a successful program when mediocrity is the result of graduating to meet a quota rather than standard.

And, we'll never have a successful programs as long as the GOP and its christo-taliban allies insist on teaching mythology instead of science to our students.

"Reaching out to the stars"? We can't even get to space without paying the Russians for a ride. Not one country can even reach for the moon. The Europeans that reached the New World did not land on the eastern seaboard and suddenly shoot for California.

While NASA is government-affiliated, going to the moon and establishing colonies and actually landing a human being on Mars should have no Republican versus Democrat factor. We should all be doing what we can to put funding into space exploration! While I'm saddened that NASA's budget was so terribly cut and that we aren't sending people onto the moon at the moment, I'm glad that private companies and grants are picking up the slack in the planning and funding process. I'm totally in favor if NASA picking up all the hottest engineers and scientists from all the best schools in the country and tasking them as think tanks, working out the math and the science needed, doing the experiments. Why keep it hush-hush when someone out there in the regular academic world may be able to come up with the solutions to the problems that NASA is currently facing with engineering and making extended space travel safe for our astronauts again? While I applaud the sacrifice and mourn the loss of the astronauts we have lost, it's been way too long not to work on sending someone else up for newer and better missions into space.

AB, You're right, WE can not do it, nor could we EVER do it, nor could any other country do it by itself. This project wouldn't be about competition between countries, but about cooperation.

Cooperation: A word feared and hated by clerics and politicians the world over. LOL

@UnitedStates1776

the top 10 credit-rated economies of the world are socialist free-market countries. The U.S. isn't even in the top 20. So you can stop with the Fox proaganda

Maybe you shouldn't criticize others for repeating propaganda if you're going to do the same thing yourself. Hong Kong is the #1 economy in the world and it is the gold standard for capitalism. Most of the other top ten are tiny little countries with little, if any, racial diversity. The idea that a country with the diversity and size of the US could successfully adapt a system used by countries with populations smaller than some states is FAR beyond naïve.

Also, according to S&P there are only 16 economies rated higher than the US and Fitch and Moody's still give the US the top, triple A, rating. So your "not even in the top 20" drivel is total nonsense.

@Backcountry: Hong Kong is a "Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China," last I looked.

Here's a citation for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong

Not exactly a "capitalist" nation.

Unfortunately you are right and its not our technology that will hold us back its our reptilian brains. We are nothing but scavengers. Heartless opportunists.

We have no right going to other planets until we learn how to manage this one.

Sorry there Common Sense Ed, not all of humanity is an embarrassment.

Tom wrote:

Unfortunately you are right and its not our technology that will hold us back its our reptilian brains. We are nothing but scavengers. Heartless opportunists.

So, it's not our fault, right?

It will go no where. realistically it has all the appearence of political grandstanding. Small budget, limited resources, the P.C. correct ethnic choice of "leader" of the P.C. correct gender. Do you honestly think this is a real effort?

Gary, I completely agree with you. Mae will build the foundation and when time time comes hand over the keys to the next visionary. As with all things being built by mankind, a solid foundation is the key to future development, and she is amply qualified to do just this.

Dennis, may we infer from that comment that a white male would have been preferable?

I remember that at least 2 women qualified for the Mercury program but were shoved aside because space travel was a "man's job" just like everything else important back in the 1950s. I hope that's not where you're coming from. I think Dr. Sally Ride, Col. Eileen Collins, and Dr. Jemison might have different viewpoints.

It is going to take time, maybe a thousand years. But as they say every journey begins with a single step.

...the P.C. correct ethnic choice of "leader" of the P.C. correct gender. Do you honestly think this is a real effort?

So, a program can only be viable if a male WASP is leading? The world has changed since 1950, in case you haven't noticed.

Dennis is stuck in the 50's; he called it the "good old days". Glad the rest of us have evolved leaving him behind.

The sad thing is that the 1950's really weren't the "good old days", unless one was a straight male WASP who didn't have the misfortune of being tagged as a communist.

Dennis, I think you are way wrong on this one. The woman has an absolutely stellar resume' (no pun intended), which you couldn't possibly have read. She has worked her butt off to get where she is. I envy her work ethic and fortitude even more than her talent.

I don't believe Dennis meant that a woman is incapable of accomplishing the mission at hand, merely stating that a combination of factors makes this appear to be a public relations/politically correct decision, not one made using the scientific method. Mae Jemison may very well be the most qualified person for the position, but the project might be taken a little more seriously if there was a larger allocation of capital for it. With only $500,000 set aside, it doesn't seem like a very ambitious attempt considering the possible ramifications of a successful voyage to another star system. It doesn't have to be a man or a white woman to make it successful--it could be a hermaphrodite astronomer from Zimbabwe or Thailand if they were the most qualified person to lead the project. In science, the only colors that matter are those of the electromagnetic spectrum and the doppler shift (you get my point). As a species, all variations of the HUMAN race (genetically no more than 1.5% different) need to join together and ensure the survival of life originating from our common home of origin--Earth. We are all made of the same material--the same stardust rains down and becomes part of what we are. We have all evolved from a common point into the beautiful variations of life on this planet. If the theory of the big bang is completely correct, all matter--including your cells and my cells--were joined at one infinitely small point in space at one time. We need to forget our differences and concentrate on finding and rejoining with other variations of life throughout the universe. It is our nature to seek out the unknown and try to understand it...

The only series in the franchise I couldn't make myself watch.

Haha we just started watching that on Netflix. Definitely nowhere near as good as other series!

I can picture it now. 100 years will be multi-generational, by the third generation of "no you can not go out and play until you do your homework" that ship will hold the best computer game players in the universe.

Dennis-387683, the 100 years is just to BUILD the first starships. Voyage transit times would depend on the state of engine technology at that time.

.

OBXRon, that's the spirit, total pessimism.

BTW, we are supplying ISS just fine.

The new private supply ships are on schedule for their testing.

And NASA is going to target some very big deep space things rather than just play merry-go-round with low-earth orbit shuttles.

.

$500.000 is just enough to get an office, maybe two computers and an article on MSN. A political ploy.

@OBXRon... so we're to just close out any thinking of the future because we have problems to face now? That's the kind of thinking that got us into the current crisis to begin with. Reaganonmics.. short sighted, narrow minded, narrow focussed, blame game political solutions that created far more problems than they began to address. I'll put my token on planning for the future and not on living in the past, thank you very much.

Given that we have flushed about $700 billion down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years and we'll be looking at well over a couple of Trillion Dollars by the time all is said...

and your seriously worried about $500k ?

I think some perspective needs to be used.

Dennis ... apparently you don't know where to shop if you think that $500K will rent an office and buy a couple of computers.

Yeah, how's that Voodoo Reaganomics multi-trillion dollar fiasco and all those last 30 years of GOP war spending working out for you? Hope you made a lot of money on those wars because your families share is about $160,000.

.

"Hey, Cristoforo! Why are you wasting the King and Queen's money taking a bunch of ships across the ocean? Everybody KNOWS that if you don't fall off the edge you'll get eaten by sea monsters. We can sail up and down the coast of Spain and trade with Portugal and Italy just fine. Why bother chasing around for some new way to get to China?"

If he'd known about it, Doubting Tom would probably have had the same reaction when DARPA provided seed funding for the Internet.

Doubting Tom,

We pi$$ed away more money than that every 3 minutes in Iraq.

Seriously, you can read about it at the library - or on line. Besides, they are not suggesting that the technology will be ready in 2014, only a probe design. You can design a car without having all the specifics of the engine technology. The workable fusion engine would likely be decades down the road. Seriously!

You don't have to have the specifics of the engine, but you do have to have some basic idea. How big, fuel source, weight, coolant (if req'd), transfer of power, etc. When I said power plant, I meant a basic design, not the specs. Do you have any ideas of those? Seriously?

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) may be ready to start experiments by then.

Maybe the Iranians will have a functional reactor by 2014. Yeah... Then they can claim space travel as their "peaceful use" of nuclear technology.

I think we should clean up this planet first....so much work to be done here......where and when would the pay off be from manned missions to where ever....just send those probes to view the cosmos....that's good enough.....

bigben ... if the Europeans had taken that attitude, the New World would have never been discovered.

Interstellar travel is not going to happen if we don't begin to seriously explore the possibilities, as is being done here.

Agreed. I used to support space travel whole-heartedly. But we have too many problems on this planet to be using up resources for a small group to run off into space. Most of us know far less about what's in our oceans than we do about our galaxy. Let's spend these resources on improving conditions here for ALL the people.

The drain on our resources to begin exploring the concept is microscopic.

The idea is to explore technologies that would allow us to sustain ourselves on a long-term journey into space. Mike N., why not explore living underwater? A few possibilities that seem to jibe with the eventual goals of the program are making a self-contained environment (like that inside a spaceship)...why not do that in a biosphere underwater? Why not treat it like a spaceship and have it produce everything the inhabitants need for a year?

In KY...we already know what it is required to survive underwater, and we can do it. We should develop it further instead of following this pipe dream of traveling LIGHT YEARS away for a CHANCE to find a habitable planet. Undersea at least we have the gravity we need to sustain molecular development and fetal development. There's no lethal radiation. There's food and oxygen - and the safety of dry land available. To survive space you need to develop ludicrous lift and propulsion systems, gravity-less food , plumbing, etc, health concerns of molecular nature and atrophy in weightless environments. I mean, imagine if the human crew CAN manage to survive this trip in zero-G's , then make it to a planet with Earth plus 4 G's or something. They would be crushed or rendered otherwise incapacitated. All this to get a handful of our species to some rock somewhere while the rest of us die of here. It's kind of showing hubris to me. When our planet's time is up, our species' time is up. It's just nature running its course.

We will identify habitable planets and pick several of the best for the first missions -- long before it's time to start building starships.

they better have weapons on that ship

When our planet's time is up, our species' time is up. It's just nature running its course.

No, that's just a defeatist attitude. We are the ONE species that has the ability to plot its own survival and to outlive its home planet, if only it has the vision to do so. Ensuring the survival of the species? Now, that's nature.

Barry - that's not defeatist. It's realist. That's not "nature" ensuring survival of the fittest. That would be nature having us eveolve in to living without air and food in a weightless environment, immune to deadly radiation. What this is is technology running amock. People say that if early explorers felt that way they'd have never discovered new lands- but it's hardly the same thing. We traveled the oceans because even primitive man could hold his breath and float, then swim, then hold on to a floating log, them sit in a floating log. Why? Because the laws of physics and nature did not need to be broken to do so. Try as we might, we cannot fly without propulsion. We cannot live without oxygen and food. All three of which are non-existant once we leave the surface of the planet. Soending billions to ship a relative tiny handful of people off to their likely demise in the radioation filled void of zer-G space is NOT worth it - if we even got them on their way. The liklihood of them finding and worse yet, successfully landing on a habitable planet is just about zilch - and they ain't going to be able to pick up and try again if it doesn't work out. We have far more things to discover and use responsibly here on Earth before throwing money and energy away on this silly pipedream. Like the Universe gives a dump about our species in the grand scheme of things. It's utter hubris to think we MUST spend billions so that a few of us can continue living in a drifting zero-G casket while the rest die off on Earth. When the time is up, time is up and nature will continue on its path without us, here, there, wherever.

We cannot live without oxygen and food. All three of which are non-existant once we leave the surface of the planet.

Actually, it is not hard to find oxygen in space. They have found massive amounts of water on the moon and mars. A simple process can split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Even you can do that with a battery, a cup of water and a couple wires.

"Actually, it is not hard to find oxygen in space.".........are you serious? There ain't no moons or planets to just drop in on for supplies, like some kind of subspace Wawa, when traveling light years through the Deep Space void . Not that it would be so simple to derive oxygen from them even if there were umpteen planets around to choose from. They can't fly a Deep Space sustainable ship with multiple heavy-lift launch systems to get them in and out of god-knows what gravity fields, even IF they found a planet with derivable oxygen. Real space is not Star Trek folks. I'm beginning to think this whole exercise simply exposes typical Americans' utter misunderstanding of Science and Physics.

Mike, you do realize that all this is going to take TIME, don't you? Of course there isn't any gas stops out there. Not now. If humanity can preserver in spite of attitudes and ignorance, in a thousand years humanity could have things like travel to another star. By then it may even be common.

On the other hand we could all just bury our heads in the sand and wait until the Earth is no longer habitable.

Gateway to heaven my friend

Really? I guess you favorite President Schrub's "No Child Left Behind" has escaped your memory. As a resident of Texas, I can tell you that was the worst policy EVER.

It's a good thing you weren't consulted for Sputnik and Apollo.

Life is precious and sending men into space with these technologies is not as glamorous
but a whole lot safer.

Life IS precious, which is why it is foolish leave all of it here on Earth. Are all of your investments in the same stock or mutual fund? I doubt it. That's because you know the benefits of diversification. Well, the concept is applicable here. We've got to diversify and not depend entirely on this one tiny planet to sustain mankind.

This is about common sense and a modest program that I have outlined would have accomplished a lot more. Lee apparently could care what it costs and Barry is willing to risk human life for what? Oh you think you can establish a sustainable base on Mars, yea right. America is broke we can't afford this huge waste of money. Soon it won't matter if you have your money in stocks or mutual funds when our government destroys our currency. Get your head out of the clouds.

ahhh, how foolish for one to accept a limitation that one sets upon oneself. There is no easier way to fail than to tell yourself something simply cannot be done.

Mr. Wizard ... I guess you would've opposed the development of the airplane, considering how many lives were lost by designers, test pilots, etc.... After all, ships are good enough, right? Even the westward movement of this country entailed a significant loss of life. No significant advance comes without risk.

As for the US being "broke", that is a matter of will, not resources. But, in the private sector, companies that are losing money do not decimate their R&D budgets, at least not the companies that are ultimately successful. Any entity that doesn't evolve will stagnate and die. That's true of religions, companies, countries and species. Eliminating our R&D is a recipe for ensuring that the 21st century will be the "Chinese Century", not the "US Century."

Just The Facts-3657984:

I think I might have missed something. Why would our "sister society" have to live in our sliver of time? Why couldn't Dolphins produce radio waves? How many things that AREN'T Marconi radios produce a radiation signals that might hint at intelligence? Anything that told us whether or not we're "alone" (literally, or in a simply practical sense) would be worthwhile, wouldn't it?