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Subscribe to RSSFrom April 15, 2010: Former astronaut Mae Jemison tells MSNBC she believes President Barack Obama's plans for NASA will help the agency move forward. Jemison is to lead the "100 Year Starship" effort.
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.
In the 20 years since then, Jemison has founded several ventures — including The Jemison Group, a technology design and consulting company; and the Houston-based Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, which takes on educational projects. Jemison, a 55-year-old Alabama native who has experience as a physician and a Peace Corps worker as well as an astronaut, played a prominent role in facilitating the 100 Year Starship symposium organized by NASA and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Florida last fall.
One of the follow-ups from that seminar was to be the award of a $500,000 contract from DARPA to continue study of the technological, political and social requirements for ultra-long-term projects such as interstellar space missions. Several ventures put in proposals, and one of the groups that didn't win the contract, the Tau Zero Foundation, said in this week's email update that the contract was going to a team "led by an ex-astronaut."
The BBC identified the ex-astronaut as Jemison, based on the text of an unreleased letter from DARPA. It also reported that Jemison's foundation was teaming up with two other groups, Icarus Interstellar and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.
NASA file
Jemison was the first black woman in space in 1992.
DARPA has not yet publicly announced the selection, and my efforts to contact the agency's representatives have been unsuccessful so far. But after the BBC's story, the report was confirmed on the Centauri Dreams blog by Paul Gilster, who is affiliated with the Tau Zero Foundation. Gilster said Jemison's organization "now takes on the challenge of building a program that can last 100 years, and might one day result in a starship."
Adam Crowl, director of Icarus Interstellar, elaborated in a blog comment:
"... Project Icarus will keep running as it has since 2009, and the end point will be an interstellar probe design, chiefly fusion-propelled in the boost phase. That’s due at some point in 2014.
"Icarus Interstellar is a broader banner for a whole group of interstellar related research projects, Project Icarus being just one, which will be producing designs and doing basic research with the common goal of building the technical foundation required for eventual successful interstellar flight.
"Now in light of this news, we’ll be under the banner of the 100 Year Starship Organization, which covers more than just the technical aspects. Each of the triad came to our happy union with different strengths and emphases – Mae Jemison’s organization covering education and broader social goals, the Foundation for Enterprise Development covering innovative organization and operational approaches, and Icarus Interstellar covering the technical aspects. Together we’ll be working towards an organization that will last 100 years and produce a viable interstellar technology, with benefits for all humankind."
The $500,000 DARPA grant is intended to serve as seed money for the 100 Year Starship Organization. Meanwhile, the founder of Tau Zero, former NASA researcher Marc Millis, suggested in his email update that Tau Zero would lower its profile:
"It is too soon to know how this selection will affect Tau Zero's goal to rigorously and impartially guide progress toward interstellar flight. With insufficient funding to go around, I feel that it would be a disservice to the community for Tau Zero to attempt to compete with this new organization, especially considering that this new organization now has significantly more than an order of magnitude more funding. I hope they serve the community well."
Millis said Centauri Dreams would "continue to operate as an impartial and articulate news source and discussion forum on all things interstellar."
Courtesy of Adrian Mann
An artist's impression shows the Icarus starship accelerating past Jupiter, gaining a valuable boost in speed with the help of the gas giant's gravity, slingshotting it toward its interstellar destination.
Jemison has made a name for herself not only as the first black woman in space, but also as the first real-life astronaut to appear on a "Star Trek" episode. How big of a role will she and her partners play in turning the "Star Trek" vision into reality, and on what time scale? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
Update for 9 p.m. ET Jan. 9: DARPA confirmed the selection of Jemison's foundation in a brief statement attributed to Paul Eremenko, DARPA program manager, but indicated that the deal was not yet completely done:
"We can confirm that the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence has been selected for negotiation for a grant award for the 100 Year Starship effort. We have no further comment until the grant is awarded."
More about interstellar flight:
- Reality check for starships
- Billionaires wanted for starship plan
- Visionaries ponder 100-year starship
- Sex poses big challenge for interstellar travel
- Destination for first starship? Someplace that's livable
- The best options for flying to faraway stars
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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Lots of issues with this, Political sandstorm by Obama--why are we "appeasing" muslim radicals??? WE the US--black, white or green are 'infidels'. He needs to understand that to the muslims HE is their "public enemy #1. He has three strikes, A, the leader of the enemy, B, they are more prejudiced than the back woods rednecks in white sheets, C, he claims to be Christian. I am not slamming any professed follower of Muhommad that follows the peaceful teachings of the Quran, similar teachings to the bible--I mean the radical zealots who are on a Jehad. Next problem-fusion propulsion----so far fusion can't blow it's own way out of a paper bag except in something that weighs as much as a medium sized mountain. We may never get it right so at this point it is "trekkie phantasy". Personally, I think we need 'phasers' first. Next problem--'seed' money my butt. Porkbelly boondogle!!!! Next--OK so she's black--good for her and be done with it, instead she is riding on a political cushion created by a black president who is "OVER" compensating blacks that may or may not actually deserve help on their own merit. Just because she was an "astronaut" does not mean she was smart or tough enough to be the 'right stuff', just a black woman that was politically correct. Other than being a physician, also good for her, I would even wonder what her grades were in med school. I know, I know, not fair, blah, blah, well--sorry for ranting--not.
Sorry folks we can NOT afford this bs, flush the project. Or borrow more money from China.
It is a great idea and this is more of a combined think tank. We already know that the fuel will have to be something that does not exist or is not developed, any petroleum or petroleum chemical derived fuel will be out of the question.
The first steps are the hardest in any venture. It is like the first day of school. It was never easy for anyone that I know.
I think that these people could use some help and that they may find that astral travel may have to be one of their focuses to learn the technologies required to build ships that can seemingly dematerialize and move to another location in space materialized. It may sound far-fetched now but it is with all new fields of study and their are some very good minds at work in these explorations today.
In 50-100 years there may be a combined effort between the two fields. At one time out of body experiences were attributed to crackpots and religious nuts. Today the field is being studied by neither of those types because it takes an open-minded person to explore.
When we have astronauts that can leave their body on earth and travel to other solar systems and learn about them then we will truly have evolved.
I certainly hope that NASA and our government leaders who advocated the admission of homosexuals into the military are not going to ban homosexuals from this mission. They have as much right as anyone to go. Come on Liberals get behind this and demand assurances the homosexuals will not be over looked. Where's the ACLU on this? If new planet is colonized it should be colonized with gay people as well.
To: softdude
Actually there are some very interesting projects on the horizon from a couple of American companies. One of these being Shackleton Energy which plans to place a mining base on the moon and a fueling station in low earth orbit. So even if the American governments' focus is towards the big deep-space projects, there are still many commercial interests pressing towards a permanent presence on the moon.
So they picked up one of the dumbest race in our specie? Look at Africa and tell me how good they are, Obama is racist so he tends to favor blacks.
Here we go again what could be a perfectly interesting discussion gets hijacked into a political forum. Well after tonight's debate I think it obvious that the GOP is solely responsible for the dumbing down of America. We need free thinkers in space, heavily armed of coarse, and yet I don't see that it matters they may be gay or whatever. Let's leave the hate and bigotry on this world and start fresh, so leave Fox and friends and the rest of the Gestapo types here to wallow in their hatred.(And stupidity)
This is so cool. Those of us whom want to make it happen will and the rest of you will be left in the dust. to paraphrase an acquaintance paraphrase of Davy Crockett, : Y'all can go to hell, I'm going to Proxima Centauri.
aimed at those who lack the heart to dream, of course.
.
It's about @!$%#ing time. We should already have a city on the moon.
Should start building it now but build it big, 2 or 3 hundred miles long, useing materials from the moon or asteroids. Put some old off the shelf engines in it. Use it around our solar system while were constantly upgradeing it and its systems.
In order to make a manned interstellar discussion meaningful, we must first master the four basic ingredients that are required to make it successful (over 100% reliability).
Propulsion
a) Launching huge amount of mass to earth’s orbit and to a moon base where the spacecraft will be assembled and tested.
b) If it is real that dark energy exists and accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe and that it permeates all of space, then it is clearly the energy source for interstellar travel. Unfortunately we know very little about it let alone harnessing it.
Spacecraft Integrity
I believe the best course of design for a failsafe spacecraft is to make a seamless structure with all operational components double tasking as the spacecraft strength members. (I.e. the minimum or no moving elements)
We must also fully understand the aging process of the vehicle and make one with infinite life and/or come up with processes to “regenerate” the limited life items from vacuum space.
Human Safety
This is likely to be the most complicated of all the problems. Radiation, zero-gravity, confinement, emotional stability, human errors, medical needs, food and water, and on and on.
After 60 years in space we have only scratched the surface in understanding these issues. Sure NASA could and will present tons of volumes of data on the issues but without any solutions. Their design specifications to date, to make the past missions possible, are to put operational margins only sufficient for a theoretical 100% successful mission. (I can tell you no mission flown has ever been 100% successful)
We must do better to define all possible life cycles that could arise and ensure that the crew has sufficient resources to resolve all outcomes. I do not believe 100% reliability is enough for such a mission. By that I mean the margin of error can only be positive to remove any chance of unforeseen failure modes. In order to achieve such unprecedented engineering concept we must design machines that are capable of fixing themselves. We are not even close to understanding the concept let alone start experimenting.
Ironically, we can turn this from the most complicated of problems to the simplest by replacing (completely removing) the human with robots, intelligent and expert systems. We can do this because the only ingredient we have a good handle on to maintain our control of the spacecraft is communications.
Communications
Although our systems and understanding of the requirements are not complete, communications is by far the furthest in making an operational system for such a mission.
Conclusions
Yes, you can say we can only see the tip of the iceberg of information that is required to configure such a mission, but it is not hopeless. I believe the answers can be found in our methodologies we have used to study all the sciences over the last century. Not necessarily the specific theories but how we advanced to these theories. We need to invent and develop the mathematics of space exploration. Assembling pieces of metal together and filling it with combustible material is as crude as fire, the round wheel, the helical screw thread, and vacuum tubes. We need a spacecraft that will work and blend in the physics (“fabric of space”) of vacuum not against it.
We need a lot more science, (including physics, chemistry and biology) than what we have so far.
I grew up on Sci-Fi.. My idols were Asimov, Ellison, Herbert, Sagan, Poul and McCaffrey, just to name a few.. The list is quite endless really.. I adored Star Trek (all of them) and Star Wars and never missed any movie or TV show that had the slightest tinge of space travel, the occult or 'otherworldlyness' about it.. It has been my dream since childhood to go into space.. But, my dreams long ago gave way to the reality of the human race, it's terrible abusive treatment of this planet we live on and it's unquenchable desire to destroy what it deems unnecessary for profit, be it living or dead!
We still see ourselves as the 'center of the Universe'.. Our egos know no bounds and we seem unable to change.. The fact that we are still killing each other off in war after war pretty much proves my point.. Technologically, we have advanced a thousand-fold since I picked up my first sci-fi novel, which was Ted Sturgeon's 'More Then Human'.. How ironic the novel depicted a new 'evolution' of humanity with the creation of a human 'gestalt' when the facts are we still act like apes, barely out of the 'knuckle-dragging' stage..
There is no way we are ready to 'boldly go where no one has gone before'.. We have way, WAY too much growing up to do before we are unleashed on an unsuspecting galaxy! We can't even control our own over-breeding and we are STILL stripping planet Earth of it's finite resources like some kind of virus run amok, EVEN when we KNOW we are killing ourselves with our unstoppable greed!
No, my dreams of humanity in space lost it's appeal when I lost my respect for a species, that over the past 6 decades, has shown no growth, no compassion for each other and the planet we live on.. God forbid, we should ever meet up with some gentle, kind unsuspecting Beings that have something we want.. They wouldn't stand a chance...
Shocking that Obama just happened to pick the first black woman in space to lead this effort.
I'm sure it's because she's the most qualified person in the whole country, right?
I hate seeing an astronaut giving Or Thinking they need to give Any Political consent to a president's vision. Makes me wonder if they are Qualified or there because they are willing to be political !
Seriously, a 100 year star ship project?
A: where not going to be building anything like that for at least 100 years. Why, our technology way to limited. Making plans for anything that far in the future is a complete waste of time because you have no guarantee that when the technology finally does come about that would make it possible weather those people will even consider your information.
Pentagon, why don't you work on a more current problem. Like how to stay out of the middle east indefinitely.
What part of:
"to continue study of the technological, political and social requirements for ultra-long-term projects such as interstellar space missions."
didn't you understand?
Engineers and scientist do this, not pilots. Another Solendra scandal in the making.
go where and do what ?.....who would want to go into the unknown...knowing they'll never get back and find nothing of interest out there ... what a waste...this money could be used better right here at home doing something constructive...like a new shuttle fleet..all ready proven to work and replace what we had...
sd
We can't even manage to get ourselves onto the moon to fully examine it's potential resources, and they're worried about multi-generational missions beyond the solar system?!?!?!!? These people don't have their priorities straight.
This is so bogus ... no craft, no technology for interstellar travel, just a pipe dream. On top of it all it has the adolescent knee-jerk veneer of an opportunistic PC racial and gender-obsessed statement in picking a woman and a minority. Oh, get serious! Do it on your own dime! Stop wasting taxpayers' money.
Take away from productive useful programs, and patronize the muslims and give a 'same race' friendly pork barrel appointment to someone to study visiting stars with our current technology. You all elected him, you deserve what you get. Fools!
Lets send all the 1%ers on this spaceship and get them off this planet, that will give the rest of us a chance to get a better life
Congratulations!
Put Obama on it tomorrow and send it as far from earth as you can.
She talks of moving things ahead...an even better way is to strap BHO to a missile or interstellar launch vehicle and send his ass packing to Alpha Centauri. Problem solved. Quite efficient as well!