Former Woman Astronaut Wins Competition for Interstellar Space Travel Plan

Ken O’Brien

In later December, 2011 a branch of the U.S. Government notified the winner of a competition to plan for the first interstellar travel by human beings.

According to the BBC, “The Pentagon's premiere research agency has chosen a former astronaut to lead a foundation that is designed to take humanity to the stars.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and Nasa are sponsoring the project, known as the 100-Year Starship.

Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, was notified last week that she had won, according to a copy of a Darpa letter obtained by the BBC.” 

You may have heard of the X Prize. It gained notoriety in 2004 when one of its sexiest competitions was won by Mike Melvill and Burt Rutan. The Ansari X prize for suborbital spaceflight. The prize challenged teams to build private spaceships to open the space frontier.

Far less recognized was the competition being held to further the reality of interstellar human space flight. Ian O’Neill, Space Science Producer at Discovery News, and founder and editor of Astroengine.com, writes in Al Jazeera, “… the US defence research agency DARPA and space agency NASA have teamed up, pooled together $500,000 and sent a message to the biggest thinkers on the planet: Come up with a plan for a 100 year mission to a nearby star and we will give you the cash to further develop your idea.”

We’re all familiar with NASA, but you may not recognize DARPA. It is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration. Among other things it is widely credited with being the driving force behind the creation of the internet.

O’Neill addresses the practical constraints imposed upon competitors. “Known as the 100 Year Starship programme (100YSS), the idea is to design the mission profile of a human mission into interstellar space. Sadly, the groups vying for the $500K prize cannot assume anti-gravity will be discovered or the warp drive will be designed in the next few decades. They have to work with the technology we currently have to plan an interstellar mission that could be accomplished within the next 100 years.” The competition has its own website http://www.100yss.org/.

As a matter of historical perspective, the contract for the construction of the first electronic computer was issued by the U. S. Army in 1943. The project was based upon research conducted by the Army during World War II. The contract was completed in 1946 and resulted in ENIAC the first general purpose electronic computer.

The first paper on the concept of the internet was written in 1960. The first commercial ISP, The World, was launched in 1989.

Ms. Jemison’s foundation, The Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, had partnered with two other groups in pursuit of the award. They are Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to interstellar travel, and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

The two biggest issues in such a project are the matter of a propulsion system and the dynamics of multigenerational human interactions in space.

The propulsion issue has been a principal focus of Icarus Interstellar. The interstellar generational concerns are the focus of the earlier article by O’Neill.