Starship Travel

NASA is teaming with DARPA, the Defense Department's agency that manages extremely high technology-- often breakthrough-- projects, to study what would be necessary for a human journey to a star within 100 years. The agencies are calling for "big ideas" that would push such a project forward from engineers, scientists, and science fiction writers. Pursuing the project, the agencies argue, would help develop technologies that would transform both the civilian economy and the military's capabilities.

Sending humans to another star within a century is an extremely ambitious goal. At the moment, going back to the Moon or sending humans to Mars any time soon seems beyond the grasp of the U. S. Government. Going to Mars would be an epochal human event, but going to another star would be several magnitudes of difficulty-- and significance-- beyond that.

Advances in technology will be important to allow us to undertake such a project, but the real obstacles may be political and financial. With that in mind, the group NASA and DARPA intend to set up to carry the project beyond the initial study should perhaps look to bringing other nations and private enterprise into the effort.