Nasa's and DARPA's Hundred Year Starship

[bobbymike]

NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete” Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,” with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA.

“You heard it here,” said Worden at “Long Conversation,” a Long Now Foundation event in San Francisco. “We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund,” Dr. Worden added. “I absolutely will be on board.” (No further details on this are available from NASA at this time.)

“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” he explained. “Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.” (Worden was in fact fired by President George W. Bush, he also revealed.)

New propulsion ideas

Worden also mentioned some nearer-term ideas that NASA is exploring (and that are not necessarily related to the Starship program). One new propulsion concept is electric propulsion, said Worden. “Anybody that watches the [Star Trek] Enterprise, you know you don’t see huge plumes of fire. Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds.”

Worden said NASA is also funding a new program to develop microwave thermal propulsion for getting to orbit. “The idea is if you can beam power to the spaceship, so you don’t have to carry all the fuel; and then you use that energy from a laser or microwave power to heat a propellant; it gets you a pretty big factor of improvement. I think that’s one way of getting off the world.”

The principal investigator of this program is Dr. Kevin L.G. Parkin, who invented the technology and described it in his PhD thesis. He is assisted by Creon Levit and David Murakami. Caltech grad student Dmitriy Tseliakhovich has also formed a company called Escape Dynamics LLC to commercialize the microwave thermal propulsion project. (Tseliakhovich’s team project at Singularity University this past summer grew out of Parkin’s work.)

The rest of the story at the link plus a video interview.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/nasa-ames-worden-reveals-darpa-funded-hundred-year-starship-program

 

[Catalytic]

New propulsion ideas

Worden also mentioned some nearer-term ideas that NASA is exploring (and that are not necessarily related to the Starship program). One new propulsion concept is electric propulsion, said Worden. Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds.”

This worden guy is clearly a member of the tinfoil hat brigade! we should combine all our sarcastic powers to berate him!.....

Unless he's telling the truth? Is it possible his sources are better than ours? Will there really be a prototype of an interplanetary spaceship in a few years?

Electric propulsion? common wisdom (on this site at least) would suggest this is nonsense on a par with that of stealth blimps! Where is the evidence of the development work on electric propulsion that has lead to Worden's comments (lack of public evidence does not mean it does not exist privately I suppose).

Some very interesting comments in the pod cast of "long conversation", life on Mars? this from the AMES director!

 

[Nik]

IIRC, ion-drive efficiencies have improved, and a recent probe used this approach. Snag is to boost faster and longer, centi-g rather than micro-g, needs a lot more power. In the absence of fusion, and given a growing shortage of the appropriate radio-isotopes, this means fission. But, you'd need to change various international agreements and appease the concerned folk who fear a deflagration on the pad. Never mind those nukes littered over Spain following a bomber collision, there was a Russian satellite which scattered itself across Canada and took megabucks to clean up...

Of course, if you can have a fission pile...
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html

 

[Catalytic]

Worden speaks about "solar powered electric propulsion" not ion engines.

Dyson's Orion nuclear propulsion system is discussed and an interesting angle on why Kennedy hated it and why the "German" method was used

 

[Orionblamblam]

Electric propulsion? common wisdom (on this site at least) would suggest this is nonsense on a par with that of stealth blimps!

What the hell are you babbling about? Ion engines (i.e. electric spacecraft propulsion) have been built and flown for damn near fifty years.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

SOLAR ELECTRIC (ION) PROPULSION

http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html

Catalytic, I suggest you change your attitude or refrain from posting.

 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

As reported by Alan Boyle at http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/01/5392035-ride-a-starship-not-for-a-century, DARPA have given a bit more detail in a news release:

[quote author=http://www.darpa.mil/news/2010/starshipnewsrelease.pdf]
[...]

The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned spaceflight a century from now. This goal will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources. The year long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed.

'The 100-Year Starship study is about more than building a spacecraft or any one specific technology,' said Paul Eremenko, DARPA coordinator for the study. 'We endeavor to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies and cross-cutting innovations across a myriad of disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology, economics, and psychological, social, political and cultural sciences, as well as the full range of engineering disciplines to advance the goal of long-distance space travel, but also to benefit mankind.'

[...]
[/quote]

 

[Stargazer]

"The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned spaceflight a century from now. This goal will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources. The year long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed."

Typically the kind of verbose sentences that are completely vague and almost utterly devoid of meaning but make a big impression on decision-makers...

 

[dannydale]

"The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned spaceflight a century from now. This goal will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources. The year long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed."

Typically the kind of verbose sentences that are completely vague and almost utterly devoid of meaning but make a big impression on decision-makers...

It came across as a "Look we can speak 'Wall Street'-ese; please don't kill this off because you can't immediately print money with it!" to me.