Posted on 10/29/2010 2:27:01 PM PDT by Dallas59
The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.
There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.
The 100-year ship would leave Earth with the intention of colonizing a planet, but it would likely be a one-way trip because of the time it takes to travel 35 million miles. That’s a daunting prospect, partly because of the ethical dilemma, and partly because it may be the only recourse.
"What psychological challenges should we anticipate in those who volunteer in good faith and with great courage, yet find themselves confronting misgivings or loneliness or feelings of rage or beset with mental illness?" asked Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
If there are no political ads on Mars, where can I sign up?
By the time this thing is ready they could send smart robots.
Give them a World of Warcraft account and they won’t even notice they’re on Mars.
can you imagine being stuck on a starship for your entire life with your ex-wife.
*shiver*
Which would probably buy just the toilet paper for a space mission. They are going to have to add a lot of zeros to those numbers to get anything like what is implied here.
100 years to travel 35 million miles? It takes just a few months to get to Mars. I think they mean nearest star.
All my Exs live in Texas. That’s why I live on Mars.
Whut?
If they were building a new super-secret propulsion system that could far surpass current chemical rocket designs, then it would take them about 1 week to get to Mars.
An "advanced" propulsion system that gives us the ability to make one-way trips to Mars? What are they talking about? Using squirrel farts so it takes 10x longer to get there?
Mars at its closest to Earth is around 55M, not 35M miles.
Must be the new Muslim math.
So sorry, that was 55M km....
Can we send the DUmmies back to their home planet?
Heh, and they’re hiding space aliens in area 51. When friends asked me whether I knew where to find the aliens I always told them that the aliens were hidden along the Texas border. For some reason they took a long time to catch on that I wasn’t talking about space aliens.
My recent lying, cheating, pompous, arrogant, and more-than-mildly-sociopathic ex-girlfriend would be bad enough...
No, but I can imagine a tragic life-support accident.
/johnny
Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel about her...:)
... and home schooling! Otherwise the 100 year ship will be full of corpses for the last half of the voyage.
No offense, I think it probably won’t work. Too small of a group, one or two people die and there’s not enough expertise left. Too many people, greater the chances of personality clash and factions developing. Leading to deaths and we’re back to scenario one (not enough expertise left).
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