100 Year Starship

The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) is a joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant project to a private entity. The goal of the study is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft, but rather to create a business plan that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel.

Origin

The 100 Year Starship effort was announced by NASA Ames Research Center director Pete Worden in a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference in October 2010. In a DARPA press release officially announcing the effort, program manager Paul Eremenko, who served as the study coordinator, explained that the endeavor was meant to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies to advance the eventual goal of interstellar space travel.

Foundation

The 100 Year Starship study is the name of a one-year project to assess the attributes of and lay the groundwork for an organization that can carry forward the 100 Year Starship vision. American physician and former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison made the winning bid as leader of her own foundation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, partnering with Icarus Interstellar and the Foundation for Enterprise Development. The consortium was awarded a $500,000 grant for further work. The new organization maintained the organizational name 100 Year Starship. Neither Icarus Interstellar nor the Foundation for Enterprise Development are any longer involved in 100 Year Starship although initial grant negotiations took place.

100

Year 100 (C) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Traianus and Frontinus (or, less frequently, year 853 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 100 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Events

By place

Roman Empire

Europe

Starship

A starship, starcraft or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel.

The term is mostly found in science fiction, because such craft have never been constructed though some credit the word being first used in the Oahspe: A New Bible bible (1882)

Whilst the Voyager and Pioneer probes have travelled into local interstellar space, the purpose of these unmanned craft was specifically interplanetary and they are not predicted to reach another star system (although Voyager 1 will travel to within 1.7 light years of AC +79 3888 in approximately 40,000 years). Several preliminary designs for starships have been undertaken through exploratory engineering, using feasibility studies with modern technology or technology thought likely to be available in the near future.

Research

To travel between stars in a reasonable time using rocket-like technology requires very high effective exhaust velocity jet, and enormous energy to power this, such as might be provided by fusion power or antimatter.

Mae Jemison

Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. After her medical education and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985 to 1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to form a company researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is a dancer, and holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. She is the current principal of the 100 Year Starship organization.

Background and education

Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama, on October 17, 1956, the youngest child of Charlie Jemison and Dorothy Green. Her father was a maintenance supervisor for a charity organization, and her mother worked most of her career as an elementary school teacher of English and math at the Beethoven School in Chicago.

IXS Enterprise

The IXS Enterprise is a conceptual superluminal spacecraft designed by NASA scientist Dr. Harold G. White, revealed at SpaceVision 2013, designed for the goal of achieving warp travel. The conceptual spacecraft would be a modified version of the Alcubierre drive. Dr. White is currently running the White–Juday warp-field interferometer experiment in order to develop a proof of concept for Alcubierre-style warp travel, if possible. The Alcubierre drive uses exotic-matter -not to be confused with anti-matter- to travel faster than light.

While the concept had been out since 2013 the design of "IXS Enterprise" was popularized in June 2014 after a series of media outlets reported on the conceptual artwork done by Dutch artist Mark Rademaker in collaboration with NASA. According to Mark Rademaker, over 1,600 hours have been spent on the conceptual artwork that he created.

The energy required to power the warp drive, according to White, is approximately the negative (negative energy is required for the Alcubierre drive concept to function) mass–energy equivalence of Voyager 1, which has a mass of approximately 700 kilograms. Using E=mc², −700 kilograms of mass is equivalent to ~−63 exajoules of energy (this number is not definitive and can be further reduced). The ship has two thick outer rings (to reduce required energy) that generate the warp field—a contraction of space ahead, and expansion of space behind it. The space inside the rings is optimized to fit more space for cargo, crew and equipment.