DARPA's 100 Year Starship

The day someone can convince me of a compelling business case for private industry to invest in ANY beyond Earth orbit, long-duration exploratory/scientific mission...is the day I will become a believer.

Until then, Commercial Space will be ruled by the almighty dollar (nothing wrong with that, per se), and will be limited to LEO commercial and government satellite launches, and possibly millionaire/billionaire space tourism.

Tritium, probably the day someone finds out there's a trillion dollar asteroid.

It'll be successful if it gets people start thinking about one-way trips to certain destinations or at a certain point after initial exploration. That discussion needs to be had. The first new world explorers and global circumnavigation started for economic reasons, but within several decades, started moving out onto land to claim and live on.

That needs to happen again. Maybe for America. Maybe for the entire world. But that is the way after two or three trips to Mars mid century, we don't cease trips back until the mid 22nd century. People living there will be the anchor to give going back.

I really think this is the kind of thing that NASA should have been doing on a continuing basis; looking for the best ways, new processes, identifyng the technologies and information required to progress in aeronautics and space. Instead, NASA got into a mode of making sure they operated with as many people as they could afford, making it seem as complicated as possible while making as little progress as they were able.

If you won't leave the planet before it is "commercially viable" then Columbus never would have set sail for India (and find the new world). You spend money on exploration because you DON'T know whats out there.

Until then, Commercial Space will be ruled by the almighty dollar (nothing wrong with that, per se), and will be limited to LEO commercial and government satellite launches, and possibly millionaire/billionaire space tourism.

You do realize that there is a $250 billion dollar per year commercial space industry in an orbit that energy wise is more than half way to the Moon.

GEO that is.

This is a great idea in principle but will not work with in the United States due to ITAR restrictions.
May be good for other nations however.

Keep in mind this is a program to develop an *organization* that develops the technology, not a program to develop the technology.
http://www.100yss.org/
The key challenge is how to keep a variety of contributors -- companies, governments, investors, benefactors/foundations -- coordinated and active toward these goals across several decades (generations). We don't have a lot of background with organizations that are quite that patient and steadfast. Think Roman Catholic Church and branch out from there.

On century time scales, ITAR is a blip on the radar.

Because of ITAR and other technological restrictions each organization has become a hermetically sealed entity, each of which must maintain independent technological proficiencies and capabilities. If these technological proficiencies are shared with other companies with in the US there is a significant risk of leaks that can be considered ITAR violations or theift of intellectual property. Alas, the number of companies with in the US that have the in-house capabilities to build entire systems is steadily decreasing not increasing. Another result is that science and technological research is often ad-hoc and often not matured and integrated with larger systems but instead becomes some sort of high tech make work program not too dissimilar from welfare. With this fragmented environment of fear, the possibility of producing large space projects on the order of the Space Shuttle or Apollo is vastly diminished with in the borders of the United States. As for time scales, a century is only 4x 25 years. We have watch 25 years go by already. Therefore, to imagine watching another 4 generations go by with out significant results is not too difficult, particularly when the same activities are being tried over and over with different results being expected each time. My prognosis for the 100 Year Star Ship is that it will be a flash in the pan much like the X-30 National Aero-Space Plane (NASP). Nice feel good idea though.

The real challenge of envisioning the *organization* that enables a 100 year program is how to get multiple contributors to want to contribute, steadily, through multiple generations of managers. I don't think anyone has illusions about the difficulty of fostering those investments; but this is just about how to organize to tackle that problem.

Also I am not discounting or understating the burden of ITAR, because I have a decade of personal experience with it. However, I find the stovepiping effect you describe is not as serious as you say -- it's a time constant, not an airtight barrier. For the wild-ass blue-sky stuff I've been doing, from the time of invention it only takes a few years before everyone's talking about it. The advantage goes to the one who invents fastest, not the one who keeps secrets the best. For militarily-relevant stuff like launch vehicles, the time constant is probably more than a decade, but it's still a matter of time. I don't think there's anything that was a secret in 1960 that is still a tightly kept secret now.

The 100YSS is an admirable goal, and one that is needed in order to advance technological civilizations.
For what its worth the folks that worked on Gothic Cathedrals had the same problem. Workers that laid
the foundation often did not live to see the project completed. Part of the motivation was to contribute to some thing larger then ones self. An odd notion these days.

> I find the stove piping effect you describe is not as serious as you say

The problem with time is that the information may become available if it still exist. Aerojet at one point discarded a massive amount of material from past projects. This included original data sets, engineers notes, diagrams etc. Most likely a lot of one of a kind information. But those projects were not longer generating income and the warehouse was getting full. So one problem for the 100YSS is how to archive information for centuries instead of decades from multiple sources and maintain its availability continuously.

>The advantage goes to the one who invents fastest, not the one who keeps secrets the best.
Intersting point! By the need any help with wild-ass blue-sky projects see www bernhardsystems com

A simple answer - a whole solar system's worth of valuable resources there for the taking. A new opportunity for human expansion and exploration. New ground for the furthering of science and knowledge. Taking the next logical steps in our development as a species and as an intelligent civilisation. Better positioning ourselves both in terms of understanding, knowledge and experience to take our first steps beyond our own solar system one day. Maybe, finding extraterrestrial life somewhere in our solar system, or being better prepared to deal with the possible first contact that I think will occur at some point in our species future.

Think long term - think about humanity as a spacefaring, galactic civilisation in a few hundred years, whose survival over probably millions or even billions of years, is then assured.

None of that is possible if we don't venture beyond the confines of LEO. We remain stuck on the rock with no where to go, waiting for that inevitable asteroid, or comet with our name on it, whilst we steadily use up our resources and our population continues to grow.

Malcolm Davis,
Canberra, Australia

Malcom - Great statement! One of the best answers to THE question "WHY?"

As some of the above comments point out, this undertaking has some major obstacles to overcome with respect to acquiring and facilitating multinational potential contributors, as well as integrating the possible contributions of business competitors.  If 100YSS accomplishes absolutely nothing in terms of a starship, but makes progress with overcoming these obstacles, which affect very many industries and programs, I would consider it a major success and worth whatever amount of time and money is invested in it.

Steve

Thanks Brian. Its a difficult question to consider if you try to to think short-term, next decade timeframe, but a comparatively obvious one if you look at the big picture. I think half the problem is policy makers (I'm one myself with the Australian Government), don't have the luxury of thinking long-term or big picture because of fiscal and resource constraints, and because too often our political masters have a perspective that only stretches as far as the next election.

Malcolm Davis,
Canberra, Australia

Malcolm,

Both of your last two posts are gold.  You state plainly what so many of us know in our hearts and minds, but unfortunately the majority of people don’t see it.  Which leaves those most difficult of questions:  how do we change that?;  and have we the right to try and change it?  I wonder if perhaps we have a duty to try and change how people think about spending money on space (not in space).  For the time being, I think it’s going to take both commercial and taxpayer money to move forward, which means that people, the right people, will have to be convinced, in their own terms, that there are valid business cases to be pursued in space, long-term and short.

Steve

Many thanks Steve. Absolutely, we have a duty to try to change people's thinking on humanity's future in Space. But the challenge in doing so is enormous. The nature of Western Liberal Democracy means we are dealing with inherently a short-term political attention span, where debate and attention on Space issues must constantly struggle and fight for exposure to the public's perception against a myriad of other challenging issues which affect people directly and immediately. Proposing a long-term strategic approach to humanity's future in Space is intellectually sound, but politically challenging because modern societies are increasingly about fast policy processes and rapid change where the immediate and 'now' matters more than slow, steady goal-driven strategy towards 'tomorrow'.

I am hopeful that commercial space can accelerate our expansion into space, and make faster progress in going to new places, and do more than government can in space. But the risk is that commercial space will focus on the most immediate sources of profit, and ignore larger, but more challenging opportunities for gaining resource wealth, or most importantly, enhanced astrostrategic presence to enable us to do more on a continuing basis, further from Earth. So we'll get stuck in LEO again, with commercial space making a lot of money getting people and payload up into orbit, but not really taking the next steps. In terms of human space exploration, we've been stuck in LEO for almost forty years, and its time we moved on again.

So in that sense, the 100 year Starship programme is an important step, but it needs to ensure that technology take-aways - what is learned and gained from research towards an ultimate goal - can be applied directly to nearer-term space activities, so we can do more, more rapidly, at lower cost, than we have been able to do since 1972. I think also there needs to be increased debate and discussion both within government, and also in the commercial realm, and discussion directed at the broader population, as to what is possible, why going further and doing more is important, and where we are going as a spacefaring species, and why being a spacefaring species is important. That discussion is not really happening, because we are getting caught up at the tactical level - should we fund SLS or go with EELV man rated is an example. The tactical level debates are interesting, but ultimately, the means to get us out there depends on the purpose of going, and what we seek to achieve. I don't believe we've got the strategic level right yet.

I suppose, at the end of the day, can the big questions and the bold objectives - some of which I referred to earlier - inspire people to support a new approach to humanity in space? I don't know. When people are out of work, or facing losing their homes, or have little faith in political leaders who are not interested in, or connected with, the concerns of the voting public, then getting people to listen about where we could be going in the next 100 years of our species history is extremely difficult. But that does not mean the battle should not be fought. This forum is great for debate and discussion on both the tactical and strategic-level space, but somehow, the key is bringing the people along with us. How do we do that? We've got to get the message out, not just to the space enthusiasts, but the broader public as well, and we've got to make the reasons for becoming a spacefaring civilisation clear, easy to understand, and enticing enough to a broad sector of society that politicians will be forced to respond.

Malcolm Davis,
Canberra, Australia

What is needed is a very real sense that the future of humanity is important. Unfortunately, there are no theologies that I am aware of that have reverence for the far future as a central tenet. Conversely many religions promote some form of eventual mass destruction and even tend to look forward to it. When I was 7 my grate-grandfather planted a pine forest. I asked him why, since he would not be around to see it grow. He replied, no I won't be, but you will. The forest is still there today my how the trees have grown. It is this sense of the future, i think more then anything else, that is needed for the 100YSS.

Malcolm - I would like to correspond with you in regards to this topic. If interested, please contact me at brian@zz.com

Brian,

Your trees are and your great-grandfather’s thinking offer a message that perhaps we should heed.  The trees were here long before us and will no doubt be here long after we’re gone.  And all it took for them to succeed was passive persistence.  The trees stand their ground, bend with the wind not against it, and don’t ever give up.  We could do worse than follow their example.  Right; that’s enough metaphor for one day.

Steve