ORLANDO — Faster than the speed of light. Much, much, much more powerful than space shuttle main engines that generate more horsepower than 28 locomotives. Able to skip through solar systems — entire galaxies — within the blink of an eye.
Look! Here in Orlando. A nerd herd is charting a course this weekend that could lead to interstellar travel within 100 years.
Sounds crazy, right?
It's pretty far out.
"But the technologies to do this are going to be here within the next 100 years. I have no doubt," said Philip Metzger, a physicist who works at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
"Do I believe it's possible? Yes," said Daniel DeMartino, 18, a Florida Institute of Technology student from New Jersey. "Will it happen? That, I don't know. That will depend on a whole lot of things."
And that's the crux of the matter.
Opening a new era of human travel between the stars isn't just a matter of developing the technology for a starship like the USS Enterprise, the one Captain Kirk commanded on "Star Trek."
There must be a political will to make the human species multi-planetary. There are questions about how to finance not only technology development but interstellar operations.
There are legal ramifications: who owns what in outer space and how might someone lay claim to interstellar territory.
There are ethical questions about who might go — and who would stay — and whether we might be sending people on a one-way trip.
So DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — and NASA's Ames Research Center in California teamed to create and administer a one-year program called the 100-Year Starship Study.
The idea is to stand up a private-sector organization that could run something like an endowment — an institution that could raise money to invest in the vision and spur the century-long patronage and persistence needed to truly make mankind a space-faring species.
The gig this weekend in Orlando is aimed at sparking interest in the effort and bringing the best minds in the world to bear on consequential issues.
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So in one ballroom at an Orlando hotel, a big bunch of brainiacs pondered potential interstellar starship designs and advance propulsion systems required to traverse the 4.3 light years to the nearest star other than our own sun — Alpha Centauri.
Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. Alpha Centauri is 272,000 times farther away. And the idea of getting from here to there in a human lifetime?
"It's audacious," said James Benford, president of Microwave Sciences, author of 135 scientific papers and an expert on space propulsion systems centered on beam-driven sails. "Starships occur in science fiction. But will they occur in fact?"
The time-distance issue with interstellar travel, he said, is "profoundly difficult."
Elsewhere a gaggle of space geeks contemplated the types of lightweight, super-strength materials that might make up the hull of a 22nd-century starship.
The answer is not "unobtainium," or "wishalloy," or "handwavium," said David Weiss, vice president of engineering with ECK Industries Inc., a Canadian company that specializes in premium aluminum castings.
But there are materials and treatment processes that show promise.
"Some of these materials are not so far off as they might seem," he said.
Down the hallway and around the corner, there's a discussion about sex in space — making aliens, little green men and women. And there's no giggle factor when it comes to the effect of space radiation on human reproduction.
All in all, it's quite fascinating.
"This is awesome. This is sci-fi. It's science. It's the science behind 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars,' " said Clara Moskowitz, an aerospace journalist with the online site space.com. "This is real science, and real government agencies actually investigating how to send a starship to another star. It doesn't get better."
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Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFMKqMVq7XKPuMmS4tnZJlv-W3uOQ&url=http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20111002/NEWS02/310020018/Star-travel-Make-experts-say
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