Billionaires Asked To Kick In Cash For One-Way Space Colonization Mission
Posted by Justin on October 27th, 2010
You know a plan is closer to reality when you start accepting checks for it. With that being said, this is an awesome plan:
Pete Worden, the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, recently hinted that billionaires are being recruited to kick in contributions for a deep-space mission known as “the Hundred Year Starship.” The idea builds on the long-discussed concept of sending people on one-way missions to space destinations, in hopes of jump-starting colonization of the final frontier.
Worden is quoted as saying NASA has already committed $100,000 to the project, with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency providing another $1 million in funding. His comments, made at the Long Now Foundation’s “Long Conversation” event on Oct. 16 in San Francisco, were reported by KurzweilAI’s Amara D. Angelica.
Worden said NASA and DARPA have “just started” the project. “We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund,” he was quoted as saying.
If they get the money, the next step is recruiting. Who wants to go on a possible suicide mission into outer space?
Count me in! It’ll be like Oregon Trail meets Battlestar Galactica.
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October 28th, 2010 at 1:42 am
I call shotgun
October 28th, 2010 at 8:24 am
If we’re talking about Gliese 581, isn’t it a bit presumptuous to be sending people off into the depths of space before we even know that it isn’t already occupied? Call me a pragmatist, but don’t we need to learn to crawl before can boldly leap into the abyse?I mean, Mars is right THERE. It’s got plenty of frozen water, we can get all the energy we need from nuclear reactors, and an arboretum can recycle oxygen . We’ve know that for years and there’s still no serious attempt to start a Mars colony.
October 28th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I would be excited to see a technology that pinched, warped, or negated space for interplanetary travel. I don’t see a realistic solution to go out into the solar system, much less the abyss coming about within our lifetime due to space constraints on supplies. It may seem far fetched, but then again time travel did, too, until a little film from 1928 gave us all a glimpse of a possible time traveler.
October 28th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Where do I buy my ticket??? and Can i sit next to Justin??? haha
October 29th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
I would happily max out all my credit cards if I was guaranteed a seat.
November 3rd, 2010 at 3:39 am
im in!