Billionaires Asked To Kick In Cash For One-Way Space Colonization Mission
Wednesday, 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.