Bill Clinton backs interstellar voyage project

Getty Images

(SPACE.com) Former president Bill Clinton has lent his support to the 100-Year Starship initiative, a project started by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) to research interstellar travel.

While humanity has sent spacecraft throughout the solar system, traveling to another star is a whole different ballgame. The distances involved are significantly greater, and so are the attendant technological challenges.

"This important effort helps advance the knowledge and technologies required to explore space, all while generating the necessary tools that enhance our quality of life on earth," President Clinton said in a statement.

The issues associated with interstellar travel will be discussed at the upcoming 100-Year Starship Public Symposium, an event open to scientists and interested members of the public, from Sept. 13 through Sept. 16 in Houston.

"The 100YSS 2012 Public Symposium will bring together influential thought, scientific and cultural leaders to explore the technologies, science, social structures and strategies needed to make capabilities for human travel to another star system a reality within the next century," officials said in a statement.

Interstellar travel will be necessary if humanity ever hopes to visit another habitable world. More than 800 planets have been discovered beyond our solar system, with some of them potentially hospitable to life.

Speakers at the public event will include symposium chair Mae Jemison, the first female African American astronaut, as well as Star Trek actor LeVar Burton, astronomer Jill Tarter, a co-founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, and other notable thinkers.

Jemison also leads the 100-Year Starship organization, an independent, non-governmental organization that was founded this year using seed money from DARPA.

Visit SPACE.com next week for complete coverage of the 100YSS Public Symposium.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. 

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[rbrtwjohnson]

Interstellar voyage will be amazing. With advanced nuclear propulsion techniques, it will open vast horizons to the future of humanity. However, we'll have a really huge step toward interstellar travels when we definitely change the paradigm of chemical rockets to fusion-powered plasma turbines. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM

[NinthSt78]

Getty Images has a beautiful portrait there. It would be nice to send President Clinton an 8x10 enlargement of that one or perhaps even an oil painting of that one.

[MagnaCartaUK]

'Interstellar travel'. I don't doubt that it will be possible one day, but in just 100 years? True, you only have to look at history to see a rough example of the rate of human advances in action to gauge our progress. Captain James Cook took 1 year and 8 months to sail to Australia. Now, some 250 years later, a jet airliner can cover the 10,500 miles in around 23 hours I think - but all this was done within the confines of Earth. There's a huge gulf between Earth-based travel and Interstellar travel. The main point is what's the maximum rate that scientific study and breakthroughs can lead to the necessary technological innovations? Is it the case that even when a limitless amount of money is thrown at such a project - when all the will to succeed is there, if global cooperation is secured, intensive research, study and experiments are undertaken, and the best scientific minds are all employed to the optimum degree - that in the end, human progress can only move at a finite rate? Perhaps the chasm between our present standards, and that required for interstellar travel, just can't be bridged in 100 years alone. The distance to our nearest star is colossal. If the Sun-Earth orbit is represented by 1 inch, the nearest star would be 4 miles away, and then there's the effects on the human body and mind to overcome - a challenge in itself. I could envisage humans reaching the outer Solar System - Titan certainly for example - but far, far longer to cross the great void to another star. Around 200 years, in my very humble opinion anyway. I hope I'm proven very wrong however.

[Ulgnud]

It will be a matter of time before we develop a power plant and the rest of the technology needed to make interstellar flight possible. I hope I am alive to see it. There is a whole universe out there. Let's go see what we can find.

[BrianFraser]

I am glad DARP is interested in this. But it won't go very far unless the public is interested in it too, and does not believe it to be a pie-in-the-sky goal or "junk science".

The United States needs to resume its research in antigravity. In the 1950s this topic was not a joke. The effort was taken very seriously by very influential people. See "United States gravity control propulsion research", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_gravity_control_propulsion_initiative and "Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.", New York Herald-Tribune, Sunday, November 20, 1955, http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project048.htm . But Within a year, the topic had all but disappeared from public view.

Decades later NASA started the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project. It generated some good ideas, but later lost its funding.

What we seem to need are some very different concepts in physics. Gravitation, for instance, is apparently NOT mediated by "gravitons" or other particles. And its influence apparently propagates MUCH faster than light, probably even instantaneously (something known in physics circles as "non-local motion"). Physicists have also noted that nature does not use the metric of space-time, but uses some other kind of metric, implying that stellar distances are not what we think they are. What we need are new concepts, as well as the abilty to shake ourselves loose from the old misleading ones.

Here are some links for those adventurous innovators with the "right stuff":

scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#MotionCancellers
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#Biefeld-BrownEffect
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#GeometrySpaceTimeMotion
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/CapacitorTests/CapacitorTests.html

fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Fraser_NatureOfTime.pdf (paper)
fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/294 (discussion)

[walkthetalk]

I hope they don't have to wait too long to get this project going and then maybe Bill could get our POTUS on the first Rocket Ship. I mean that be REALLY,REALLY,REALLY. GREAT!

[audemus]

A great many conveniences we enjoy today came from the pursuit of a space program. Obviously the technical innovations that would be required to begin this level of space exploration in earnest, would give us another "trickle-down" leap in ordinary applications of these advances, as well as leaps forward we can't even begin to imagine right now.

The nature of mankind has always been to figure out how to do things...sparked usually by necessity, and sometimes curiosity. Our continued exploration of space should and will be propelled by both of these reasons.

[silvereagle2718]

Interplanetary travel within our solar system is conceivable at the present time. It may be too expensive, and the benefits would seem to be few to none, but it may be technically possible to put (alive) people throughout the solar system from the earth's orbit to just outside the edge of the heliosphere. Probably not in my lifetime.

Interstellar travel is about basic science, most notably propulsion systems and power systems. Also shielding, including life support. It is presumptuous to tell the scientist what he should discover in the box. It is somewhat less presumptuous to tell him which box to look inside of. Science fiction writers have done much to explore fantasy futures. NASA is, under the best of circumstances, limited to possible ones.

We would appear to have disagreements over the most desirable destination for the space program, but Obama does seem to have left it nicely positioned. Heavy lift capability and a lower cost light lift capability, both in the works. The Orion crew module with a 25 day range. There also seems to be lots of hype coming from various quarters about a grand future in space, when a more sober view should prevail.

The writing on the wall suggests that there is a coming battle over mastery of space--is it a lawless domain, or governed by the UN, or gentlemen's agreements between a few (space faring) countries? Right now, disease, war, and natural disasters seem get more coverage on the UN news website than space. My guess is the space faring nations will not get a blank check from the developing world without a good enough reason, and there probably won't be a good enough reason. They might be allowed to move forward to some degree. Hurricane Katrina probably didn't do much to help the space program.

[MIO42]

Its already here Bill
Ya have to Die first to Achieve it though

[Ulgnud]

How nice of Slick Willie to support something he is in no position to do anything about. Too bad he didn't do something about it while he was President.Of course that would mean he would have had to actually do something instead of talk about it.

[ludvig1-2009]

If man exceeds the speed of light he'll develop nose bleed problems.

[myopinionpal]

Interstellar will benefit only the 1% because after the GOP deregulate everything this planet will be in such bad shape that they will be the only ones that can afford to leave. The rest of us will be left behind to breath toxic air and drink contaminated water.

[Ulgnud]

The space race to the moon gave a tremendous boost to our technology. A lot of commercial products, like WD-40 and Tang are examples. I might also point out it was President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat that suggested we go to the moon, and return safely. I suggest you put down the liberal kool aid and look at the possibilities we have in interstellar travel.