It’s perhaps DARPA’s most out-there project ever: spend the next century figuring out how to build a starship.
Science fiction makes it seem easy: just engage the warp drive, do a little hand waving about Johnson rods or somesuch, and make a hyperspace jump.
The reality will be vastly more difficult. Later this month, DARPA will convene scientists, engineers, big thinkers, and even science fiction writers (one of them, Joe Haldeman, was an instructor of mine at the Clarion West Writers Workshop) at the Orlando Hilton to help get the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) project started.
To read the rest of the article, click here.