Guests: Marc Millis and Paul Gilster. Topics: DARPA One Hundred Year Starship Project, interstellar space travel, management of long duration projects. You are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. Transcripts of Space Show programs are not permitted without prior written consent from The Space Show (even if for personal use) & are a violation of the Space Show copyright. We welcomed Marc Millis and Paul Gilster to the program to discuss the recently held DARPA One Hundred Year Starship Project and the potential role of the Tau Zero Foundation solicitation proposal to DARPA for their award. For more information on the Tau Zero Foundation, visit these websites: www.centauri-dreams.org; www.centauri-dreams.org/?page_id=2118. You can also subscribe to their free newsletter from their website. In our first segment, Marc and Paul summarized the DARPA One Hundred Year Starship program. They told us about the different sections and subsections, the importance of the science fiction track and some of the non-technical tracks, and they described the Solicitation project DARPA has underway looking for a management type organization to plot the course for a century or so to bring interstellar travel to reality. Listeners had many questions for our guests but Linda asked for a reality check on the likelihood of interstellar or faster than light travel to happen within a century. Our guests said it was possible but listen to their full answer and see what you think. Later in our discussion, Marc put forth some important due diligence rules to help determine if something or someone is too far out on the fringe. This is an easy set of steps to apply so listen up and remember his guidelines. Our guests discussed the big challenge in getting space travel, especially far out interstellar travel to be relevant to most people. Another listener asked about the potential contribution of serendipity to the development of interstellar flight and then we talked about nuclear and fusion propulsion. The fusion rocket was discussed, don't miss this set of comments. Our guests were asked just how much energy was required to do interstellar flight. We were given a rule of them for baseline kinetic energy estimates and as you will hear, it is pretty basic to run the numbers. We then talked about the proportion of energy used for space now and in the future as a part of all the energy used by humanity. This presents the space users with some challenging issues. In our second segment, we talked about what could be done today and one of the favorite projects was a solar sail business plan project. Listen for details. Fusion was discussed again as was the Drake Equation as well as the Fermi Paradox in a unique combination with one another. Our discussion then focused on the search for ET, exoplanets, and more. For networking purposes, listener Ben inquired about relevant conferences and we learned that for the most part they were few and far between. Toward the end, a listener wanted to know about "low energy nuclear reaction" (LENR) and other fusion alternatives. Another listener wanted to know about finding antimatter around the Earth and being able to use it. Tau Zero has a Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/groups/47450538997. Please post your comments/questions on The Space Show blog URL above.
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