There are plenty of obstacles that we have to overcome before humanity might hypothetically be able to send a ship full of thousands to a distant star.
We have to figure out how to create a vessel that can sustain itself for generations and provide everything needed for life. Plus, it has to have the power and speed to cross light years of ever-expanding space.
But out of all the technical questions that must be answered and hurdles that must be jumped before we start on a project designed to make interstellar travel a real possibility, there's one that stands out at the start, according to Dr. Mae Jemison, a former astronaut who's now in charge of the 100-Year Starship organization.
"The first thing we started working on was actually 'how to talk about it,'" she says. It's hard to convince people that you're seriously trying to figure out how to "make the capability of human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years," which is the purpose of her NASA- and DARPA-funded organization.
In other words, even before we can begin to address all the technical challenges involved, there's a major hurdle in even getting people to consider interstellar travel as a real problem to be solved.
People want to know, she explains, "whether or not this is 'woo-woo.'"
Jemison and the rest of 100-Year Starship argue that it's not.
It's worth pointing out that Jemison's organization is not currently trying to actually build a starship within 100 years. The group is just trying to push scientists around the world to cooperate and solve the issues making that construction impossible for now.
And while it might sound crazy, technology has changed from science-fiction to science-fact in a shorter span of time. After all, H. G. Wells published "The First Men in the Moon," which he called a "fantastic story," in 1901. Yet by 1969, we'd actually stepped on the lunar surface.
But if 100-Year Starship can succeed and we can solve the problems that keep us from interstellar travel within 100 years, we'll have done even more than figure out how to go to space. We'll have figured out sustainable energy, international cooperation, and efficient ways to feed and clothe the world. These are all worthy challenges to tackle — and not just so that we can visit a distant star.
"We absolutely believe everything that's required for human interstellar journey is required to sustain our life, human life, here on Earth," Jemison says.
When people talk about solving those questions, it perhaps sounds even more unrealistic or "woo-woo" than figuring out interstellar travel.
Jemison asks: "How do you push radical innovation? ... It's when you have to do something that's basically very, very different" — like try to figure out how to travel the stars — "that gives you a perspective that you haven't used before. Then you start to pull out the best and the most creative and the most robust kinds of ideas."
It remains to be seen whether or not it's possible. But we're excited to see the ideas we come up with along the way.
