ABOUT THE STAR VOYAGER ROADMAP
The
Star Voyager roadmap is born in the wake of a new enthusiasm created by the 100 Year Star Ship interstellar joint initiative
of DARPA and NASA AMES (100 year starship, 100yss.org). The Star Ship program, for the first time in history, has fully opened
up the interstellar travel theme as a domain for serious scientific collaboration and public participation.
This roadmap describes potential scenarios for our immediate space faring future and demonstrates
how these will support and contribute to the overall goal of achieving interstellar travel. This work in progress looks at
both the infrastructure and the expedient strategies critical for interstellar travel. It focuses on the first 100 years as
a reasonable timeframe to identify the plausible milestones necessary to attain a continuous and extensive space-faring capability.
We provide a high-level discussion of major current and developing propulsion systems and
power generation concepts as well as the evolution of effective space based support infrastructures, such as platforms, elevators,
tethers, lander-shuttles, mining, space based manufacturing, and life support systems.
We explore transformative and innovative technologies, such as those based on asteroid deflection/earth-orbiting
and utilization, aiming to provide basic resources and enable reusable space based transportation systems.
For example, we describe an expedient Cruiser-Lander-shuttle structure, as
a totally reusable and sustainable transportation system for travel to the Moon and Mars, together with integrated technologies
that will enable surface and underground outposts in our neighboring solar bodies; ultimately leading to the formation of
sustainable communities. We also describe an asteroid based starship model, design and plan.
The progressive steps to a manned interstellar mission will include novel technologies,
such as artificial gravity and a necessary closed system ecology suitable for
a voyage of at least 40 years. It will also include the social and psychological evaluation of the requirements for a stable
and viable community in near-total isolation from the rest of humanity for many decades.
Our discussion of manned interstellar space exploration covers related evolutionary, and sustainability
issues, such as the preservation of terrestrial ecosystems, the conservation of human, animal, and plant embryos in space
based biological banks, and the transformation of a star traveling human population.
Our
roadmap to interstellar space addresses not just the technological and human path ahead, but also the much needed transformations
of our economic and financial imagination today. Indeed, the current debt-based monetary architecture of the world is not
conducive to large space investments. We discuss a number of key concepts important for the sustainable financing of space
exploration and interstellar travel.
This
roadmap also introduces ISDHub, International Space Development HUB (ISDHub, isdhub.com), as a tangible initiative of foundations
and businesses who have come together to develop a HUB for commercial space exploration. The purpose of ISDHub is to create
a space platform as a catalyst for innovations and investments in a unique and indispensable 21st century industry.
