You may have heard by now about the 100 Year Starship project, a new research initiative to develop the technology required to send a manned mission to another star. The project is jointly sponsored by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It will take that long just to make such a trip feasible, hence the name. So we’re a long ways off from naming any crew members or a starship captain, but the project itself does have a new leader, a former astronaut.
Mae Jemison, a former Space Shuttle astronaut, has been appointed the position by DARPA. She was also the first African-American woman to go into space, in 1992. Her own non-profit educational organization, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (in honor of her late mother) was chosen to work with DARPA, receiving a $500,000 contract. That funding is just seed money, to start the process of developing the framework needed for such an ambitious undertaking. The focus at this point is to create a foundation that can last long enough to research the technology required, rather than the actual government-funded building of the spacecraft.
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