Raucous applause greeted guests of the 100 Year Starship panel at SXSW as they took the stage. It seems little introduction was necessary for this crowd to heap praise upon the panel, but the moderator Benjamin Palmer (of the interactive marketing firm The Barbarian Group) introduced the panelists anyway as: Dr. Mae Jemison (astronaut, first woman of color in space, and a dancer), Dr. Jill Tarter (co-founder of SETI Institute and inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in Contact), and LeVar Burton (Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Geordi LaForge, Reading Rainbow host, and social change advocate).
What the group set out to discuss today is its motivation behind the 100 Year Starship plan and the Grand Challenge that comes with that.
We exist to make the capability of human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years. We unreservedly dedicate ourselves to identifying and pushing the radical leaps in knowledge and technology needed to achieve interstellar flight, while pioneering and transforming breakthrough applications that enhance the quality of life for all on Earth. We actively seek to include the broadest swath of people and human experience in understanding, shaping and implementing this global aspiration.
LeVar Burton, who shook his head and laughed at the LaForge mention by Palmer and called for applause at the Reading Rainbow nod posited that it’s, “No secret that there’s an immeasurable distance between what we can imagine and what we can create.”
“The 100 Year Starship is about making that distance smaller; making some of that imagination come true,” said Dr. Jemison.
And that’s where the discussion begins. Throughout the panel, the guests reiterated that the challenges we overcome in trying to achieve interstellar flight can greatly affect life on our planet in the here and now.
Benjamin Palmer asked the panel, “Do you think we may have to adapt ourselves biologically to another planet?”
“We may have to adapt ourselves biologically just to take the trip,” said Tarter.
Dr. Jemison continued this line of thought by stating that it would take 70,000 years to get to another star at our fastest speed so far. “We need a closed-system life support, recycle and reuse. We can’t take with us everything we need,” said Jemison.
“Original hunter gatherers used 1,800 calories to create meals that added up to 2,000 calories a day. Modern people, to create the same daily amount of calories, use up to 200,000 calories,” said Tarter. “In order to pursue the Grand Challenge of the 100 Year Starship, we’re going to have to address that. Do we bring cows with us in space? We don’t know and we’ll have to find out.”
Tarter went on to say that we’re “on the verge of being able to tell you where to look in the sky to see Earth 2.0. When that happens, I can’t imagine people not saying, ‘Really? Does anyone live there? Can we go there?'”
These other planets, referred to as super-Earths, measure somewhere between two to eight sizes bigger than our Earth. What those involved with 100 Years are doing now is trying to define the index of habitability, also called planetary habitability, which measures a planet’s or natural satellite’s potential to develop and sustain life.
However, about the index, Tarter said, “The problem is that we’re charting it on our own vices.”
“For me, one of the interesting components is how do we relate to each other?” said Burton. “And that’s a big reason I’m part of this Grand Challenge.”
Conversation between Burton and Tarter veered off into the metaphorical and discussed integrating technology directing into human physiology when Jemison felt the need to “break up speculative talk” and bring the panel back to real world. “Have we optimized our brain capacity? Not because we implanted something. Have we pushed ourselves as far as we can go?” asked Jemison.
Jemison stated that the most useful technology involved with the 100 Year Starship plan will likely be simple sophisticated technology, by which she means that even the most complicated technology needs to have simple solutions if it were to break down.
“If the blah blah fails, you may not be able to go get a new one, but you might have a coat hanger,” said Jemison.
The idea of simple sophisticated technology brought up the problem of dealing with clothes on such a trip, which prompted Burton to mostly complain about the lack of pockets on Federation uniforms.
“Each person [on the starship] would need a boxcar of clothes. Manufacturing, cleaning, and destruction of clothes is the most toxic thing we do. This simple idea needs to be thought through for the 100 Year Starship,” said Jemison.
“Maybe we engineer ourselves to have pockets in our skin, like marsupials,” said Tarter, to an audience that was surprisingly receptive to such a proposal.
Jemison discussed that it’s ideas like the one Tarter proposes and more that is what their organization is all about.
“Creating an extraordinary tomorrow creates a better today,” said Jemison. The former astronaut also rejected the idea that this line of thinking is just a pacifist’s dream. “Shouldn’t we be trying to make something better?”
However, moderator Ben Palmer threw a bit of cold water on the panelists’ fire by asking, “Have we lost our ambition?”
Palmer’s heavy question received an audible sigh from the panel and what sounded like a heartbroken “wow” from Burton.
“It’s not kids. It’s us, the adults, who are making the decisions now and we need to recognize that and change our thoughts,” said Jemison.
When asked about weapon possibilities, photon torpedo reference and all, from an audience member, Jemison says, “There’s nothing that says we have to bring weapons with us.”
At a recent science symposium, there were “people who wanted to create those weapons and run off to fight aliens. There was a very clear gender split there though,” said Tarter.
Palmer picked up a question about interspecies relationship from an audience member, and the moderator added that he doesn’t even understand his own cat.
“You may not understand the cat, but I bet the cat understands you. Maybe the cat should take the lead,” said Tarter, which got a good laugh from the audience. “Our first contact will likely not be another species’s first contact. What we need to do is figure out what our human core is, what’s our message, so we can better understand what it is we want to say to another species and what we’d want it to express.”
“It is the essential nature of human beings to look up and wonder,” said Burton. “We’ve perhaps been a bit disconnected from that wonder. It’s time to reconnect.”
You can visit the new site launched for the program and retrieve a screensaver in the donations area that displays information about space travel and distances.
At the end of the panel, each panelist had a few last comments or messages to give the audience.
“When Mae called me up to tell me about this mission, I said, ‘You’ve been given the opportunity to create the Federation,'” said Burton. “Yes. The answer is yes.”
“We’re creating a pathway to the stars, with footprints on Earth,” said Tarter.
Burton wants to make sure people understand that creativity is needed for this endeavor to succeed and said, “Art plus science equals culture.”
As the last word of the panel, Jemison stated that, “Right now, in this world, we’re the most material rich than we’ve ever been…What we really need to be working on is abundance for all. And that’s what the 100 Year Starship is about. How do we have an abundance for all?”
Comments are closed.