PULLMAN, Wash. To Washington State University Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch and seven of his space-minded colleagues in an initiative called Star Voyager, it has never been enough for humans to simply dream about traveling to the stars. To them, interstellar travel is not so much a dream as it is an ultimate ambition. With the release this month of their book, How to Develop the Solar System and Beyond: A Roadmap to Interstellar Space, the eight collaborators scientists, engineers, economists and assorted other professionals lay out mankind’s plausible pathways to the stars. They present multiple scenarios for mankind’s space-faring future over the next hundred years, providing a comprehensive overview of the human, technological, and financial challenges of interstellar travel.
Among the first manned starship proposals, the Star Voyager Roadmap describes potential scenarios for our space faring future. From the development of earth-orbital operational platforms to systems of asteroid capture and deflection, the book describes the strategies and resource developments that will support and contribute to the overall goal of achieving interstellar travel. As with previous advances in space-focused technologies, new interstellar travel technologies will have benefits that advance science and technologies across the globe.
Since its release, the Star Voyager Roadmap has consistently placed in the top ten Amazon best sellers in the field and on Oct. 22 was listed number one in the Amazon list of New Releases in Astrophysics & Space Science best sellers.
The Star Voyager Roadmap had its genesis in the enthusiasm created last January by the 100 Year Star Ship interstellar joint initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA, aimed at working with private entities toward achieving interstellar space travel within the next century.
Its authors are all members of Star Voyager, an initiative of the Leeward Space Foundation that serves to unite and support a growing consortium of engineers, astronomers, astrobiologists, economists, astrophysicists, architects, computer scientists, psychologists, futurists, artists, and other professionals, all determined to take a leap into space.
“This is a unique group of scientists with a great variety of expertise that came together to respond to an earlier call by DARPA and NASA for the 100-year Starship Initiative to chart a path toward interstellar travel in roughly a 100-year time frame’” said Schulze-Makuch.
In addition to Schulze-Makuch, the book’s authors are Amalie Sinclair humanist, space policy advocate, and director of Leeward Space Foundation; Charles Radley, spacecraft systems engineer and associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Armen Papazian, financial economist; Joseph Miller, astrobiologist, neuropharmacologist, and associate professor of Cell and Neurobiology at the University of Southern California; Pier Marzocca, aerospace engineer and professor at Clarkson University, John Lee, executive director at Leeward Space Foundation and chairman of the Board of the International Space Development HUB (ISDHub); and Giorgio Gaviraghi architect and CEO of exponential Design Lab, an innovation design firm.
Star Voyager has a twofold mission. The first is to develop a plan for opening up the solar system to exploration, development and eventual colonization. The second is to initiate, promote, and support the drive to technological innovation that will lead us to the endless frontier, to interstellar space.
Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Washington State University. He is best known for his publications on extraterrestrial life and has co-authored four books on the topic: A One Way Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet (2011), We Are Not Alone: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life (2010), Cosmic Biology: How Life could Evolve on Other Worlds (2010), and Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints (2004). In 2012 he and David Darling published Megacatastrophes! Nine Strange Ways the World Could End.
In 2010, together with Paul Davies, Schulze-Makuch proposed a plan for the exploration of Mars by a one-way trip.