Centauri Dreams
Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration
Musings on Kepler’s Latest
The data from Kepler’s first 136 days of operation could not be more interesting. As discussed in yesterday’s news conference, we now have fully 1235 exoplanet candidates from Kepler’s transit observations, and it’s worth quoting principal investigator William Borucki (NASA Ames) on the significance of the results thus far:
“We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone – a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Some candidates could even have moons with liquid water. Five of the planetary candidates are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars.”
Statistical analysis by the Kepler team shows that between 80 and 90 percent of these candidates are likely to be real planets. Remember that the spacecraft is staring at 156,453 stars in a patch covering 1/400th of the sky, located in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. What it’s giving us is a statistical sample of stars in a particular part of the Milky Way, one we can use to extrapolate planetary populations throughout the galaxy. In a helpful post, Franck Marchis (UC-Berkeley) lays out the properties of these planets classified by size:
- 68 Earth-size exoplanets with a radius (Rp) of less than 1.25 Earth radius (Re)
- 288 super-Earth size exoplanets with 1.25 x Re < Rp ? 2.0 x Re
- 662 Neptune-size exoplanets with 2.0 x Re < Rp ? 6.0 x Re
- 165 Jupiter-size exoplanets with 6.0 x Re < Rp ? 15 x Re
- 19 very-large-size with 15.0 x Re < Rp ? 22 x Re
The numbers are useful as well as deeply exciting, because they suggest how vast the exoplanet population must be on the galactic scale. Kepler is seeing only the small fraction of planets whose orbital alignment as seen from Earth causes them to transit their hosts stars. Roger Hunter, Kepler project manager, sums up what many had long suspected but lacked evidence for until now: “It’s looking like the galaxy may be littered with many planets.”
Image: Kepler’s planet candidates by size. Credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel.
Where is Earth 2?
One of the questioners at yesterday’s news conference asked Douglas Hudgins, a Kepler program scientist, whether buried within the latest data release the project’s ‘holy grail’ might be lurking; i.e., a planet in the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. We do see planets in the habitable zone of certain stars from Kepler’s work, but Hudgins had to point out that the true ‘grail’ Kepler was after was a planet similar enough to Earth that it would be found in a roughly one-year orbit around a star like ours, and squarely in the habitable zone. We haven’t yet had enough time for such an observation to be made, since it would take more than one transit to reveal such a recurring event.
So right now we’re talking about planets in the habitable zone of stars that are cooler and smaller than the Sun, places where the star in the sky would be a lot redder than the Sun as seen from Earth. The next data releases will get more and more intriguing on that score as we home in on true Earth-analogs. At that point Kepler’s statistics really will be giving us a glimpse of the likelihood of the kind of planets we could live on and how common they are in the galaxy. As the overall catalog grows, it will become more accurate and should reveal not just exoplanets orbiting at larger distances from their host stars but very possibly moons around some of them.
We’re also getting a better read on just how skewed our early exoplanet results were toward large planets, particularly the so-called ‘hot Jupiters.’ That was an inevitable result of picking off planets that were the easiest to detect, but Kepler is now showing us that stars in our galaxy are more likely to be orbited by smaller worlds. Let me quote Marchis on this:
…we can now say that stars in our Milky Way galaxy are more likely to host small exoplanets since 75% of the Kepler catalog exoplanets are smaller than Neptune, with a peak of exoplanets only 2-3 times larger than Earth.
Using model predictions which take into account the probability of having the correct geometry to detect these exoplanets, the Kepler team extrapolated that 6% of the stars in our Milky way have Earth- and super-Earth size exoplanets, 17% of them have Neptune-size candidates and only 4% of them have Jupiter-size exoplanets.
Image: Kepler’s planet candidates as of Feb. 1, 2011. Credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel.
Why so comparatively few multi-planet systems (about 170 thus far)? Considering the short period of time Kepler has been in operation, we’re working with fairly short orbital periods. That’s one thing that makes Kepler-11, discussed here yesterday, so unusual. Given that we’re talking about orbits close to the parent star, it’s astounding to find a star with five planets crammed inside the orbital distance of Mercury, and a sixth at a distance between Mercury and Venus around our Sun. The five inner planets have orbital periods varying between a scant 10 to 47 days around this G-class star, and from all the indications we have, the system is dynamically stable.
Bringing the Hunt Back to Earth
Where would we have gone next in our exoplanet hunt if money were no object? The Space Interferometry Mission immediately comes to mind, because while Kepler could give us a statistical look at a particular patch of sky, SIM would have targeted nearby stars, giving us detections via interferometry of Earth-like worlds within thirty light years. Without SIM or, for that matter, Terrestrial Planet Finder, we’re finding other ways of locating such worlds from Earth’s surface. Ground-based surveys like MEarth and new technologies like laser frequency combs may help us fill out our target lists for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
Lee Billings looks at these technologies in a fine new article in Nature. Take Steven Vogt and colleagues, who have built the Automated Planet Finder (APF), a robotic telescope paired with a powerful spectrometer at Lick Observatory in California. Like MEarth, APF targets short period planets around nearby stars, and that includes the brightest M-dwarfs in the sky. One way to save money while still hunting exoplanets is to maximize observing time. Billings quotes Vogt:
“The coin of the realm is observing nights,” he says. “It’s not new technology; it’s not laser combs or some newfangled near-infrared spectrometers that can take advantage of M-dwarfs. Take $50 million, which is chump change in the NASA regime, build a 6–8-metre telescope with enough light-gathering power to reach a large fraction of the nearest M-dwarfs, put a nice spectrometer on it and dedicate it to this work every single night of the year. You’d have these planets pouring out of the sky.”
And maybe there’s a cheaper way in space, too, as revealed in Sara Seager’s ExoplanetSat program. Seager (MIT) has the notion of entire fleets of tiny CubeSats, dozens at a time scanning individual stars, each satellite with its own particular target. Planets around nearby Sun-like stars should be detectable if they transit, and Billings says we should see a functional prototype as early as 2012, with subsequent satellites launching for as little as $250K apiece. So there are ways to proceed beyond Kepler, and they’ll surely be in full gear even as the Kepler data continue to arrive and the planets we discover begin more and more to resemble our own.
For more, see Ford et al., “Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: I. Statistical Analysis of the First Four Months” (preprint) and Borucki et al., “Characteristics of planetary candidates observed by Kepler, II: Analysis of the first four months of data” (preprint).
The Remarkable Kepler-11
Last June Centauri Dreams readers were excited about the release of Kepler results, but miffed that so much of the most interesting material was held back for later release. Now we have the release of these data, and the first thing I want to do is direct you to Greg Laughlin’s systemic site, where you can find a follow-up characterization flow chart to help work through systems of interest. Laughlin calls it a ‘template for the treasure map,’ and it’s available in full here.
What happens next? Laughlin (UC-Santa Cruz) notes the process: “Once the candidates hit the stands, there will be a rush to skim the cream, and a mobilization of follow-up observational campaigns to capitalize on the best opportunities in the data set.” He also reminds us that the brighter the parent star, the better the chances for delving deep into its exoplanetary mysteries. We’re in cream skimming time indeed, and we’ll have plenty to talk about in coming weeks. We’ll carry on tomorrow with thoughts on the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone (five of these are near Earth-sized).
Planetary Bonanza Around Kepler-11
For today, though, I want to focus on the unusual case of Kepler-11, a system that contains no fewer than six planets orbiting a Sun-like star. Ponder this: Before the new discovery, we had determined both the size and mass for only three exoplanets smaller than Neptune. Now, in a single planetary system, we have added five more, all in tightly packed orbits around the primary. There is a sixth planet as well, though its mass remains undetermined.
Image: This diagram compares the orbits of the six planets in the Kepler-11 system with the orbits of Mercury and Venus. Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle.
The five inner planets in this system range from 2.3 to 13.5 times the mass of Earth. All have orbital periods of less than fifty days, meaning they would fit inside the orbit of Mercury within our own Solar System. The sixth planet has an orbital period of 118 days and, as noted above, we have no data on its mass. All six of these worlds have densities lower than the Earth’s. Jonathan Fortney (UC-Santa Cruz) led the work on the structure and composition of the planets:
“It looks like the inner two could be mostly water, with possibly a thin skin of hydrogen-helium gas on top, like mini-Neptunes,” Fortney said. “The ones farther out have densities less than water, which seems to indicate significant hydrogen-helium atmospheres. … These planets are pretty hot because of their close orbits, and the hotter it is the more gravity you need to keep the atmosphere. My students and I are still working on this, but our thoughts are that all these planets probably started with more massive hydrogen-helium atmospheres, and we see the remnants of those atmospheres on the ones farther out. The ones closer in have probably lost most of it.”
Finding six planets around the same star allows us to make advances in the burgeoning study of comparative planetology, and Kepler-11 seems to hold clues to planetary formation. Because stellar disks should lose their hydrogen and helium gas within about five million years, the assumption here is that the numerous small planets with hydrogen/helium atmospheres must have formed quickly. Moreover, their crowded location near the parent star suggests planetary migration, with at least some of the planets forming further out and spiraling inward over time.
New Techniques for Determining Mass
Let’s back out for a moment to the wider picture, because we’re seeing in this work a useful new way to figure out the masses of exoplanets. What Kepler does is to detect the periodic dips in brightness as planets pass in front of their host stars, the size of the dip allowing a determination of the planet’s radius. The planet’s orbital period can be found by measuring the time between transits. Finding a planet’s mass, in the case of Kepler-11, was done by analyzing variations in the orbital periods caused by the gravitational interactions between the planets.
Daniel Fabrycky, a postdoctoral fellow at UC-Santa Cruz, led this analysis:
“The timing of the transits is not perfectly periodic, and that is the signature of the planets gravitationally interacting. By developing a model of the orbital dynamics, we worked out the masses of the planets and verified that the system can be stable on long time scales of millions of years.”
Bear in mind that ground-based Doppler spectroscopy, which is normally used to confirm a transiting planet and determine its mass, could not be used here because of the small size of the planets involved and the distance of the star, some 2000 light years from Earth. Because Kepler is looking for small planets around relatively distant stars, orbital dynamics becomes the method of choice, and we can expect the same method to be used on many of Kepler’s discoveries. Fabrycky noted that the sixth Kepler-11 planet is too far separated from the other five to allow the orbital perturbation method to work. Thus we have no determination of its mass.
Six planets all orbiting in the same plane, showing the conservation of the disk pattern in the system from which they formed, is a scenario reflecting what we see in our own Solar System, though we have no other real comparisons between this system and ours. Kepler-11 is a fascinating find, one of many we’ll have the chance to talk about as Kepler results are sifted and the cream is skimmed. I’m out of the office most of the day, but I’ll have the citation for the Nature paper on this work up as soon as I can.
Now back — the citation is Lissauer et al., “A closely packed system of low-mass, low-density planets transiting Kepler-11,” Nature 470 (03 February 2011), pp. 53-58 (abstract).
Kepler News Conference Today
The NASA news conference announcing the latest Kepler results will take place today at 1800 UTC (1300 EST) at NASA headquarters in Washington. You can follow the action live on NASA TV. The participants are:
- Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- William Borucki, Kepler Science principal investigator, NASA Ames
- Jack Lissauer, Kepler co-investigator and planetary scientist, NASA Ames
- Debra Fischer, professor of Astronomy, Yale University
I’ll hold today’s main post until after the embargo on the Kepler news lifts.
NEO Deflection: All the Myriad Ways
The asteroid Apophis is extremely unlikely to hit the Earth any time soon, but we do know that it’s slated to make two close passes, closing to a distance of 36,000 kilometers or so in 2029 and again in 2036. These events should give us pause — this is an object some 335 meters in diameter weighing an estimated 25 million tons. It’s 90 stories tall, if you like to think in skyscraper terms, which is what Greg Matloff probably likes to do, given that the physicist and asteroid deflection expert works at New York City College of Technology (City Tech).
Of Apophis, Matloff says, “We don’t always know this far ahead of time that they’re coming, but an Apophis impact is very unlikely.” A good thing, too, for a strike by an object of this size would be catastrophic. This City Tech news release offers a look at Matloff’s ideas on what to do if we find a Near-Earth Object on a collision course. He’s a proponent of diverting rather than destroying such objects because of the potential for debris striking the Earth after an explosion.
Asteroid Deflection the Slow Way
Wouldn’t we need a huge nuclear explosion to divert an asteroid’s trajectory in the first place? Not necessarily. Matloff worked with a team from Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL) in 2007 to study methods for deflecting NEOs, finding that heating the surface could alter an object’s trajectory. That heating project is another potential use for the solar sail technologies Matloff has been investigating for the past thirty years, going back to the days of a seminal paper in interstellar studies (written with Eugene Mallove) called “Solar Sail Starships: Clipper Ships of the Galaxy,” which appeared back in 1981 in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
But when it comes to asteroids, solar sails play a different role than leading humanity’s push to the stars. The idea is to configure twin solar sails to act as concentrators of sunlight. Imagine a highly reflective sail that faces the Sun, focusing solar photons on a smaller thruster sail. Both sails would be stationed alongside a Near-Earth Object, with the thruster sail focusing sunlight on its surface. In his book Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth (with Les Johnson and C. Bangs), Matloff notes the result:
[The] thruster directs a concentrated sunbeam on the NEO’s surface. If the NEO is coated with layers of dust, soil, or ice, a jet of superheated material (like a comet’s tail) may be raised in the direction of the thruster sail. The reaction force to this jet pushed the NEO in the opposite direction.
The potential is to create a jet stream of sufficient strength that, over time, it would nudge the NEO into a different trajectory. Creating a steerable jet involves penetrating the object’s surface with photons, but by just the right amount to create the deflection. According to Matloff, it could be as little as a tenth of a millimeter.
Probing an Asteroidal Surface
Here the need for missions to one or more NEOs again comes into focus, but while we wait for the development of the necessary tools and funding, Matloff and colleagues at City Tech are working with red and green lasers to study how deeply they penetrate asteroidal rock, using meteorite samples from the Allende meteorite that fell in Mexico in 1969. Their first results were presented at the recent gathering of the Meteoritical Society, which met in New York last July. “To my knowledge,” says Matloff, “this is the first experimental measurement of the optical transmission of asteroid samples.”
And given the significance of the work, we can assume it won’t be the last. We won’t know whether creating a jet stream by long and slow application of light reflected off a solar sail will work on an actual object without analyzing a wide variety of Near-Earth Objects. And that raises the question of how to proceed. The City Tech story quotes Matloff on the matter:
“At present, a debate is underway between American and Russian space agencies regarding Apophis. The Russians believe that we should schedule a mission to this object probably before the first bypass because Earth-produced gravitational effects during that initial pass could conceivably alter the trajectory and properties of the object. On the other hand, Americans generally believe that while an Apophis impact is very unlikely on either pass, we should conduct experiments on an asteroid that runs no risk of ever threatening our home planet.”
In any case, further City Tech work by physicist Lufeng Leng has shown through scans of the Allende sample that the composition of the surface material through which the light passes governs the depth of the light’s reach. The results show that lasers from a space vehicle placed near an NEO can help us understand its composition, allowing subsequent sail missions to focus solar photons with the precision needed to create the trajectory-bending jet stream. It’s an ingenious use for solar sails, but we’d better be sure we understand the objects we’re heating well enough to ensure a successful result.
Consider: We have much to learn about the mechanics of keeping a twin solar sail mission deployed on station near an NEO for long periods of time. Moreover, a deflection option like this one (or a similar idea Matloff discusses, in which astronauts land on an asteroid and set up a highly reflective thin film sail on the surface to exert a small but constant force on the NEO), are optimised only for certain kinds of NEOs. Would they work on a ‘rubble pile’ asteroid that’s barely held together by its own gravity? Other options, like the so-called ‘gravity tractor,’ seem more useful in that context, a reminder that NEO deflection may have many potential solutions.
Related: Ray Villard on asteroid deflection. The next Sputnik moment?
Jupiter Impactor Probably an Asteroid
What was it that left such an interesting infrared signature in Jupiter’s atmosphere on July 19, 2009? The images below, made with a wide variety of instruments, show what appears to be the debris of an object that collided with the planet. The event was first noted by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley in Australia, who tipped off an international team of scientists that went on to combine data from three infrared telescopes to study the impact, looking at atmospheric temperatures and the chemical signatures of the debris. The conclusion: The object was most likely an asteroid.
Image (click to enlarge): Eight different looks at the aftermath of a body — probably an asteroid — hitting Jupiter on July 19, 2009. Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was the first to capture an image of the impact, with a visible-light camera attached to his telescope in Australia. A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image was obtained in visible light. Infrared images were obtained by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Telescope, both atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The images were taken between July 19 and 26, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IRTF/STScI/ESO/Gemini Observatory/AURA/A. Wesley.
The results, reported in two papers in Icarus, show that the impact debris in 2009 was denser than debris from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which broke apart and impacted Jupiter in 1994. Jupiter is getting to be a lively place now that we have so many eyes on it — remember the two impacts in the summer of 2010 — but the 2009 event is proving useful indeed, given the amount of data available and the fact that the evidence points to an asteroid impact. Until recently, icy ‘Jupiter-family’ comets were the only objects thought likely to strike Jupiter.
So is the giant planet unable to clear its orbit completely when it comes to small objects like asteroids? Perhaps so. In any case, the asteroid signature seems strong. Here’s Leigh Fletcher (Oxford University) on the matter:
“Comparisons between the 2009 images and the Shoemaker-Levy 9 results are beginning to show intriguing differences between the kinds of objects that hit Jupiter. The dark debris, the heated atmosphere and upwelling of ammonia were similar for this impact and Shoemaker-Levy, but the debris plume in this case didn’t reach such high altitudes, didn’t heat the high stratosphere, and contained signatures for hydrocarbons, silicates and silicas that weren’t seen before. The presence of hydrocarbons, and the absence of carbon monoxide, provide strong evidence for a water-depleted impactor in 2009.”
A cometary nucleus would have been unlikely to have penetrated as far into the Jovian atmosphere as this impactor, and the detection of silica in the debris firms up the idea that we’re dealing with a strong rocky body that exploded deep in the clouds. Going under the assumption that the object had a density of around 2.5 grams per cubic centimeter, the researchers calculate its diameter at 200 to 500 meters. An object called 2005 TS100, though not the impactor in this event, has made several close approaches to Jupiter in computer models, demonstrating a chaotic orbit of the kind that could have brought this object into contact with the planet.
JPL points out in this news release that asteroids of this size hit the Earth about once every 100,000 years, but we don’t have a good idea what the frequency of asteroid strikes on Jupiter is. But the diversity of objects hitting the giant planet seems to be raising eyebrows. Paul Chodas works at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL:
“We weren’t expecting to find that an asteroid was the likely culprit in this impact, but we’ve now learned Jupiter is getting hit by a diversity of objects. Asteroid impacts on Jupiter were thought to be quite rare compared to impacts from the so-called ‘Jupiter-family comets,’ but now it seems there may be a significant population of asteroids in this category.”
The 200 trillion trillion ergs of energy (the equivalent of 5 gigatons of TNT) released in this event not only created a channel of super-heated atmospheric gases and debris but also launched debris back above the cloud tops that splashed down a second time into the atmosphere, dredging up gases like ammonia from the troposphere and heating the lower stratosphere by as much as 4 degrees Kelvin, a significant amount of energy given the area affected. As we continue to learn, the outer Solar System can be a violent place, and it’s heartening to see amateur astronomy feeding professional follow-ups that help us learn more about it.
The papers are Orton et al., “The atmospheric influence, size and possible asteroidal nature of the July 2009 Jupiter impactor,” Icarus Vol. 211, Issue 1, pp. 587-602 (abstract) and Fletcher et al., “The aftermath of the July 2009 impact on Jupiter: Ammonia, temperatures and particulates from Gemini thermal infrared spectroscopy,” Icarus Vol. 211, Issue 1, pp. 568-586 (abstract).
100 Year Starship Meeting: A Report
by Marc Millis
On January 11 & 12, I participated in a gathering of roughly 30 individuals to learn about and discuss the DARPA/Ames 100-year Starship Study. In addition to reporting on those events, I’ve included my personal commentary at the end of this report.
Recall that in October 2010, the Director of NASA/Ames, Pete Worden, inadvertently revealed that DARPA was funding Ames to the tune of $1M for such a study. This triggered something of a media flurry and shortly thereafter DARPA issued this press release. This January meeting was the first step in their process to involve the insights of others. I requested and was granted an invitation.
The gathering was held in a 1903 fort that had been converted a couple of years ago into a modern lodge and meeting area (Fort Baker, now Cavallo Point). Its location near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge provided a calm, out-of-the-way location with few distractions. The meeting began at noon on the first day, carried on (with breaks) through cocktails and dinner, and then resumed on the second day, running through lunch. The organizers invited Peter Diamandis (ISU founder, X Prize Founder, etc) to facilitate the meeting and Peter did an excellent job of stepping through the original agenda and giving everyone a chance to be heard.
PARTICIPANTS, PROCESS, AND PURPOSE
Of the roughly 30 attendees (not including supporting staff, such as the stenographers), about half were from NASA/Ames and DARPA. Aside from one NASA HQ representative (the new resurrected NIAC lead, Jay Falker), no other NASA center was represented. In alphabetical order:
DARPA Attendees
Paul Eremenko
Roger Hall
David Neyland – Progenitor of this 100-year study
NASA Attendees
Matt Daniels (Ames & Stanford PhD student)
Jay Falker (NASA-HQ & new NIAC lead)
Rachel Hoover (Ames, Public Affairs)
Peter Klupar (Ames)
Larry Lemke (Ames)
Creon Levit (Ames – assigned to lead this 100-yr study)
Lisa Lockyer (Ames)
Alex MacDonald (Ames)
Dawn McIntosh (Ames – on temporary assignment to DARPA)
Alen Weston (Ames)
Pete Worden (Ames Director)
Other Attendees
Elizabeth Bear (Science Fiction writer)
Jim Benford (Microwave Sciences)
Peter Diamandis (Xprize Foundation, etc)
Lou Friedman (Planetary Society [retired])
Joe Haldeman (Science Fiction writer)
Barbara Marx Hubbard (Foundation for Conscious Evolution)
Mae Jemison (Former Astronaut, now active in various educational endeavors)
Harry Kloor (Chief science advisor for the X Prize organization)
Marc Millis (Tau Zero Foundation)
Alexander Rose (Long Now Foundation)
Jack Sarfatti (StarDrive.org)
Dan Shekow (Global Universal Entertainment)
Jill Tarter (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – SETI Inst.)
Jacques Vallée (Euro-America Ventures & Co-developer of ARPANET [led to Internet])
Craig Venter (J. Craig Venter Institute, first to sequence the human genome)
Claudia Welss (Assistant to Barbara Marx Hubbard)
The planned agenda consisted of cycling through 3 break-out discussions (10 to a team), to discuss respectively the “why, what, and how” of an organization, where each cycle consisted of one team reviewing the notes of the prior team. The overall goal of the organization is to sustain research that will lead to the creation of a starship in roughly 100-years, and to inspire students along the way. By asking “why-what-how,” it was hoped to flesh out some substance to define that organization.
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This brings me to an important point. The meeting and the DARPA funding is about creating an organization that could last for 100-years, rather than about the technological and sociological advancements necessary to eventually create starships. In fact, the funding is not allowed to be spent on any research or educational activities related to interstellar flight, but instead can only be used to define that organization. As much as I really like the name, “100-yr starship,” this study should instead be called the “100-yr organization study.”
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DISCUSSION RESULTS
Although there was some debate challenging the assumption that one lasting organization is the key element to make interstellar flight happen, the attendees followed that premise and the “why-what-how” cycle of questions. Next are some preliminary results of those discussions, but it must be stressed that these do not constitute conclusions passed on to DARPA/Ames, but rather reflect the provisional thoughts that came out in the course of this first set of discussions. This is not the final word.
Also, I am not endorsing, nor dismissing, these results, but rather I am simply reporting them to the limits of my abilities and my own biases. I post my own comments at the end of this report.
WHY go to the Stars?
After much discussion, the key motivations for interstellar flight were distilled down to the five items listed in the first column of the table and then voting was used to compare their relative importance from three different perspectives: (1) what the attendees felt for themselves, (2) the anticipated priorities of fund sources, and (3) the anticipated priorities of the general public. Again, these reflect the discussions rather than being “THE” final answers.
| Domain | Concept | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Specific spoken and gestural (bodily) systems of communication, including vocabularies and grammars. | Some languages assign gender to nouns, while others do not. |
| Ethics | Concepts of right and wrong, justice, and fairness. | Some cultures execute murderers, while others do not. |
| Social Roles | Rights and responsibilities differ by categories such as age (child, adult), gender (man, woman), and status (peasant, King). | Cultures differ in the ages at which people take on certain rights and responsibilities, and specifically what those rights and responsibilities are. |
| The Supernatural | Concepts regarding a universe considered fundamentally different from daily experience. | Different cultures worship different gods, goddesses, and other supernatural entities. |
| Styles of Bodily Decoration | Human identity is often communicated by bodily decoration, either directly on the body or with clothing. | Some cultures heavily tattoo the body while others communicate identity more with clothing styles |
| Family Structure | Concepts of kinship or relations between kin, and associated ideas such as inheritance | Some cultures are polygynous, where males have several wives, and some are polyandrous, where females have several husbands. |
| Sexual Behavior | Regulation of sexual behavior, including incest rules. | Cultures differ in the age at which sexual activity is permitted. |
| Food Preferences | Concepts of what are appropriate food and drink in certain situations. | Some cultures eat certain animals while others consider them unfit to eat. |
| Aesthetics | Concepts of ideals, beauty, and their opposites. | Some cultures value visual arts more than song, and vice versa. |
| Ultimate Sacred Postulates | Central, unquestionable concepts about the nature of reality. | Some cultures consider time to be cyclic while others consider it linear. |
In contrast, here is what I jotted in my notes from my own impulsive thoughts:
• For humanity to survive and thrive
• To conquer frontiers instead of each other
• Because its just so damn cool
• To find out what’s really out there
Two other provocative subjects that came up in the course of these discussions were, should this be an international or USA organization, and should humans be considered part of eventual interstellar voyages? Regarding international or USA, the group eventually reached a consensus (not unanimous) for an international effort. And after lively discussion about robotics, transhumanism, and who would likely go on the first missions, it became obvious that human survival, via expansion into space, was a key motivation.
Although the agenda questions included “Who should go?” it became clear that this question was premature. It is way too early to judge such things, and nothing done today about this would still be valid by the time human interstellar flight actually becomes possible. In the course of reaching this conclusion, there were several well-made, yet contrary opinions.
WHAT does the organization need to do to fulfill those motivations?
Rather than sticking to the task of defining what an organization needs to do to last long enough to enable interstellar flight, the discussion turned instead to contemplating some of the milestones that would have to occur toward enabling interstellar flight. This is what they came up with. Please note: I do not agree with much of this list. I’m simply reporting it:
– 5 yrs:
• Prove other habitable worlds exist
• Create a credible plan
• Create a world view of hope
• $500 million (receipts) blockbuster movie
– 10 yrs:
• Land humans on Mars
• Communicate faster than light-speed
• Generation of life from computer code without a biological cell
• Ability to sink carbon on Earth faster than we’re creating it (leads to terraforming Mars and other planets)
– 20 yrs:
• Image of other Earth-like planet
• Telepresent probe on the surface of Europa
• ECLSS (Closed-loop life support)
– 25 yrs:
• Reflect energy off an exoplanet
– 30 yrs:
• Non-propellant satellite to Oort Cloud
With the exception of echoing the need for closed-loop life support, I personally refrained from most of this discussion so as to not impede their own flow of thoughts. We (at Tau Zero) are already working to define such next-steps and I wanted to use this as an opportunity to hear an independent set of views.
HOW can an organization be created and how can it achieve such milestones?
This part of the discussion never really jelled for a number of reasons. First, little time was left after distilling the “Why” and “What” sections. Next, the agenda was adjusted on the second day to give 1 minute each for existing interstellar organizations to describe themselves to the group. And lastly, this discussion met with very divergent points of view – too many to distill down to a set of key points in the remaining time. Despite that understandable lack of resolution, here are some of the interesting debates:
Origins of Organizations
The ingoing assumption by DARPA/Ames is that a new organization is needed for interstellar flight, and that need is enough to warrant a $1-million dollar study for its creation. That assumption was challenged by more than just myself. In addition to my own lessons, others also asserted that organizations come into existence after pioneers start making progress, rather than the other way around. Tsiolkovsky and Oberth, for example, did their work before there were rocket societies. Inspired by such pioneers, such rocket societies were later created to accelerate progress. [That pattern is exactly the strategy of Tau Zero: find the pioneers and help accelerate their progress through the collaboration and support.] Eventually the rocket societies and clubs led to government-supported work when their promising innovations looked like they could meet national goals (such as Apollo or the bombing of London with V2 rockets).
The main DARPA/Ames counterpoint was that if the right organization can be created and funded sufficiently, the rest would follow.
Type of Organization
While the consensus was that this should not be a government organization, most of the points and counterpoints were just anecdotal. The antigovernment stance seemed rooted in the frustrations felt by many. The US government in particular was criticized as being too short-term in its thinking and more self-serving than meeting the needs of governance. Nonprofit groups seemed to be the crowd favorite for a time, but the power of for-profit corporations was raised clearly as well. The point counterpoints involved the altruistic stance of nonprofits versus the power of commercialism – even if self-serving. When it came to the features of longevity and the ability to accomplish huge tasks, the role of government once again emerged. In contrast to the ingoing premise of a single, long-lived organization, the cycling of this discussion did more to accentuate how great accomplishments need a mix of organizations rather than one organization to do it all.
The point of longevity and the ability to raise funds also evoked discussion of religion. Several times throughout the other “why” and “what” discussion, religion also came up. I regret that I do not have the talent to capture accurately all those points and counterpoints. Those comments flew too fast and varied to be captured dispassionately. What is certain is the religious discussions got quite righteous and divisive. No overall consensus was reached regarding whether religious organizations should be a part of such endeavors, or even act as a role model for such endeavors.
Fundraising & Resources
Assuming a non-government entity, the prevailing notion was to secure wealthy supporters and establish lasting endowments… and to capitalize heavily on the fruits of the labor, even marketing the branding of such cool-sounding names as the “100-year starship.” Ideas for block-buster movies were provisionally mentioned.
Credibility was also raised as a necessary point in fundraising, but here I got confused. To me, credibility means that the organization has demonstrated that it produces reliable and relevant progress that others can rely upon to guide future decisions. In the context of this group, however, “credibility” was seen in terms of getting “big-name” supporters to first back the idea and then use their name recognition to bring in other supporters. The idea of putting an ad in the New York Times with the top 100 supporters of the 100-year starship organization was enthusiastically discussed.
While the prominent notions of “resources” were in terms of funding, a few participants brought up the fact that people are a resource, including the individuals who are making progress today and the students who will become tomorrow’s pioneers.
Lessons from Other Organizations
In addition to my own overt frustration that other organizations were not considered in the formation of this study, a few others echoed this issue. The omission of the British Interplanetary Society (which is just two decades short of a century in longevity) was brought up. To accommodate these concerns, the agenda of the second day was changed. Rather than using the remaining time to distill the “how” discussions to a short list , each of the represented organizations was given one-minute to address the whole group. I regret that my note-taking did not keep up with all those who spoke, but at least I jotted notes on the following (alphabetical by speaker):
Jim Benford: Spoke about Project Icarus (and as part of the Tau Zero Foundation)
Lou Friedman: Although retired from The Planetary Society, Lou spoke of the TPS and his own attempts to launch a solar sail mission
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Spoke of her Foundation for Conscious Evolution, which deals, in part, with the spiritual evolution of humanity
Mae Jemison: Discussed her numerous educational organizations and the importance of involving parents
Marc Millis: Obviously I spoke of the recent accomplishments of the Tau Zero Foundation, and our strategy to find and support the collaboration of pioneers and to keep the public informed via our Centauri Dreams news forum.
Alexander Rose: Introduced the Long Now Foundation, mentioned that it gets funding largely through a few wealthy folks, and spoke about their millennia clock project.
Jack Sarfatti: Briefly mentioned wanting to start the equivalent of “Star Fleet Academy” in the Presidio in the Bay Area, and his StarDrive.org.
Dan Shekow: As a part of his Global Universal Entertainment company, spoke of the possibility of producing block-buster, society-changing movies to drive public interest.
Jill Tarter : Described the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and its long history of listening for intelligent signals from space, and the support from Paul Allen for its latest antenna array.
Final Discussions
While wrapping up, each person at the meeting was given a chance to make closing remarks, many of which echoed ongoing discussions. Here is a condensed set of those parting comments:
• When another habitable world is found, the interest in interstellar flight will bloom
• Define the “Big Questions” whose solutions are needed
• Be sure to involve other existing organizations in future discussions
• Be sure to involve a mixture of disciplines. Social sciences and other nations/cultures were not adequately represented at this meeting
• Capitalize on the “coolness” factor
NEXT STEPS FOR DARPA/Ames
The DARPA/Ames folks said they needed to digest these discussions before embarking on a next step, but one thing mentioned several times was to have a “bidders conference” in preparation for a solicitation about studies to define the organization. No funding will be allowed for research or educational activities toward interstellar flight. No timeline was mentioned for when the next step would be announced.
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MILLIS’S REFLECTIONS ON THIS MEETING
When I heard about this study back in October, including the way it was disclosed, I was not sure if this “100-year starship study” was an opportunity or the emergence of a new competitor to an already limited market. I hoped that this meeting would clarify that, but I remain uncertain.
When faced with confusing situations, I prepare by devising a number of divergent hypotheses. Then, as the evidence unfolds, I see which hypotheses seem most consistent with the evidence. From my over 30 years in NASA, I have witnessed the extremes of well-intentioned, honorable initiatives all the way to the other extreme of self-serving earmarks with good-old-boy networking. Accordingly, my ingoing hypotheses spanned those possibilities. Frankly, what I saw in the meeting reminded me of both those extremes, and I am still not sure how this study will transpire.
The emphasis on creating a new organization was loud and clear. Since the funding is constrained to support only the definition of an organization (no research, no education), and since other organizations already exist that are devoted to meeting the topic challenges (Tau Zero, British Interplanetary Society, The Planetary Society, and others with their niches, such as SETI) there is already a disconnect between the premise of this study and what is already happening in the world.
I must also be frank in my own self-serving biases. I started Tau Zero to chip away at the unknowns toward making interstellar flight an eventual reality, and with the help of dozens of others, we investigated the issues and options to arrive at our strategy of finding and supporting the pioneers, and using journalists and artists to tell their story along the way. Hence, I have a great deal of possessiveness regarding how interstellar flight should be organizationally pursued. In my mind and with most (not all) of my network, we are doing exactly what fits current realities. Adding another organization in the mix would be more disruptive than fruitful. Instead I would love to apply that $1M to the 30+ task proposals we have in our queue, and to finally fund the admin support we need to deal with the dozens of offers of volunteer help and permanently fix our damn, broken website (volunteers are wonderful, but can only do so much).
Regardless of how this DARPA/Ames study plays out, my cohorts and I will continue to pursue interstellar flight as we have – which includes forging collaborations with other complimentary organizations. That collaboration might now have to be accelerated to respond to any RFPs (Requests for Proposals) issued by Ames. At the meeting, Lou Friedman suggested forming some sort of “Interstellar Alliance” to respond, and I recently learned that such notions are shared by others who were not invited to the January meeting.
When DARPA/Ames does announce their next step, I hope that all of us can respond in a constructive way, to help shape this initiative into something for the greater good. Time will tell.
In the meantime, we at Tau Zero will continue our efforts. As stated in our November status report, we are beginning active fundraising this year and plan to shift from a donations-only model to a membership format. Also, the results of our November organization meeting – with more details about our priorities and how we operate – will be revealed here on Centauri Dreams when ready.
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