Techdirt. Stories filed under "darpa"

Techdirt. Stories filed under "darpa" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "darpa"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Interstellar Travel -- 'To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before' Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120303/01062217972/dailydirt-interstellar-travel-to-boldly-go-where-no-one-has-gone-before.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120303/01062217972/dailydirt-interstellar-travel-to-boldly-go-where-no-one-has-gone-before.shtml Star Trek... While we won't be traveling beyond our solar system anytime soon, there are already plenty of efforts underway to develop the technologies needed to make interstellar travel a reality. Here are a few examples.

DARPA is funding the "100 Year Starship Initiative" which aims to make long-distance space travel possible within the next century. The initiative will focus on identifying and driving advancements in the technologies needed for interstellar flight, as well as using them to improve the quality of life on Earth. [url]
According to an estimate of how much energy would be needed to make interstellar travel possible, it will be at least another 200 years before humans will have enough to trek to the stars. For example, a mission to send 500 people on a one-way trip into space would require 10¹⁸ Joules of energy for rocket propulsion. In comparison, a shuttle launch requires 10¹³ Joules of energy. [url]
NASA's Glenn Research Center has compiled a list of some ideas for interstellar travel that are based on scientific knowledge that exists today. To make interstellar travel practical, we'll need to be able to control gravitational/inertial forces, travel faster than light, find ways to harness the energy in the vacuum of space, etc. [url]
Icarus Interstellar Inc. is working on the concept of using powerful lasers to generate antimatter from the vacuum of space. The large amount of energy produced through matter-antimatter annihilation could then be used for interstellar propulsion. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120303/01062217972 Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:01:00 PDT White House Going To Launch Its Own Innovation Prize Platform Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20100311/0033318516.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20100311/0033318516.shtml launch its very own innovation prize platform. The government, of course, is no stranger to innovation prizes, with things like the DARPA's "grand challenge" for autonomous vehicles, and its more recent "find the red balloons" challenge. However, I believe the goal here is to make it easier for other parts of the federal government to quickly offer up compelling innovation challenges. While I'll be curious to see the platform in action -- and how it's used -- it's really great to see the federal government seriously exploring and enabling new and different ways to encourage innovation. It's especially encouraging to see them not just fall back on thinking that "patents" are the only lever they can pull.

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]]> x-prize-me http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100311/0033318516 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:03:00 PST You Know What Was Useless In DARPA's Balloon Challenge? Google Search Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091214/0928527342.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091214/0928527342.shtml lessons learned from the MIT team's quick victory in DARPA's "find the red balloons" challenge. JP Werlin pointed out one additional interesting point however: despite this being a task involving searching, finding and aggregating information, Google search was useless for this particular project:

Google didn't matter because Google is a file cabinet of the past. Yes, we know that supposedly this week Google Real Time Search is launching and it will be the next great thing. We also know there are Google Alerts that help us stay current. But there was no real time search or alert that helped us on Saturday, December 5, 2009. Now Google documents were great (we used Spreadsheets) and Google Maps with Street View was indispensable. But Google's main function, it reason for being, was 100% irrelevant. Google is great for looking at yesterday. In its current form, Google is a complete failure for looking at today. And when I mean today I do not mean today's Wall Street Journal or Techcrunch as arguably those are both looking at history as well. I am talking about what is happening right now, this moment. And do you want to know the best place to find out what is happening right now? Twitter Search.

Perhaps that changes (as noted) with Google's real time search offering, but it is notable. Google positions itself as wanting to be the place where you can find any relevant information, but that information is backwards looking.

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