Darpa funding interstellar spaceship research.

For those that don´t know, interstellar space is the space outside of our solar system, and between other solar systems. Apparently they are giving out a 500000 dollar award if i understand this correctly, to hobbyists and researchers able to contribute. Anyway, here is the link for the full article.

idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com...

They need to up their offer significantly.
X prize are offering $30 million Just to send a robot to the moon.

reply to post by pazcat

i guess the 500000 dollars are for the best idea. the 30 million would be for actualy putting the robot on the moon, including material, production etc.

no no no... they don't get it...
To lead nerds (ie people smarter than you) to accomplish something you want, you need a sufficiently tempting carrot.
I'd say they offer as a prize for the first one to develop a safe interstellar travel method, for example, a night withKatee Sackhoff...

Darpa funds invisible, shoot-through shield [See HALO

]

Darpa, the Pentagon’s wide-eyed research arm, is betting big on "metamaterials" — composites that can seemingly-impossible new properties, thanks to their molecular structure. But even for Darpa, and even for metamaterials, this seems like a long shot: a $15 million program to build shoot-through, one-way-invisible, self-healing shields for soldiers in urban battlefields.

Metamaterials are already showing promise, as the building blocks to real-life invisibility cloaks; that’s because the composites let electromagnetic waves flow around them, instead of reflecting ‘em back. Darpa’s "Asymmetric Materials for the Urban Battlespace" program goes way, way beyond mere invisibility, however.

"Asymmetric, or ‘one-way,’ materials will support basic unit operations such as raids, cordon and search activities, snap checkpoints, and fire fights," according to military budget documents. "Friendly forces will be able to see through [one of these new materials] and shoot through it, but hostile forces will not." Such shields will also have "the ability to ’self-heal’ if necessary. The materials must be lightweight, respond instantly, and be easy to deploy and retract in confined spaces."

Darpa doesn’t give much guidance on how this might be done. But the agency does offer a clue, buried in an earlier budget document: "Initial studies have shown optical analogs of secure digital communication hold great promise for providing a ‘coded’ obscurant system. The optical properties of obscurant can be tailored such that they develop transparency at narrow, tunable wavelengths. This narrow band optical bleaching phenomena could be realized through optical threshold sensitive switching materials akin to some developed for laser protection goggles."


www.wired.com...

I'm just posting this to give you an example of the type of work DARPA funds. Keep in mind the bold part. There's a reason there's only a $50k prize for an interstellar ship, it legitimized some pencil pushers department / salary.

I actually did a little digging and found out that its too late to claim this cash.

Speaking abstracts for papers and proposed panels should be submitted online at www.100yss.org by 2:00 pm ET on Friday, July 8, 2011.

www.darpa.mil...

Too bad I did not know about this earlier, in elementary school this was one of our fuzzy situations that we had to talk about in the gifted and talented class. We covered everything from waste recycling, child birth, ect...

I'm over 30 now but I have a memory like a trap.