Let's Reconstitute Humans From Genomes Launched Into Space! and Other Ambitious Proposals for Galactic Colonization
Gliese 581 Gliese 581 and its exoplanets are only 20 light years away (okay, so that's still a long way off), but we won't be visiting them unless someone builds us a starship. ESODARPA's 100-Year Starship project is getting underway Fragmented human genomes could be shipped toward the stars and reconstructed upon their arrival, spawning the first interstellar citizens and avoiding the problems of long-distance space survival. That's just one idea - proposed by genome pioneer J. Craig Venter - emerging from the field of dreams seeded by DARPA's 100-Year Starship project. DARPA is collecting proposals for a conference on the starship project this fall. You can submit ideas through July 8; find out more here. We have no idea what interstellar travel might look like in 100 years, of course - just as Jules Verne could never have conceived of the technology required to really send humans to the moon when...