100 Year Starship

The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) is a joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant project to a private entity. The goal of the study is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft, but rather to create a business plan that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel.

Origin

The 100 Year Starship effort was announced by NASA Ames Research Center director Pete Worden in a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference in October 2010. In a DARPA press release officially announcing the effort, program manager Paul Eremenko, who served as the study coordinator, explained that the endeavor was meant to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies to advance the eventual goal of interstellar space travel.

Foundation

The 100 Year Starship study is the name of a one-year project to assess the attributes of and lay the groundwork for an organization that can carry forward the 100 Year Starship vision. American physician and former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison made the winning bid as leader of her own foundation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, partnering with Icarus Interstellar and the Foundation for Enterprise Development. The consortium was awarded a $500,000 grant for further work. The new organization maintained the organizational name 100 Year Starship. Neither Icarus Interstellar nor the Foundation for Enterprise Development are any longer involved in 100 Year Starship although initial grant negotiations took place.

Young–Simpson syndrome

Young–Simpson syndrome (YSS), is a rare congenital disorder with symptoms including hypothyroidism, heart defects, facial dysmorphism, cryptorchidism in males, hypotonia, mental retardation and postnatal growth retardation.

Other symptoms include transient hypothyroidism, macular degeneration and torticollis. The condition was discovered in 1987 and the name arose from the individuals who first reported the syndrome. A individual with YSS has been identified with having symptoms to a similar syndrome known as Ohdo Blepharophimosis syndrome showing that it is quite difficult to diagnose the correct condition based on the symptoms present. Some doctors therefore consider the syndrome to be the same.

The mode of inheritance has had mixed findings based on studies undertaken. One study showed that the parents of an individual with YSS are unrelated and phenotypically normal, indicating a sporadic mutation, thus making it difficult to base the cause of the condition on genetic make up alone. Another study however with an individual of YSS had first cousins as parents, giving the possibility of autosomal recessive inheritance.