Article Posted on : - Jun 19, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP): The research agency in the US Defence Department that helped foster the Internet wants someone to dream up a way to send people to a star.

The winner will get half a million dollars for the idea.

This month 150 competitors answered the federal government's initial call for private sector cosmic ideas. Officials say some big names are among those interested. The plan is to make interstellar travel possible in about a century.

The Defence Department is known for big spending and big ideas. It devised a space-based missile defense system in the 1980s known as "Star Wars." Its new trademarked 100-year Starship Study concept comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The agency is spending a total of $1 million on the project. After presentations are made at a conference in Orlando, Florida, DARPA will decide in November who gets the money.

The grant would be "seed money" to help someone start thinking about the idea and then get it off the ground in the private sector, David Neyland, director of DARPA's tactical technology office, said in a teleconference Thursday.

This is not about going to a nearby planet, like Mars. And it is not about using robotic probes, which does not interest the Defense Department, Neyland said.

But even the nearest star beyond our Sun is 40 trillion kilometers away. The fastest rocket man has built would take more than 4,000 years to get there. This is not just about thinking new rocket methods, Neyland said. It is also about coping with extended life in space, raising issues of medicine, agriculture, ethics and self-reliance, he said.