FORMER ASTRONAUT Dr. Mae Jemison laid out her plans to use
research into space programmes to fix issues here on earth
today, speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in
Austin, Texas. "What happens when we say this is a problem? How
do we change the way we handle it?" said Jemison. Mae also heads
up the 100 Year Starship programme, which is a DARPA funded
project that aims to make interstellar travel a reality within
the next 100 years. Jemison says that the programme's aims will
lead to real world advancements here on earth. According to her,
pushing for interstellar travel will require us to rethink how
we do things on earth today and challenge society to advance its
current paradigms of thinking. The project aims to create a
Grand Challenge that will attempt to achieve a very difficult
task that will lead to smaller advancements along the way.
Jemison used the example of mapping the human genome as a Grand
Challenge that led to a variety of other advancements. "For
every dollar that went into t