A Long Term Commitment

The things that have completely transformed our society all started out as "pie in the sky" research projects.

Luckily for us the investigation of (say) electricity yielded so many early successes, but subjects like chemistry, physics and biology had been around for centuries before they developed into the easily used technologies we take for granted today.

And all these disciplines built on mathematical ideas developed hundreds of years before.

So I say get stuck into the "100 years starship study", we may not get a starship but we'll probably get something just as good.

Did they ask the same questions when DARPA set up the DARPA net?

DARPA has traditionally been a Skunk Work- a place where "impractical" concepts can be explored, and has proved its worth time and again. It may be the ONLY US Government agency worth perpetrating...

Let them go for it.

I did some reading about this agency and the guy that runs it. In my mind, this is another good one. It's very rare that you'll hear me say that.

http://arpa-e.energy.gov/Home.aspx

I think you mean "Perpetuating"... lol

you also have to look at the ROI too. Suppose for a moment that they DO develop a starship in the 100 year time frame they envision and we disregard all the spin-off technologies that come out of it for the moment. the ROI could very well be the survival of the species. is there ANYTHING that has higher priority than that?

As many have already stated, the ROI will be in related and possibly unknown effects generated by the research itself. Having used the DARPA net in it's infancy and been part of developing e-mail and network systems based on it, I have to agree it's one of the best "skunk-works" going.

DARPA is the essence of proper government spending: governments don't MAKE money, they SPEND money. At least in America's society, if an operation or function can make money, then someone(s) should be able to, or already has, started a business to do it. (And therefore the government quite possibly shouldn't bother duplicating the function.)

This basic lesson seems lost on those who think "government should run more like a business."