How to Build an Interstellar Ship

This piece focuses on the here-and-now urban ecology applications that could help drive the development of interstellar-travel-oriented biotechnology. This is smart because a nearer-term payoff dramatically helps to move technology like this forward, and it's why the recent asteroid mining proposal is exciting (though there hasn't been a lot of discussion since the initial press release).

Another possibility, if not for interstellar travel, then for colonizing Mars - settling Antarctica sustainably.



You think that's inhospitable? Seriously? Then you don't even want to see Mars. That's all water laying around. Plus there's air. And Antarctic settlements wouldn't last two years once the supply lines shut down.