The Cost of Daedalus

[Autolykos]

Space exploration has always fascinated me. Lately, I found renewed interest in the Daedalus Project , a mid-1970s creation of the British Interplanetary Society. To me, it still seems like the most feasible interstellar exploration mission today (barring any way to make ramscoops work). Being of a rather libertarian "bent", I've started wondering if it could be possible for a private organization to build and launch a Daedalus-type spacecraft in the near future. The chief concern, of course, is how much such a project would cost. That is what I'd like to put out to the forum: Is there any way to reasonably estimate the pricetag on the Daedalus Project? If so, how much would it be?

Thanks in advance for any and all responses. :)

- Rob

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Autolykos I've started wondering if it could be possible for a private organization to build and launch a Daedalus-type spacecraft in the near future.

The question on the table would be how the builders could recoup their investment. Any ideas on what returns could be realized by such a project?

[Autolykos]

Like I said in "Scrapping the Space Program" over in Politics, the organization could charge people for the information its probes gathered. The price wouldn't have to be much -- most people would be interested in the pictures, so charging a few cents per picture could be profitable. I'd figure *a lot* of people would want to see them, being another solar system and all, and there'd hopefully be a whole lot of pictures taken...

- Rob

[Starboy]

The funny thing about that is that at the rate improvements are being made on telescopes it is very likely that by the time Daedalus reached its targets most if not all discoveries it could make would be old news.

Starboy

[Autolykos]

Quote by: Starboy The funny thing about that is that at the rate improvements are being made on telescopes it is very likely that by the time Daedalus reached its targets most if not all discoveries it could make would be old news. Starboy

Somehow I doubt that Earth-orbiting telescopes would be able to see planets orbiting Alpha Centauri with as much detail as probes orbiting those planets would be able to.

- Rob

[Starboy]

Quote by: Autolykos Somehow I doubt that Earth-orbiting telescopes would be able to see planets orbiting Alpha Centauri with as much detail as probes orbiting those planets would be able to. - Rob

Fifty years is a long time. When they launched Hubble they were saying that earth based telescopes would not be able to exceed Hubble’s resolution and it is already happening and that was only twenty years ago. And that is here on earth. They are planning some very big scopes and they are making good progress on synthetic apertures. Besides what would it hurt to wait? The scopes get better, planet detecting techniques get better. We then have a much better idea of what systems to aim for and what sort of equipment to put on board.

Starboy

[Livemike]

Quote by: Autolykos Somehow I doubt that Earth-orbiting telescopes would be able to see planets orbiting Alpha Centauri with as much detail as probes orbiting those planets would be able to. - Rob

Well there is a limit on magnification/resolution that depends the distance between the edges of the array. Logically if you want really good resolution you should the array orbit the sun to get maximum effective mirror size. I call it the Bloody Huge Array concept.