The Ultimate Project: 10000 Year Journey

Posted: 26 Feb 2008 01:26 PM CST

When you’re thinking interstellar, long time frames are inescapable. Are we capable as a culture of planning missions that last not only longer than a single human lifetime, but longer than multiple generations? Steve Kilston (Ball Aerospace & Technologies), with help from Sven and Nancy Grenander, clearly thinks so. The three are behind the fittingly named Ultimate Project, a starship designed to carry one million humans across the light years separating us from the nearest stars, creating colonies and perhaps going on from there, a ten thousand year star journey that could turn into a trek through the galaxy lasting for millions more.

For just to get such a mission to the launch point, Kilston is thinking in terms of century-long segments within an overall 500-year plan. 100 years to develop the plan for the mission. 100 more years to achieve a detailed design. Now a century for prototyping and demonstrating technologies, followed by a century to assemble materials and construct the spacecraft. A final one hundred years for a shakedown cruise in the Solar System. You can see that we’re looking at societal commitments on the order of the great cathedrals of Europe, but going substantially beyond even their protracted construction in terms of time and expense.

Full article here:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1738