What was the Daedalus project?

Project Daedalus is the name extremely large (54,000 tons) interstellar spacecraft designed as part of the concept of concept. The Daedalus project was also the name of this study, which was carried out from 1973 to 1978 by the British interplanetary company. The Daedalus project continues to appear in discussions on interstellar travel. One of its requirements was that it could only be built using contemporary or almost futures technology of that time. Daedalus has never been built of course and maybe it will never be, but it helps to set an interesting data point for brainstorming about interstellar travel.

The target star of Daedalus was Bernard's star, located 5.9 light -years. At that time it was assumed that he had at least one planet, but the evidence on which it was founded has been fired since then. Daedalus was supposed to be unmanned and only require 50 years to achieve the target system. It was explicitly designed to get to its goal for less than human life.

at your oBrnov's weight and size (190 meters) would have to be built in orbit. Daedalus was to be driven by Helia-3/deuteria pellets, whose cores would be connected together by inertial laser imprisonment. The 150 pellets per second would release a large amount of overheated plasma, which would then accelerate the rear of the vessel using a magnetic nozzle. Taedalus, such as this, could have been about three years, could achieve 10% of light speed. Fuel for slowing would be too much weighed, so it was not included. The vessel would simply fly through the Bernard Star System to 10% Lightspeed, creating observations along the road and continued forward for as long as it could avoid a fall into another star or black hole.

Some project specifications:

• Total length: 190 meters
• first stage Harmoba: 46,000 Tons metrics
• The second phase of the hamostička: 4000 metric tons
• first stage of mass empty mass: 1690 metric tons
• empty mass of second phase: 980 meterstons
• engine burn time first phase: 2.05 years
• engine burning time second phase: 1.76 term
• Thrust first phase: 754,000 Newtons
• Thrust Second Phase: 663,000 Newtons
• Exhaust gas speed: 10,000 km/s
• Weight of payload: 450 tons

Daedalus would be an amazing vessel to see to build and would return the first detailed images of another star system. Maybe it will be built one day, because the cost of the necessary technologies, such as the launch of the universe, descend.