Guest contributor Richard Obousy is a member of the Tau Zero Foundation, a non-profit group of scientists dedicated to the incremental advancement of interstellar spaceflight. Richard is the current leader of Project Icarus, one of the Foundation's key initiatives and a project that builds on a landmark nuclear pulse propulsion study from the 1970s: Project Daedalus.
Project Daedalus was a feasibility study for an interstellar mission, using 1970s capabilities and credible extrapolations for near-future technology.
One of the major objectives was to establish whether interstellar flight could be realized within established science and technology. The conclusion was that it was possible, but that it would be very difficult.
Realistically speaking, Project Daedalus is dead on arrival for any kind of practical human interstellar travel. We will have to go far beyond rocket technology of any kind, including even the much vaunted antimatter/matter annihilation rocket. More on this in an upcoming Stardrive feature article. To read the rest of the article, click here.