Project Daedalus
Concept Led By: British Interplanetary Society
Companies Involved: None (No Spacecraft Was Commissioned)
Being named after the Greek mythological designer and father of Ikaros, you’d think Project Daedalus would have gotten off the ground. Turns out, naming a project after a Greek tragedy was a bad omen. Project Daedalus came crashing down before it really went anywhere. We should first mention this is unlike the other spacecraft designs we’ve referenced because Project Daedalus was mostly just a study conducted by the British Interplanetary Society from 1973 to 1978. Their job was to figure out a design that could plausibly be a useful unmanned interstellar probe. It would be intended simply as a scientific probe, but there was a catch.
It would need to be designed using both existing or near-future technology and would need to be capable of reaching any destination it was sent to within a reasonable human lifetime, which would have been within 70 years. A team of scientists and engineers was led by Alan Bond, a mechanical and aerospace engineer. Their concept was the use of a fusion rocket that would reach Bernard’s Star 5.9 lightyears away. Their spacecraft design would take an estimated 50 years, but it would need to be capable of being sent to another target star. No rocket or spacecraft was ever made using this study by the BIS. They have still never built a spacecraft nearly 50 years later.