Mission Design Meetings

In the years leading up to building of the spacecraft, engineers and scientists from a range of disciplines, alongside political and religious leaders debated the the basic principals that that would underpin the mission and the ship design. This would include the destination and number of passengers.

Comments by experts and minutes of several of these meetings are below:


A:
I do not believe that it is time for this mission to go ahead. Although our ability for solar system exploration has increased in recent decades, there is much improvement in propulsion systems and energy use to come. The jump from the outer parts of our solar system are very uncertain. It has not been demonstrated that sufficient antimatter can be harvested to achieve the velocity increase necessary to reach a habitable planet within the timescale suggested. We should shelve the mission for a few generations by which time we will have better knowledge and technology for a successful mission.

B:
I agree that success is not guaranteed. However, this kind of defeatist attitude gets mankind nowhere. Throughout history humans taken steps beyond what others though prudent or even possible. We have tried and succeeded. Yes there have been failures but these failures have helped us to learn how to be successful. In the 1960s John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. This attitude led to success. For half a century after the Apollo program, sensible care and consideration meant that nobody returned to the moon.
If we try now and do not succeed, we will not have failed but paved the way for the next attempt. We will learn how to master the resources laid before us in our solar system. We will have learnt how to indefinitely support humans in a hostile environment.