An interesting article on io9 today titled:
|
The plans, published last month in the Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest, would take us to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto starting around year 2050.
|
|
Their travel plan to Neptune, for example, was designed with a 5-year total mission duration
|
|
Based on the costs of historic large technological endeavors, the scientists project that a mission to Neptune would cost roughly 4 trillion dollars.
|
via Ars Technica
Dreaming big: planning a human mission to outer solar system
|
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the starting point for many unmanned space missions—the study’s lead author, Ralph McNutt,
|
You can read McNutt et. al.'s paper
here [“
Human Missions Throughout the Outer Solar System: Requirements and Implementations” ] (it's a PDF), and find out more about the voyage our descendants might someday take to the outer system.
via io9
Why it would cost 4 trillion dollars to take humans past Jupiter