During the 1970s members of the British Interplanetary Society embarked on alandmark theoretical engineering design study to send a probe to Barnard'sstar. Project Daedalus was a two-stage vehicle employing electron beam driveninertial confinement fusion engines to reach its target destination. This papersets out the proposal for a successor interstellar design study called ProjectIcarus. This is an attempt to redesign the Daedalus vehicle with similar termsof reference. The aim of this study is to evolve an improved engineering designand move us closer to achieving interstellar exploration. Although this paperdoes not discuss prematurely what design modification are likely to occur someindications are given from the nature of the discussions. This paper is asubmission of the Project Icarus Study Group.
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