Project Cyclops, A Design... - Department of Earth and Planetary ...

1. INTRODUCTION
Each summer for the last five years the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) has funded
eight faculty fellowship programs in cooperation with
the American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE). The selection of four sites is governed by the
proximity of a NASA facility to a university. Two
programs are conducted at each site-one research oriented
and the other engineering-design oriented. Project
Cyclops is the 1971 NASA-ASEE Summer faculty
Fellowship Program in Engineering Systems Design
conducted jointly by Stanford University and Ames
Research Center.
A major objective of these programs is to provide
an educational experience for young faculty members
of American universities. The Engineering Systems Design
programs, for example, usually involve several disciplines,
each represented by individuals involved in the
program. The interaction of the disciplines, as well as
the tradeoffs available for optimizing the overall system,
becomes apparent. Each specialist inevitably
learns something about the other fields involved in the
total system design.
While the overall objectives of the summer programs
are educational, it is important that any system studied
have a clearly stated objective or set of objectives. The
primary objective of Project Cyclops was:
To assess what would be required in hardware, manpower,
time and fitnding to mount a realistic effort,
using present (or near-term future) state-of-the-art techniques,
aimed at detecting the existence of extraterrestrial
(extrasolar system) intelligent life.
By a "realistic effort" is meant one having a high
probability of success, based on our best estimates of
all the factors involved. Because our present knowledge
does not allow accurate estimates of the density of
intelligent and especially of communicative life in the
universe and therefore of the volume of space that
must be searched, the Cyclops system design must take
this uncertainty as to the magnitude of the problem
into account at the outset. This suggests starting with
the minimum system that would probably be needed
and increasing its size till success is achieved or until a
new and superior technique is discovered. Cyclops is
therefore not a fixed static system but a flexible expandable
one.
This report presents the conclusions reached in this
summer study including a possible system design (with
some alternatives) and some cost estimates. However, it
should be emphasized that, because of time and manpower
limitations, this study represents only about two
to three man-years of effort. Before cost estimates can
be made that are accurate enough to permit a go-no-go
decision, at least ten times this effort will be needed.
And before a final detailed design can be specified at
least a thousand times the present Cyclops effort will
have been expanded. Thus the present report must be
taken as only a very preliminary and rough set of estimates.
Although the Cyclops system as here described
would have certain important applications in both radio
astronomy and communication with deep space probes
both the extremely preliminary nature of this study
and tile great uncertainty as to whether a system of
this type will be built in the reasonably near future
force us to emphasize that presently contemplated expenditures
in radio astronomy, radar mapping and deep
space communication facilities should be evaluated
without regard to the content of this report. It would
be extremely unfortunate if funding for any worthwhile
projects in these fields were to be deferred or
reduced because of a mistaken impression regarding the
imminence of a Cyclops-like system. Rather we would
hope that the fact that many people are willing to
consider the magnitude of expenditures involved in
Cyclops might serve to emphasize how greatly under
financed radio astronomy, for example, is at the
present
time.