Reminds me of my games of Civilization. Should I spend few more turns to build additional engines to my spaceship, or should I launch it now and risk being overtaken by a faster ship.
In real life its so much more complicated than that. Because choosing to "send ship now" will result in huge amounts of progress in overcoming obstacles you could not have known about until you actual began the project.
It seems like the answer is always send out a test ship as fast as possible, knowing that it will absolutely be overtaken by a ship with more engines AND the knowledge gain from the first ship.
It seems like the answer is always send out a test ship as fast as possible, knowing that it will absolutely be overtaken by a ship with more engines AND the knowledge gain from the first ship.