Eta Carinae expedition

The Eta Carinae expedition is mentioned in the Jason Curtis novella, "Renee (and the Space Raiders)". Also known as the "Deep Star" expedition. A small fleet of ships, Deep Star One, Two and Three, set out on a multi-year voyage towards the Eta Carinae nebula, whose core stars are expected to go hypernova within the next few thousand years, if they haven't already.

The purpose of the expedtion is to investigate the evolution of Eta Carinae to help predict this event, and to plant early warning stations along the way. The idea is that if these detect the wavefront of the expected hypernova, they will send warp torpedoes towards Sol and Alpha Centauri to warn of the approaching disaster.

Possible Route

The ships have no plan to go all the way to Eta Carinae, that would be a multi-decade trip, but they do intend to go at least a hundred light years, well beyond explored space at the time. The ships will have to make multiple stops to refuel, and a secondary purpose of the trip is to determine how far in that direction that terraformed planets exist. To that end they will favor stops at G and K type stars.

Stars

The following stars lie very roughly along the route, which will necessarily meander. The best route between these (and the complete list, including other star types) is TBD.

Star	Type	from Sol	Nearest next	Distance	Notes
Alpha Centauri	G,K	4.2			Start at Kakuloa
61 Virginis	G	27.8	HR 4523AB	15ly	exoplanets
HR 4523 A	G,M				exoplanet, B is red dwarf, Centaurus
Kappa Ceti	G5	29.9	Delta Trianguli	20ly
Delta Trianguli AB	G,K	~35			close binary
BE Ceti	G2-3	66.5			young? ~600my, aka 9 Ceti
94 Ceti A	F8,M	~73			binary, has Jupiter-size planet, hab zone may be unstable
(more needed)

Eta Carinae expedition