Kepler set to begin search for Earth-like planets.

This was an article printed in the New York Times newspaper on March 2, 2009. NASA is prepared to begin its first "planetary census" Friday evening with the launch of the Kepler space telescope. Armed with a 95-million-pixel digital camera, Kepler will spend three and half years staring at the same area in the Cygnus and Lyra constellations, monitoring some 100,000 stars for blips that would indicate the transit of a planet crossing in front of a star. Th goal: to determine whether Earth-like planets at a proper distance from the sun are common or rare -- a first step in seeking out other life in the universe.

Once again, notice that the cost of this endeavor was not mentioned. The cost was $467 million. Also not mentioned is that the closest constellation Cygnus, is 149 light-years away from Earth.
The most distant space probe, Voyger 1, was about 14 light-hours away from Earth as of March 9, 2007. It took that space probe 30 years to cover that distance. Should Kepler find the right combinations for a star and a planet location for life in that constellation, it would only take 927 earth years to get there. Good Luck.