I believe that work on such a project would be interesting, even if it isn't ever done. It is something that if you worked on it as a grad student, and then became a professor and your grad students worked on it ... and they became professors and their grad students worked on it - they'd be the ones seeing the results.

Not so much a "this is a way to do things..." but rather a "thinking about research that spans generations and the problems that they solve in the process of doing that great project has useful spinoffs."

A mission out to 550 AU at New Horizons speed of 2.9 AU / year (it still boggles the mind of talking about those speeds and distances) is nearly 200 years from launch to primary science objective.

It's "only" been 45 years since Mariner 2 to New Horizons.