Before us are distances that even light travels for many years. It is clear that the missiles we have now will not fly far. A dozen variants of the engines of the future have already been invented. It is interesting to see which ones are realistically done.
EmDrive "bucket"
Development stage: Tested at NASA, TU Dresden and Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The design seems ridiculously simple: we take a metal bucket and put a magnetron inside (which is in any microwave oven), and then we cover it tightly with a lid, that is, we seal it. We turn on the "microwave" and get the following: electromagnetic radiation creates a certain pressure, and under the lid it is greater than at the bottom. This creates a thrust directed towards the bottom. True, for the experimental model it is negligible - 20 micronewtons. On Earth, this is not enough even to move from the spot. But there is a clear advantage - no fuel is needed. At all. In addition, in space, the developers are sure, even with such a low power, one can accelerate to a speed of several kilometers per second in ten years and fly 3.5 billion kilometers. But on a cosmic scale, this still means crawling slower than a snail:to the very, very closest star (not counting the Sun, of course) Proxima Centauri is 4 light years, and each light year is 9 thousand billion kilometers.
Ion engine
Promotional video:
Development stage: 1998 - launch of the Deep Space-1 probe (the engine worked for 678 days), 2003 - launch of the Hayabusa and SMART-1 probes.
It needs xenon or some other inert gas. Electric current knocks out electrons from its atoms - ions are obtained, which acquire a fantastic acceleration: up to 200 kilometers per second. This is 50 times more than the speed with which the incandescent gas rushes from the current rockets. Moreover, he can work continuously for three years in a row.
Plasma engine
Development stage: VASIMR project, not yet tested in space.
It is similar to ionic, only dozens of times more powerful. The ionized gas is heated to several million degrees, and it transforms into a state of plasma, which is ejected through the nozzle. They are considering installing such an engine on a spacecraft for manned flights to Mars. The journey will then take only 39 days. But neither he nor his younger brother will take us to the stars: an incredible amount of fuel will be required, and we will obviously not live to land on an exoplanet in such a ship.
Fusion engine
Development stage: no working samples.
He, too, does not need fuel, he will take it directly from space - collect hydrogen (and there is enough of it there), heat it to the point where the atoms begin thermonuclear fusion, that is, up to millions of degrees, and thus receive energy. The speed of movement, according to calculations, turns out to be simply incredible - in 11 years you can overcome 400 light-years and get to the Pleiades constellation, and in 23 years - generally to the neighboring galaxy Andromeda. And the trouble is that a special, proton-proton thermonuclear reaction is needed, but it has not yet been obtained.
Antimatter engine
Development stage: theory, in 2010 - successful production of antimatter.
So, so: there are electrons, and there are - positrons. These are electrons the other way around, because they have a positive charge, not a negative one. And there are the same wrong protons - antiprotons. All this is antimatter. Physicists have calculated that with the help of some four milligrams of such matter, one can fly to Mars in a few weeks, and 17 grams will be enough for Alpha Centauri. The trick is that when it interacts with matter - the most ordinary - they destroy each other, and at the same time there is a release of just colossal energy. A kilogram of antimatter plus a kilogram of ordinary antimatter is equal to the Tsar Bomba, but we earthlings have it, the most terrible of all hydrogen ones. There is only one small question left - how to get this treasure. It has not yet been found in the observable universe. They try to do it themselves. The first antiparticle was synthesized back in 1965. Now the task is to trap them in a special trap and ensure that they stay there as long as possible in their anti-state. So far, it turns out sparsely: in 2011, 309 antiprotons "lived" for 1000 seconds.
Quantum engine
Development stage: terms of reference from Roscosmos for experimental verification.
If we talk about the invention of the Russian scientist Vladimir Leonov, nowadays they call him a "gravity" and generally scold him for nothing. But in 2014, its creator showed his experimental model to the Russian Academy of Sciences, and there it was recognized as quite workable. Then the 54-kilogram engine gave a thrust capable of lifting and carrying up to 700 kilograms into space, while consuming only a kilowatt of electricity. The thing, however, is very complicated. For example, it needs a reactor of cold nuclear fusion (and this is still a hypothetical thing), and most importantly, the zero element, which Mendeleev once included in his periodic system and which science does not recognize today. Leonov insists that it exists and that invisible matter ("quantum space-time") consists of it. And if you learn to handle it,then you can get anti-gravity, which will carry us to Mars in 42 hours. In the spring of 2019, Roskosmos agreed to let Leonov show how it works and prove that it can be used to fly into distant space.
Warp Drive
Development stage: theory.
We can say that Leonov's ideas are similar to those invented by another scientist - the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre. Once in the 90s, he had seen enough Star Trek and after a whole night of calculations came to the conclusion that nothing is impossible in the Enterprise. You just need to deform the space around the ship. And How? And so: just drive him crazy, again with the help of antigravity. Only this did not require a zero element, but something even more unimaginable - exotic matter. We don't know where to get it, but we know that it has less pressure than in a vacuum. Negative. You say, it doesn't happen? It turns out that it happens. The vacuum is not empty, as it turned out, it is teeming with quantum particles, which also create pressure. And if you put two microscopic plates very, very, very close, then there will be less of these particles dangling between them than around. So it turns out that there is negative pressure. This experiment was carried out in 1948 by the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, so now an amazing effect bears his name.
So, about Alcubierre. His idea is this: to surround the spaceship with a large exotic ring. And then insane matter, interacting with normal matter, will begin to create anti-gravity and bend space: it will contract in front, and expand behind. There will be such a tunnel in which our "Enterprise", without moving anywhere, will be able to move faster than light, and in two weeks it will be near the star closest to the Sun.
That is, we will find exotics not in microscopic, but in normal scales - and we will fly.
Adel Romanenkova
