Chemical-fueled rockets are capable of delivering people to the Moon, Mars, Venus. But in order to explore other planets of the solar system and go beyond its limits, ships are needed on nuclear or thermonuclear fuel - explosions. RIA Novosti talks about explosive projects and the estimated timing of the interplanetary mission.
The principle of a spacecraft moving due to the energy of a nuclear charge was formulated by the American scientist Stanislav Ulam even before the space age, in 1947. According to his idea, the detonation from successive nuclear explosions can be caught by a metal shield attached to the ship and thus accelerated.
In 1957, in the United States, within the framework of the Orion project, they began to develop a model of a nuclear propulsion device and to test it. The ship was intended for the military to move nuclear warheads. It included a compartment with fuel cassettes, a pusher shield, a cargo compartment. The manned version also required the installation of shock absorbers to dampen the jerks. In addition to gaining speed, the explosive takes on board an order of magnitude more payload than a chemical-fueled rocket.
“This idea is attractive because only with the help of an explosive spacecraft it is possible to accelerate to significant relativistic speeds, then the distant planets of the solar system will become available and it will be possible to organize the first interstellar expedition,” explains RIA Novosti Anton Pervushin, science fiction writer, specialist in the history of astronautics …
Scientists have calculated that if you detonate one charge every three seconds, then with an acceleration of one, the ship will reach three percent of the speed of light and fly to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in 140 years.
The idea of a space propulsion device based on nuclear explosions was also expressed by the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov in 1962. His concept was recognized as very complex, but promising.
All work on explosives stopped in 1963, when an international treaty was signed banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, space and under water.
Explosion scheme "Orion" / Illustration by RIA Novosti. NASA.
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Thermonuclear explode
In 1971, German physicist Friedward Winterberg proposed accelerating a spacecraft with a thermonuclear reaction launched by an electron beam.
A thermonuclear reaction is 26 million times more energetic than the chemical hydrogen-oxygen rocket fuel and gives an order of magnitude more energy than a nuclear one. But an order of magnitude less than an explosion in the interaction of matter and antimatter. The problem is that of all the potential types of fuel, only the nuclear fission reaction has been realized and has shown its effectiveness.
Despite the utopianism of the idea of a thermonuclear engine, it was supported by members of the British Interplanetary Society, and two years later they established the Daedalus project.
Thermonuclear fusion takes place in the bowels of stars. To launch it on Earth, monstrous temperatures and fuel made from hydrogen or hydrogen and helium are required. Calculations have shown that the energy of thermonuclear fusion of a mixture of deuterium and helium-3 can develop 12 percent of the speed of light - 36 thousand kilometers per second. Daedalus would have reached Bernard's Star, 5.9 light-years from Earth, in half a century. For comparison: the fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1, accelerated to 17.02 kilometers per second due to a gravity assist near Saturn.
Structurally, the ship was a large reservoir of fuel, from where every second, in small portions, fuel is thrown into the combustion chamber. Plasma combustion products are directed into the nozzles by strong magnetic fields.
In 1978, work on "Daedalus" was curtailed.
“Unfortunately, explosive projects cannot fully develop due to the treaty banning nuclear tests in three environments (ocean, atmosphere and space), signed in 1963. Until it is revised, any concepts of explosions remain purely theoretical,”notes Anton Pervushin.
Thermonuclear fuel ship project / Icarus Interstellar.
Two hundred years of waiting
In 2010, enthusiasts made another attempt to revive the dream of an explosion and founded the Icarus project. They were supported by the British Interplanetary Society and the Tau Zero Foundation.
The participants in the Icarus project took the Daedalus' developments as a basis and analyzed the main aspects of the future mission. It is proposed to launch a small unmanned probe on a thermonuclear propulsion device at once to several targets within 15 light years from us. To study in detail one or two stars and six or seven planets, a whole complex of equipment weighing about two hundred tons will be required. You can fill up with helium-3, which is scarce on Earth, in the orbit of gas giants such as Jupiter. Given the pace of technology development, such a mission will not be possible until 2300.
In addition to legislative restrictions, explosive projects have many unsolved technical problems. It is not clear where to get the fuel for a thermonuclear reaction, how to feed it into the chamber, how to damp the acceleration, how to protect the crew from cosmic radiation, and in general which of the space propulsion systems will be the most efficient.
Nevertheless, according to Pervushin, if someday people want to send a large spacecraft to the nearest stars, there is simply no other option than an explosive one.
Tatiana Pichugina