In 1973, the British Interplanetary Society - the first and oldest organization dedicated exclusively to space exploration, the development and support of astronautics - launched an ambitious five-year project to find and create the most promising unmanned spacecraft design for interstellar travel. The first among the proposed solutions was "Daedalus". This plan looked even more ambitious and set the key goal of finding opportunities for manned travel to various stars with the aim of using technologies of the near future.
Thermonuclear acceleration
How to achieve the required speed, accumulate a sufficient amount of energy and at the same time not burn the spacecraft and the people on board to the ground? The tasks are clearly not easy. The Daedalus project team came up with a solution to the use of short-term nuclear acceleration, which would overcome such difficulties. The proposed system worked like this: inside the parabolic magnetic fields located behind the spacecraft, small thermonuclear explosions will be produced, whose energy will accelerate the spacecraft with the highest possible level of efficiency.
Of course, to implement interstellar travel, you will first need to figure out how to accelerate the spacecraft to a speed of over 10,000 kilometers per second. But this is only part of the problem. The second question is who, in this case, will control the ship? The possibility of using an independent autopilot system was considered as a possible solution. It was proposed to use the isotope helium-3 as fuel for the reactors, which can be produced in the atmosphere of Jupiter or directly on the surface of the Moon.
Ultimately, the 1978 final report loudly proclaimed that interstellar travel was indeed possible, but the engineers never started to build a working prototype.
Nevertheless, it would be premature to call the Daedalus project a pipe dream. Numerous reports indicate that modern space agencies and universities around the world continue to study the ideas of using nuclear energy as a driving force for spacecraft, laid down by the Daedalus project more than 30 years ago.
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Project "Icarus"
Members of the British Interplanetary Society and the Tau Zero Foundation launched the Icarus project in 2009, the goal of which is to theoretically assess the feasibility of creating a spacecraft with a thermonuclear engine for interstellar travel. Subsequently, the results of the work may turn into the design of an unmanned space mission.
More than 20 scientists and engineers took part in the project. Their task was to try to design a propulsion system based on a thermonuclear reaction and capable of accelerating a ship to 10-20% of the speed of light. In fact, the "Icarus" was based on the "Daedalus" project, but later on "Icarus" was to become an independent project, with only very minor borrowing of the "Daedalus" elements. Icarus was planned to be completed in 2014, but work is still ongoing. The organizers are currently looking for volunteers to complete it.
Light sail
The Planetary Society has launched a project called LightSail to investigate the possibility of developing a spacecraft powered entirely by solar energy and accelerated exclusively by sunlight. After several unsuccessful attempts of the LightSail 1 program in 2015, it was still possible to successfully complete a test run and deploy the solar sail. A new variant of the solar sail, LightSail 2, is slated to be launched into Earth's orbit using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018.
The concept of using a solar sail as a propulsion system is far from new. Even with the discovery of the first photons, astronomers like Johannes Kepler began dreaming and theorizing as early as the 1600s about the possibility of collecting solar energy and translating it into impulse to endow another object with acceleration.
Modern scientists have not lost this desire. Take Stephen Hawking and his Breakthrough Starshot project. During his recent visit to Norway, Hawking talked about how a small space probe could "travel on horseback on a beam of light" at about 160 million kilometers per hour. Of course, like any ambitious project, Breakthrough Starshot will have to overcome equally ambitious problems first before anything can work out.
Bassard's interstellar ramjet engine
In 1960, American physicist Robert Bassard introduced the concept of an interstellar spacecraft capable of traveling at incredible speeds. It is based on a system capable of capturing the substance of the interstellar medium (hydrogen and dust) and using it as fuel in the spacecraft's thermonuclear engine.
According to Bassard's calculations, the engine will require an intake of interstellar matter from an area of almost 10,000 square kilometers to operate. This, in turn, will require the use of an electromagnetic (electrostatic ionic) collecting collector of huge diameter and extremely high field strength. Further analysis, however, showed that the mass of the collected substance would in this case still be so low that it would call into question the effectiveness of the system.
Antimatter rockets
Using hydrogen isotopes to fuel a nuclear reaction and generate the necessary thrust for interstellar travel has become a pipe dream. Rocket boosters based on antimatter were chosen as a new direction of development, where the interaction between ordinary matter and antimatter causes the annihilation of both and creates a colossal level of energy.
If we imagine the possibility of directed release of a huge amount of this energy, then the generated energy explosion, caused by the mutual annihilation of colliding atoms, could be used as a working fluid for the movement of the spacecraft. However, we are still far from being able to conduct such tests in real conditions.
In addition, the use of antimatter as a fuel for rocket engines will impose a number of restrictions: first, the reaction will create an incredibly high level of gamma radiation; second, it is difficult to obtain a sufficient amount of antimatter; and third, the amount of payload you can take with you becomes very limited.
Nonetheless, NASA's Advanced Concept Development Institute has invested in studies of the likelihood of an antimatter spacecraft that will be devoid of at least the first problem mentioned above. According to the researchers, if we use positrons (antiparticles of electrons) as the main element of antimatter, then the energy indices of gamma rays will be much lower.
Another study addresses the second problem on the list by using what is called antimatter sail. The creator of this concept is Gerald Jackson, a former physicist at Fermilab. Jackson proposed a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. It took about $ 200,000 to build and test a working prototype. However, the actual amount of implementation and implementation of this technology will, of course, require much higher financial costs.
IXS ENTERPRISE spacecraft concept
The NASA aerospace agency proposed its own version of a "startrec-like" spacecraft with the possibility of warp accelerations in 2016. In the photographs presented, you can easily see the details of the USS Enterprise from the cult MCU. Concept creator Mark Rodmaker shared in an interview with The Washington Post that the purpose of this job was to inspire young people to pursue careers as a spacecraft engineer.
According to the concept of this project, the IXS Enterprise does not use nuclear reaction and antimatter to move in space, but a warp drive. The large ring-shaped structures around the ship create a “warp bubble” that reduces the amount of energy required to operate the warp drive.
Nikolay Khizhnyak