The future of interstellar spacecraft.

  

The future of interstellar spacecraft. 

The interstellar spacecraft might not come to practice very soon. But the fact is that theoretical research. Along with careful missions is opening the road to the interstellar journey. And maybe the time of that mission will come in 200-300 years. The fact is that nobody knows when we are ready to travel to the other solar system. When we remember history many things have been "impossible".  

The Chinese knew how to make gunpowder rockets in the 200s(1). And the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky(2)(1857-1935) created theoretical research with rocketry and spaceflight in the 19th century. The thing is that things like interplanetary spaceflights. And space elevators(3) are also invented by Konstantin Tsilkovsky. 

Image 2: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935)

That man is called "the Father of the spaceflight". Tsiolkovsky also created research and articles about "lighter than air aviation". There was a rumor that Tsiolkovsky created an idea to use the hydrogen balloon or high-flying airship to carry space rockets to the high altitude. And then launch that rocket to the orbiter or sub-orbiting trajectory. 

The hydrogen balloon can lift the rocket to an altitude of 30 kilometers. And that thing could make it possible to launch smaller rockets to the orbiter. But for some reason, that plan remained at the theoretical level. And that reason could be bureaucracy. 

The thing is that technology advances all the time. And maybe the advancing of technology is faster than we think. The thing is that the first interstellar mission might become reality sooner than we expect. The thing is that the theory is the first step for making dreams real. And modern scientists have more advanced tools and experience than Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. 

But there are many things. What that man invented and what remains at the theoretical level. One of his greatest ideas is the space elevator. That giant structure that uses the centripetal force of the Earth is ever created in practice.  

Image 3: The Daedalus and Saturn V comparison

The British Interplanetary Society. And theoretical Project Daedalus(3) and its improvements. 

There are a couple of theoretical concepts for interstellar spacecraft. All of those concepts are probes. And the carefully made steps will open the road for successful manned interstellar missions far away in the future. But the first interstellar concepts would be more primitive than some SciFi spacecraft that travels across the galaxy in a couple of weeks. 

In the 1970s the British interplanetary society created Daedalus. Theoretical spacecraft. That could travel to Barnard's star. Daedalus planned to use thermonuclear detonations for reaching that distant star. In the updated version the Daedalus uses antimatter. 

When Daedalus closes the objective of its mission. That craft will create antimatter by using an antimatter generator. The antimatter would be created by benefiting the solar wind which impacts the gold leaf. That thing turns those particles into antimatter. That thing makes it possible that Daedalus II could bring samples from the solar system where it visits. 

NASA has created an idea of "Project Longshot" (4) which is quite similar to Daedalus. As I earlier wrote the both of those theoretical crafts are unmanned. So there are no worries about the lifetime of astronauts. But of course, there is the possibility that the theoretical interstellar probe is forgotten if there is some kind of other problems on Earth.  But the time of that craft will be far away in the future. 

(1)http://en.chinaculture.org/created/2005-07/21/content_70826.htm

(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

(3)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

(4)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

(5)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot

Image 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

Image 2: Pinterest

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There is no direction up and down in space (Project Daedalus)

There is no direction up and down in space (Project Daedalus)

There are some mistakes about the study project Daedalus, and one of them is that the craft must have the same mass of fuel for acceleration and braking, so the stages of Daedalus should be the same size. Or there must be some other thing like a solar sail, which would help the craft to break because the craft needs the same mass of energy for decreasing the speed than in the acceleration stage.

The solar sail can also be used as the giant brake, and it would open before the craft is coming near the Alpha Centauri, and then the particle flow from the star would decrease the speed of Daedalus. That means that it works like a giant airbrake when spacecraft is entering the other solar system. This project is an only theoretical study about the interstellar spacecraft.

When we are thinking Daedalus as the manned craft, we must realize that the floors of the craft can put in the vertical direction to the traveling direction. That means that the craft is moving to the direction, where the roof of the crew could be.

In the 1970s the British Interplanetary society designed many study projects with the interplanetary- and interstellar spacecraft.  Some of those designs were very fantastic, and one of the most remarkable ideas was to create saucer-shape spacecraft, which would use the interstellar ramjet for creating the energy. The system would be interesting, because the craft was short, and it would travel in the space like the larger part would be ahead. The ramjet system would suck the ions through the craft, and then those ions would be targeted with laser rays, which would make fusion possible.

That system would also create artificial gravity by using the speed of the craft for that thing. When the craft is traveling in a vertical direction comparing to the floor, that can create artificial gravity, and the craft is moving to the direction of the roof, as I have written before. 

But when we are thinking about the saucer shape craft we are always forgetting the possibility, that the craft would be a modular system. The rocket stage, where could be even antimatter engines could be a dock to the probe, or manned module, and it can be separated, when the craft would operate in the atmosphere.

There is introduced the conventional version of this solution. The X-37B is the small space shuttle, which has been space over 700 days. The Agena-stage can connect to those shuttles very easily, the docking ring can put in the cargo room, and then the rocket stage can push the craft in the solar system. But where NASA would use those shuttles.

The thing is that they can use those shuttles to collect data from the asteroid belt or deliver probes to the atmospheres of the gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn. When we would want to make something revolutionary, we can equip Agena stages with lightweight nuclear reactors. That allows to use of NERVA-system in those vehicles, but the political resistance against those things would be great.

So is there possible to make extreme powerful rockets without nuclear energy? One version is to use a simple pressure base system, where gas is traveling through the pump, what is connected with dynamo. That thing allows increasing the temperature in the combustion chamber and also the speed of exhaust gas would turn higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus