Comments on Next Big Future: Vasimr 200KW almost flight ready in 2008 and the s...

I am aware of theoretic propulsion systems that ca...

2008-06-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

I am aware of theoretic propulsion systems that can achieve a decent % of the speed of light. But it may be that all would require a substantial space-based architecture and a large amount of additional investment for power, lasers, huge amounts of He-3 or whatever. This would place the first interstellar launch a number of decades away.

If the purpose for an interstellar mission were rather to buy insurance for humanity by launching a slower craft which contained frozen embryos, stem cells, and automated gestation and rearing systems then the duration of the mission would only be limited by how long the systems would still be functional. Potentially that could be hundreds or low thousands of years. At this duration, acceleration, shielding, and costs might be within our current capacity.

Again, any near-term technology that could get us there in about 1,000 years?

Here is an article at nextbigfuture that has a tab...

2008-05-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

Here is an article at nextbigfuture that has a table of even faster concepts.

The general view is that advanced Vasimr are a pre-fusion rocket technology. A fusion rocket can get up to 10% of lightspeed.

Photonic laser propulsion and a table of really fast space propulsion concepts

300 km/sec = 300,000 m/sec = 3.0 x 10^5 m/sec = 1/...

2008-05-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

300 km/sec = 300,000 m/sec = 3.0 x 10^5 m/sec = 1/1,000 the speed of light. So it would take 4,300 years to make it to Alpha Centauri.

Not bad. And that's near-term technology. Any possibility that technologies could be combined to get there faster, say in 1,000 years?

Also, what about a linear accelerator? Ions could be accelerated to .9999 the speed of light. That's a great ISP. Microwave energy could be beamed so that the craft wouldn't need to carry the fuel.