Two talks at the 100 Year Starship conference held the key to the future, in the opinion of Adam Crowl. Adam Crowl is a designer on the Icarus Project. Project Icarus is a theoretical design study with the aim of designing a credible interstellar probe that will serve as a concept design for a potential mission that could be launched before then end of the 21st century
James Benford, Ph.D, discussed the economics of developing beamed-energy propulsion to propel high-speed sail-probes out of the solar system. His discussion demonstrated that the infrastructure required to launch sail-probes can also be used to develop the solar system for the benefit of all humanity. An incremental pathway to the stars, performing useful , profitable tasks at each step, can be carried out using technology we have now. The architecture might not be as Dr.Benford sketched out, but there is a road to the stars, which Icarus Interstellar is a part of.
Gregory Benford called the 100 Year Starship conference the first hard science fiction convention.
Jim and Gregory Benford think the most likely first unmanned “ship” will be a beam driven sail that makes a sundiver fall to get a boost from maybe 1/100th of our orbital radius, then gets pushed by beamed laser or microwave beams to very high speeds. The physics of that we now understand; Jim and I worked on the basics in the early 2000s—stability, steering, high acceleration. We even lifted a carbon fiber sail against gravity at JPL. With the basic physics done, it’s merely engineering… but what fascinating prospects! The sail papers were all promising.
What about larger payloads? We’ve hit the engineering wall, going as far as we can with chemical propulsion systems. If we’re going to make it to Mars in any sort of reasonable timeframe or with healthy transit durations, nuclear is the obvious next step.
Indeed, if NASA doesn’t show the world it has a goal—which should be Mars, certainly–and will develop the means to go there, it will be deeply cut in the budget battles soon to come. The Webb space telescope, now projected to cost $9 billion (ten times the initial supposed cost), is the only good project they have on hand. If we put it into the L2 point at Earth’s shadow as planned, we’d better be able to service it, to get long term performance from such a huge expense. That’s hard and expensive to do with chemical rockets.
Nuclear thermal rockets are the sole economical way we have to reach such places, four times further away than the moon. The outlines of an emerging interplanetary transport system are clear. At the Symposium Geoff Landis reported on the NASA Glenn nuclear thermal rocket program, the third generation of development (after the NERVA program of the 1960s-70s and Timberwind, a still classified program of the 1980s-90s). Stan Borowski of NASA Glenn projects a manned Mars expedition by 2033!
NBF comment - Spacex should be able to take chemical rockets further to 130 to 150 ton payloads and to reusable systems. If Spacex can achieve their goal then they could do it with affordability that rivals advanced nuclear thermal rockets. Skylon might also take chemical rockets and hypersonics spaceplanes further. All of those approaches should be pursued.
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