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scotch
Total Posts: 2027
Joined 08-14-2005 status: Guru |
This is a spin-off of “Homing In”. Here we can discuss “getting there” (or failing to “get there") without straying from our thread topic. Below is an article from something called the “Internet Encyclopaedia of Science”, a site for which I can’t vouch (the subject itself, however, is mentioned--much more briefly--by reputable sources for which I can vouch):
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The selected target was Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf lying 5.9 light-years from the Sun. Although the Alpha Centauri system is closer, evidence available at the time (now considered unreliable) suggested that Barnard’s Star might be orbited by at least one planet. To reach Barnard’s Star in fifty years (the flight time allotted in the study), a spacecraft would need to cruise at about twelve percent of the speed of light, or 36,000 km/s. This being far beyond the scope of a chemical rocket, the Daedalus team had to consider less conventional alternatives. The design they chose was a form of nuclear-pulse rocket, a propulsion system that had already been investigated during Project Orion. However, whereas Orion would have employed nuclear fission, the Daedalus engineers opted to power their starship by nuclear fusion – in particular, by a highly-efficient technique known as internal confinement fusion. Small pellets, containing a mixture of deuterium and helium-3, would be bombarded, one at a time, in the spacecraft’s combustion chamber by electron beams and thereby caused to explode like miniature thermonuclear bombs. A powerful magnetic field would both confine the explosions and channel the resulting high-speed plasma out of the rear of the spacecraft to provide thrust. By detonating 250 pellets a second, and utilizing a two-stage approach, the desired cruising speed could be reached during an acceleration phase lasting four years.
Reference Bond, A., Martin, A. R., Buckland, R. A., Grant, T. J., Lawton, A. T., et al. “Project Daedalus.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 31 (Supplement, 1978). |
TonyPhillips
Total Posts: 844
Joined 09-16-2005 status: Guru |
How did they propose to “Artificially Generate” a cloud of particles 200 km ahead of the ship? Sounds like Rodenberry’s “Deflector Shield” but a lot further away… |
scotch
Total Posts: 2027
Joined 08-14-2005 status: Guru |
Inspired by Roddenberry (creator of the science-fiction television series “Star Trek"), the scientists and engineers at the Society sought to generate clouds of particles artificially using cutting-edge CGI technology. |