PROJECT ICARUS

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

PROJECT ICARUS

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Futuristic Interstellar starship using manufactured black hole containment ram (PIC)

Project Icarus mentions trinitrate as efficient fuel but what is the advantage?

Propulsion:
Another pellet ignition driver concept. Please! Use pellets in cattle feed not as interstellar fusion driver for propulsion even if (D/T) pellets are beryllium sugar coated or matter-antimatter collision targeted. Expecting 192 laser beams to deliver 1.8MJ to an ICF scheme pellet producing 100MJ of fusion power for 1 nanosecond is like waiting for Captain James T. Kirk to admit he has hemorrhoids as you observe him seating gingerly in the captain's chair of the Star Ship Enterprise. This is just not realistic in any time frame.
Present realistic advanced propulsion is Fission power: NTR, Gas-Core, NEP and fission variants & possibly Project Orion. And these propulsion systems are not indicated for interstellar travel.
The only fusion concept that might be portable for space is the D-D feedback T, WB-D 100MW Polywell reactor but until there is sufficient work payload guaranteed electrical power to prime this 'puppy' reactor it would only be used as a land based power producing reactor. I just don't think it can be justified as a component in a spacecraft just yet.

I think it's not too much to realize that any interstellar craft would need to traverse space/time at speeds of 40-60%C minimum. To employ the energy needed to traverse space to make contact with a nearest stellar neighbors we would need to emulate Negative energy, as related to theoretical models of the vacuum, space, and space-time.
Until humans can replicate and manipulate natural energy systems and the scales found in our universe like stellar fusion nucleosynthesis, stellar ejecta, black holes etc. we are relegated to .1-.3%C velocities on Newtonian 3rd law physics on gargantuan wasteful and weak spacecraft to nowhere interstellar. Until then space exploration is limited to our immediate solar system under the self imposed limitation by decree from the authorities of ideology (politically correct environmentalism & treaty bans).

We've got to risk implosion. We may explode into the biggest fireball this part of the galaxy has seen, but we've got to take that one in a million chance.
-- Kirk in 'The Naked Time'

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Monday 27th of December 2010 05:19:43 AM

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Monday 27th of December 2010 05:34:39 AM

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Thursday 30th of December 2010 07:44:50 PM

GoogleNaut · Guru

I would just add, that since we have been unable yet to even demonstrate significant power production from D-T fusion, it is utterly pointless to pursue D-He3 fusion in anyway.

Thermonuclear fusion propulsion would give us the whole solar system, but I don't see that it would be good for much beyond 10,000 km/s (1/30 of a c.) Travel to Alpha Centauri in a single lifetime (one way, 25 years) would require about 0.17c which is 52,000 km/s. Without suspended animation, this will require a "Generation Ship" which will require a self-contained space habitat with the resources to support at the least several hundred people, and would need several thousand for a genetically viable colony at the destination.

The mass ratios for such a craft are horrendous. You'd be talking launch masses near 100 Million Tons, which is not insurmountable for an already space faring, induistrial species.

I support their research, but implementing Project Icarus now is currently beyond our capabilities.

John · Senior Member

And that's just the optimistic view!