Beyond “Icarus”


Where we’re at and where we’re going. Alpha Centauri, resolved into A & B, as seen by “Cassini” from orbit around Saturn.

After we send the probes, like “Icarus”, the next step is going ourselves to live in those new planetary systems we’ve explored remotely. To get there IMO we’ll need to go en masse in one of these…

Rick Sternbach worked with Robert Enzmann on the Enzmann starship design and it’s quite an impressive concept – you’ll see different iterations here from time to time. Basically use the fuel & its tank for forward shielding and make it really, really huge. We’re looking at 12 million tons of deuterium propellant in one of those spherical ‘slush’ tanks. With a mass-ratio of ~20-150 the delta-vee is ~3-5 times the exhaust velocity, which itself can push ~0.06c or more.

Of course some kind of materials break-through might change the basic concept. We’ve looked at Ultra-Dense Deuterium (UDD) here before – ‘collapsed’ deuterium that’s 1 million times denser than its ice-phase. The huge Enzmann main-tank could shrink 100-fold in all dimensions and hold the same amount of deuterium in that state – if it remained stable in bulk. The collapse of deuterium also releases potential energy and might explain “cold fusion”, with some fusions occurring because of the extreme density to produce the observed radiation from “cold fusion” reactions.

But with UDD we could do really “wild” things with the propellant and even the basic fusion rocket concept. Imagine a massively ‘cellular’ rocket, which throws off (or consumes) tanks and engines as its mass-ratio declines. Robert Goddard used such a design for his 1920 Moon rocket concept that attracted so much ‘negative’ publicity. With such mass-ratios could push 1000-10,000 or so. That’s 7-10 times the exhaust velocity for the delta-vee – heading towards 0.6c delta-vee.

One of my areas of “Icarus” research will be investigating the potential for braking a fusion vehicle without using propellant via a ‘magneto-plasma sail’ or a ‘magnetic sail’. If such were proven workable, then our extreme mass-ratio rocket could cruise between the stars at 0.5-0.6c – pretty damn good performance for a mere fusion rocket. The more I learn about the difficulties of high-energy propulsion, the more such speeds seem fantastic – in both senses of the word. Yet difficult goals drive novel thinking – or should.

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