In the world of science fiction, mankind journeys to other star systems in larger, multi-person spacecraft like the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon, but now experts are proposing designs that would take interstellar vehicles in the opposite direction, making them smaller.
According to Space.com, Philip Lubin, a researcher from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Experimental Cosmology Group, believes that firing smaller, wafer-like spacecraft into the stars using powerful lasers could be the ideal way to travel to other star systems.
In order to reach a destination far from the Milky Way in a halfway decent amount of time, a vehicle must be able to travel at high speeds. However, this raises a problem because travelling faster would require the ship to carry more propellant, and the added fuel would make it harder for the spacecraft to accelerate, thus preventing it from reaching those speeds.
To overcome this issue, researchers are imagining tiny ships that use solar, laser or microwave sails, the website explains. By surfing on the sun’s photons or by being shot from Earth orbit on a beam, a tiny spacecraft may not require an external propulsion source, the website said.
Mini-probes could make it to Mars in 30 minutes
Lubin’s proposal for these small, wafer-thin spacecraft is one of 15 proposals that have received a Phase 1 grant from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), an up to $100,000 award meant to encourage researchers to develop ambitious new solutions for space travel problems.
Lubin’s concept, according to Space.com, is a “Roadmap to the Stars” detailing the step-by-step development and testing of miniature laser-propelled probes, each of which would weight just a single gram. The probes would be carried into space on a laser beam blasted from orbit, and each would carry tiny sensors that would be used to collect data and transmit it back to Earth.
The UCSB researcher said that recent advances in directed-energy technology have made it so propulsions systems that would have once required larger lasers can now be generated by ones that are far smaller and linked to amplifiers in orbit around the Earth. The laser array to be used to launch the system would be about six miles (10 km) across and could be scaled up over time from smaller, easier-to-use components, he explained to the website.
Ultimately, he envisions a large-scale laser system that would use between 50 to 70 gigawatts of power to propel small spacecraft with a 3.3-foot (1 meter) sail up to 26 percent the speed of light in 10 minutes. This vehicle, Lubin explained, could make it to Mars in 30 minutes, catch up to the Voyager one spacecraft in under 72 hours and reach Alpha Centauri in 15 years.
“What we’re proposing is extremely difficult, extraordinarily difficult – but so far we don’t see the fundamental showstopper,” he told Space.com. “What prevents you from executing it except the hard work to do it and the technological evolution to get there?”
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