Kickstart an Antimatter Propulsion System to Another Star

When it comes to the future of space exploration, one of the biggest questions is, “how and when will we travel to the nearest star?” And while space agencies have been pondering this question and coming up with proposals for decades, none of them have advanced beyond the theory stage. For the most part, their efforts has been focused on possible missions to Mars and the outer Solar System.

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CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

KJW said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

Nobody knows.

The Rev Dodgson said:

KJW said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

Nobody knows.

I hear the weather is nice… sunny every day…

The Rev Dodgson said:

KJW said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

Nobody knows.

Is that a reason to devote so much resources to go there?

The Rev Dodgson said:

KJW said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

Nobody knows.

I bet there’s stuff.

The point is that given that any mission outside the solar system is likely to be one-way, possibly the biggest problem will be to decide where to go.

KJW said:

The point is that given that any mission outside the solar system is likely to be one-way, possibly the biggest problem will be to decide where to go.

That’s the easy part. Go everywhere. That’s what we’re doing inside the solar system.

> To see their project through, Jackson and his colleagues are hoping to raise $200,000.

Don’t do it!

Antimatter costs $62 trillion dollars a gram.

KJW said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

how and when will we travel to the nearest star?

What’s at the nearest star that we should go there?

> How?

Robotic spacecraft (to keep weight down). Nuclear power, the old Project Orion had the right idea.

> When?

As soon as ill-placed moral concerns over the use of nuclear bombs for peaceful purposes have evaporated.

> Where?

As I said, everywhere. I can give good reasons for visiting every one of the nearest 38 star systems (including brown dwarf systems) out to Gleise 1.
For example, Barnard’s star will be at its closest to Earth in just 10,000 years, noticeably closer than Proxima Centauri is today.
The third closest star system, Luhman 16, is a binary brown dwarf, making it the closest brown dwarf to Earth. The fainter brown dwarf is not much bigger than Jupiter. And the system has a suspected planet.
The fourth closest star system WISE 0855−0714, is faint enough to be a free planet, just slightly heavier than Jupiter.
The sixth nearest, Lalande 21185, is approaching, and will be very close to us 20,000 years from now.
The seventh nearest is Sirius, and there are plenty of good reasons for visiting Sirius and its white dwarf companion Sirius B.
Need I continue?

First mission should start with Proxima Centauri and go on from there to Alpha Centauri A and B. Three stars for the price of one, with possible planets galore.
Also, and almost as important IMHO, see the following figure, Alpha Centauri A and B are both remarkably similar to our own Sun. Alpha Centauri A is an almost exact duplicate of our own Sun. That’s unique among nearby stars.

Can you communicate with a vehicle so far away?

wookiemeister said:

Can you communicate with a vehicle so far away?

I (in common with many science fiction writers, I must say), initially thought that communication fast enough to send TV images from the Moon was impossible. Had a lot of egg on face over that one. Ditto I was shocked at how little power was required to send data back from Mars.

By Pluto, what was recorded by New Horizons in one day will have taken three months or so to send back.

Having been twice bitten, I’m somewhat shy about commenting. One thing that is exceedingly clear is that it’s far easier to communicate over interstellar distances than to travel interstellar distances. In communication you only have to send photons, which weigh considerably less than spacecraft. So communication is only going to be a relatively small problem. Also, the communications time lag of 8.5 years round trip is negligible compared to the spacecraft travel time.

Lets’s consider Proxima, and see what is necessary for communication. What is necessary is:
Sending power
Receiving dish size
Error correction codes
Focus
Avoidance of interference.

The sending power for New Horizons is 12 watts. An interstellar spacecraft could have nuclear reactors like those on a nuclear submarine, which generate 2.8 megawatts.

The focus angle of the New Horizons high gain communicator is 0.3 degrees. The focus angle of a laser communicator is 0.000003 degrees.

The receiving dish is for New horizons is 70 metres in diameter. Making that 700 metres in diameter is easily possible within the timeframe of spacecraft travel to Proxima.

Shannon limit error correction codes are getting better. I’m not sure how close to the limit they’ve already reached.

Interference is another topic. Let’s assume that some bright spark has figured out how to avoid interference, for example by using a UVC laser of Xaser or by positioning the spacecraft in front of an empty region of space.

So the distance we can communicate over is about (2.8e6/12)*(0.3/0.000003)*(700/70) times the distance to Pluto. That’s 230 billion times the distance to Pluto. Let’s say the distance to Pluto is 0.0005 light years.

So with (almost) current technology, a spacecraft could communicate with the Earth over a distance of 100 million light years. That’s not just interstellar distances, that intergalactic distances. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 158 thousand light years away.

Communication is not a significant problem.