alfa0152

As some of you might know, I have designed a crewed interstellar spacecraft that I call Solar One. Basically, large flexible mirrors placed near the Sun would propel a one-mile light sail with a 4–crew spacecraft of 300 tons. To decelerate, an on-board compact fusion reactor would power a photon rocket placed at the front of the spacecraft that would 1) help decelerate and 2) ionize space hydrogen for the nuclear reactor. A Bussard scoop also placed at the front of the spacecraft would 1) collect those protons (ionized hydrogen) and 2) decelerate the spacecraft. Solar One would achieve an average of 22% the speed of light, which would allow the crew to reach the closest potentially habitable exoplanet in less than 19 years. Of course cryo-sleep and artificial gravity must be achieved first. Here is my paper in arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.11474 And here a short movie of Solar One: https://youtu.be/JEf7Z_TLmgU Feedback is appreciated!

Alpha Cen A would be a better destination yes.

how do you protect mylar from spacedust traveling at >>.2c? A thick protective coating.

It could be smaller, but the smaller it is, the more power would be needed to send people. Also, the material of the light sail has a maximum capacity to receive light. No second light sail would be used for braking, instead a laser and bussard scoop would be used. Forward proposed a second light sail to decelerate.

Hi everybody, I would like to share with you a crewed interstellar spacecraft which I have designed and called Solar One. It employs a combination of 3 propulsion methods: nuclear fusion, beam-powered propulsion , and photon propulsion. Basically, several compact fusion reactors power a laser system that propels a huge light sail. Physicist Robert Forward already proposed in 1983 to use a 26-TW laser system to propel a 100-km light sail, a fresnel lens to focus the beam of the laser, and decelerate the spacecraft with a secondary light sail. I propose something a bit different, which is to use to use for example a 60 TW-laser to propel a 5-km light sail that would deploy from the spacecraft after the acceleration stage, use parabolic mirrors that gradually change their orientation in order to focus the laser beam, and finally use a photon rocket to decelerate the spacecraft. In theory, it could be possible to achieve 25% the speed of light, reaching the closest potentially habitable exoplanet in less than 20 years. There are of course many challenges, like building high-energy continuous-wave lasers, reducing the weight of the nuclear fusion reactors (and of course achieving effective nuclear fusion first), and minimizing the effects of zero gravity during such a long trip. What do you guys suggest to overcome these challenges? This is my paper and a short video that summarizes all.