Interstellar travel with rockets

[AngelLestat]

ah, I dint saw this topic early.

The guy in the video make huge mistakes in their estimations, he is not doing the math of many of the things that he is claiming. And he is evaluating this idea with technology from 90th or before.

The mass estimation it is his big mistake. Its more close it to 450 Tons the whole ship.

The laser for that mass it would be close to 1.5 PW or something like that.

The size of the radiators totally works for a antimatter engine with 80% of efficiency. Also the sail can be used like radiator, in that case it would not have any trouble with lower efficiency.

[Soda Popinski]

Additionally, the Avatar website mentions the radiators were originally much much bigger prior to the use of "Unobtainium" - which is why the Venture Star's radiators are relatively small.

It also states it took humans 2 centuries to come up with these engines. So it's a bit further in the future than I would have thought.

Edited February 11, 2014 by Soda Popinski

[AngelLestat]

Yeah, something like unobtainium would help a lot to increase the efficiency of the magnetic nozzle.

There is also a study papers to obtain almost a 100% collimated beam with antimatter.