It takes only 5 years to design a beam-powered spacecraft to fly further than the Voyager spacecraft, which travels in interstellar space outside the solar system.
The beam propulsion system will consist of two spacecraft.
The beam propulsion system will include two spacecraft. (Photo: wired)
Assistant Professor Artur Davoyan of the University of California, Los Angeles presents a projectile beam propulsion system can send large spacecraft into interstellar space, Interesting Engineering reported March 16. This design is capable of pushing spacecraft to other star systems in the future and is funded by $175,000 from Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program from NASA.
Current chemical rockets are not fast enough to fly far beyond the solar system in an ideal time frame. This is why Davoyan developed a new concept for propelling spacecraft with bullet beams, inspired by Revolutionary Star Shot worth $100 million from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner in 2016. Breakthrough Starshot proposed using millions of laser beams to illuminate a small probe with a light sail to nudge it toward the brightest star close to Earth, Proxima Centauri, in 20 years.
For Dayovan’s beam propulsion design, he and his colleagues will use two spacecraft. One ship left for interstellar space while the other flew into orbit around Earth. From there, the orbiting spacecraft will fire thousands of small metal bullets at the interstellar craft every second. The ship also projected a 10-megawatt laser beam at the starship. The laser beam will shoot at the balls, heating them to the point of creating plasma. The plasma will accelerate the remaining shrapnel, and the bullet beam will provide thrust that will help the interstellar ship fly at enormous speeds.
The Breakthrough Starshot initiative aims to push the probe to 20% of the speed of light, so it can only be applied to small ships equipped with simple cameras. Dayovan estimates that the projectile beam propulsion system can propel a one-ton probe to a speed of about 480,000 km/h, which is 10 times faster than the chemical propulsion system of traditional rockets. The design is also fast enough to fly past Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft ever built by man, in just 5 years.
Thanks to NASA’s NIAC program, Dayovan’s team had the funds to prove the design’s feasibility. Similar to Breakthrough Starshot, the system depends on the achievements of laser technology.
Article source: VNE
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The beam-powered spacecraft design needs only 5 years to fly further than the Voyager spacecraft, which travels in interstellar space outside the solar system. System…
