Powering a Spacecraft Did you ever wonder what breakthroughs are in our future in space travel? What I mean is what are scientists and engineers currently predicting that might make space travel more efficient? Today we are not only limited by the speed of our craft, but by our bodies. We were just not designed for space travel so whatever ship we are in will have to have many devices to keep us alive as we travel to the stars or even to the moon, which is only a hop, skip and jump from earth when compared to the rest of the cosmos. In the late 1950s and 1960s an idea was put forth to speed up space travel and this idea was to design an atomic powered rocket. There were a couple of different methods of doing this which were discussed. Project Orion was a ship which would explode small nuclear bombs behind it and this was said to push the ship to very fast speeds. I don’t know about you, but the thought of using nukes this way does not exactly appeal to me. I wouldn’t want to be a passenger in any ship doing this. Someone way back in 1903 proposed using nuclear material to propel cars, boats and planes. There was a project called Pluto in the 1950s to develop a nuclear ram jet for a missile which would provide enough range for it to fly anywhere on earth to strike its target. In 1961 we tested the engine. We decided not to use the engine because it would only cause the Soviets to build one. It took the Russians 58 years, but they decided to build a nuclear cruise missile and test it in 2019. We have said the missile’s nuclear engine gives it great range, but is so heavy it limits the size of the warhead. Getting back to nuclear engines for spacecraft, the British Interplanetary Society did a study called Project Daedalus in the 1970s. The ship was to be unmanned, but interstellar and the scientists wanted the ship to be able to reach its destination within a human lifetime. A fusion rocket motor was proposed. Even a target was selected which was Bernard’s Star which was 5.9 light years distant from earth. Fifty years was allotted for the journey. Supposedly the engine would allow the craft to reach 7.1% of light speed and then the craft would cruise for the next 46 years. The engine was to use pellets of deuterium/helium-3. In the late 1980s the U.S. Navy was looking into its own nuclear powered spacecraft. It was called Longshot and was to be built on a space station. Longshot would have used a different type of fusion engine from Project Daedalus. The engine would have also powered a laser for communications. This engine would have also used deuterium/helium-3 pellets. This craft would reach a speed of 4.5% the speed of light and fly to Alpha Centauri B. The journey would take about 100 years. NASA proposed an external pulsed plasma rocket. The plasma waves would be generated by pulses from a nuclear fission engine pushing the craft through space. There were other projects dreamed of and not all were nuclear. Many would have used antimatter. The problem with that was there wasn’t enough antimatter produced to light a match let alone power a spaceship, it was truly a dream. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t have enough because I am sure someone would have proposed building a bomb with it. Is nuclear propulsion really a necessary step in advancing the speed of our spacecraft or are there other directions we could go in which would be just as good speed wise and much safer? Currently an ion engine can reach a speed of about 200,000 miles per hour. but takes time to build the speed up. It is too weak to launch from earth so it has to launch in space. A chemical rocket reaches about 18,000 miles per hour so immediately you can see the benefit of the ion engine. It has been said a nuclear powered spacecraft could reach Mars in 25% less time than a chemical rocket, but I have heard an ion engine could make the journey in about 30 days. The ion engine does have its drawbacks, only small ones have been used so far and it has to be boosted into space by a chemical rocket. Also, an auxiliary chemical engine may be needed for quick emergency maneuvers as a safety feature on a spacecraft containing a crew. There are many who believe we have anti-gravity engines and it would not surprise me since we have been working on them since the early 1980s. If some of the UFOs which have been witnessed contain these engines and are ours, it is obvious they are capable of incredible speed. Gravity waves are believed to travel at the speed of light. Would this mean we could get one of these craft to fly at light speed or close to it? Possibly we could. That would be great for flying around the solar system and for long duration flights to the closer star systems. Have we been hiding this ability? Some believe not only we have but we also have taken flights to other worlds in these machines. When our planet was in the golden age of exploration, sails made it possible. There are scientists and engineers who believe they will also make it possible to explore the solar system. The sun puts out a stream of energy known as the solar wind. It can be captured by something called a solar sail and a craft attached to it will be blown along for the ride. “…60 experts from around the world unanimously agreed that solar sail technology is viable for space flight operations." Solar sails will power a ship much faster than a chemical rocket. It is said if given three years of flight time a solar sail could build up its speed to 150,000 miles per hour. There is one problem, the solar winds get weaker after Jupiter.
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