What are the unusual forms of space drive?
Typical forms of space drive today are solid rocket boosters, liquid missiles and hybrid missiles. Everyone carries their fuel on board and uses chemical energy to make a pull. Unfortunately, they can be very expensive: it may take 25-200 kilograms of rockets to give a payload of 1 kg to the low orbit of the Earth. Raising kg to low orbit of the country costs at least $ 4,000 USD (USD) since 2008. $ 10,000 may be more typical. Because the rocket must drive its own fuel up through the densest part of the atmosphere, it is not very cost -effective. A newer invention is a private spacecraft spacecraft, which used a carrier vessel before starting to its height of 14 km (8.7 million). At this height, greater at altitude than Mt. Everest, the spacecraft is already above 90% of the atmosphere and is able to use its small hybrid engine to travel for the rest of the way to the edge of the Space (100 km altitude). Early, cheap, repeatedly usable tourist spacecraft will beprobably based on this model.
In addition to the paradigm of the chemical rocket, there are several other forms of space drive that have been analyzed. Especially ion nozzles have already been successfully used by several spacecraft, including Deep Space 1, which in 2001 visited Komet Borrelly and Asteroid Braille. For longer journeys, for example from Earth to Mars, ion nozzles offer better performance than conventional forms of space drive, but only with a small edge.
Among the more advanced forms of space drive are nuclear pulse drive and other approaches with nuclear drive. The density of a nuclear power plant or nuclear bombs is many times greater than the densotache and nuclear missiles would be more efficient. Nuclear pulse drive that one reference design from the sixties, called Orion-Not to be confused with the reconnaissance vehicle of Orion crew 2000- that it could supply SHOPDKU 200 people on Mars and back in just four weeks, compared to 12 months for the current NASA or Saturn Moon reference mission.
Another design called Project Daedalus would only require about 50 years to get to Bernard's star, 6 light -years, but would require some technological progress in the inertial fusion (ICF). Most of the research on nuclear pulses were canceled due to a partial test contract in 1965, although the idea was later.
Another form of space drive, solar sail, was examined in detail in the 80s and 90s. Solar sheets would use reflective sail -bearing loads using the sun's radiation pressure. Sun sails that carry any reaction matter could be ideal for fast travel from the Sun. Although solar sails can take weeks or months to accelerate to considerable speed, this process could be skipped using lasers based on ground or space to direct radiation on the sail.Unfortunately, the technology for folding and distribution of an extremely thin solar sail is not yet available, so the construction may have to occur in space, which will have matters complicated.
Another, more futuristic form of space drive would be to use antimatter as fuel for drive, like some spacecraft in sci -Fi. Today, the antihter is the most expensive substance on Earth worth about $ 300 billion USD for a milligram. So far, only a few nanograms of antimatter have been produced, probably enough to light the bulb for a few minutes.
The key resolution between the many technologies and chemical rockets is that these technologies can be able to accelerate the spacecraft to the speed of almost light, while chemical missiles cannot. Thus, the long -term future of space travel lies in one of these technologies.