September 11th, 2007Behold! The Impulse Engine
The title is a little misleading, as the impulse engines used for sub-light relativistic speeds in Star Trek have not been created … yet. Instead, researchers at the Bae Institute in Tustin, California have introduced an advanced photon thruster mechanism that could potentially make inter-solar space travel both incredibly cheap and environmentally friendly.
The Photonic Laser Thruster was first demonstrated in December 2006 and built with off-the-shelf components. I’d love to know what these components were, though, as strapping a PLT onto a model jet would be incredibly exciting.
The demonstration produced a photon thrust of 35 µN and can be theoretically scalable to achieve a much greater thrust potential. Applications for this technology include highly precice satellite formation flying configurations (which is important when building large synthetic apertures in space or high-resolution observations), precision spacecraft docking and propulsion of vehicles at speeds in excess of 100 km/second.
To put that velocity into perspective, let’s use a distance that can’t be humanly quantified in terms of kilometers, but instead speed over years.
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5th, 1977 and required several decades and numerous gravity-assisted speed boosts to reach its current velocity of 17.2 km/second (relative to our Sun). As of August 10th, it’s distance was calculated at 15.5 billion kilometers (which is 103.6 times the distance between the Sun and Earth, and almost 3 times farther than Pluto). As we speak, the interstellar probe has reached escape velocity for our solar system, and has already entered a region of space called the heliosheath (the region between our solar system and interstellar space, which is also the maximum distance where our Sun’s influence gives way to interstellar space). Large words aside, it’s taken thirty years for the Voyager probe to go where no man has gone before. Using the PLT engine, a spacecraft could do the same journey in just 4 years 11 months at 100 km/sec.
This is pretty incredible from both a scientific and marketing standpoint, though I am curious to know how one would go about slowing down. With no friction in space, I’m assuming the vessel would just swing around and fire the engine in the opposite direction for a while until it could come to a complete stop?
Either way, it’s an exciting technology that could add security to people venturing into the cold depths of space and to the people we send to colonize and map the our planetary neighbours. At 100 km/second, Mars is less than a week away. The advantage here is that we wouldn’t need to worry so much about building a colony on the Moon first (which would be just two hours away), and the scientists that would undoubtedly go first would not need to sign on for missions of incredible duration. Instead, a 6-month scientific research mission to Mars would entail 2 weeks of round-trip travel with 5 and a half weeks on the planet itself. Heck, some scientists need to travel more than this just to research some areas on the Earth!
These engines produce no harmful emissions and are planned to be attached to quickly-reusable platforms. At first, these platforms will only be able to launch micro-satellites (in the order of a few kilograms), but as the technology matures, it will be possible to strap this propulsion system onto something quite a bit bigger.
I’m really looking forward to watching this technology mature. Hopefully by the time my children are old enough to make a career choice, they’ll have the option to explore exobiology and exogeology in person.
With no friction in space, I’m assuming the vessel would just swing around and fire the engine in the opposite direction for a while until it could come to a complete stop?
Yup.
Nitpick - space is not pure vacuum. There is stuff out there it’s just spread very thin. Turn off the engines and you will slow down, but not in the lifetime of the crew.
This is cool but it also puts the rest of the solar system within easy cruising range. Which may not be good news for people that wish to move far, far away from unpleasant neighbors.
According to the Bae Institute, the PLT would be capable of propelling a vessel at near-light speed (with quite a bit of ramp-up time, of course). If this is indeed possible, then if a group of people wanted to make their way to some place far, far away, they could likely do it in their lifetime (but not anyone else’s).
Assuming the vessel could accellerate to 0.7c using only one light year’s distance, and decellerate using the same, a vessel could reach the nearest known solar system with exoplanets (Epsilon Eridandi) in the span of 37 years (37 years for them, 263 years for us). Assuming there was a semi-habitable rock for them to colonize, this would certainly be far enough to thwart most visitors from coming after them.
However, this does raise the question about relativistic speeds and the problem they pose for extended flights. If a group of colonists leave the Earth for another world, and it takes 400 Earth years to arrive (even if it only feels like 20 for them), and technology had progressed so much that faster-than-light travel became not only possible, but common place, who would have claim to a given world? The people that left for it first, or the people that landed first?
Of course, the other problem with moving at near-light speeds would be the inevitable collisions with debris ….
Collisions can be handled. Just need good shields, they would have to be ramped up as well, but you could use plasma to either divert or disintegrate debris. i’ve read somewhere a while ago that they were experimenting with that on hypersonic jets Also their might be some other un imagined effects when you get to that about .7c to .9c. Who knows? It would be great if they could make like a meter size rocket with just the engine and a way to track it/control it/maybe a couple of sensors, camera too. Take it up in a shuttle mission; send it away. see how fast they can get it to go. see what happens. if its real small and light ,you maybe get it to speed up pretty fast. could be really cool and very educational.
Collisions can be handled. Just need good shields, they would have to be ramped up as well, but you could use plasma to either divert or disintegrate debris.
Ramped up is right. I’ve also read up on plasma shielding and the technology does show some promise, however, I doubt it will be ready to handle near-light-speed collisions before we have the ability to actually attain that velocity.
However, necessity is the mother of invention. Seat belts weren’t invented until automobiles were regularily getting into collisions at speed, so this will likely be no different.
That said … vehicles travelling at this speed would also need some pretty sweet scanning technologies. Shields might keep a spaceship safe from dust and micro-meteorites, but there’s no way it could handle a collision with some uncharted monster asteroid.
Ah, the technology boom approaches….
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I am just a high school student looking for something interesting to talk about.
What about:
an electromagnetic/static field (to be used as a shield)
- Almost everything contains a charge right? use the charges to repel the opposite.
- An atmospheric “shield” we know today what the atmosphere is made of right? Would it be possible to create and harness an artificial atmosphere? Our atmosphere absorbs small-> medium debris
- This is the really dumb one. A “bio-shield” If it is true that most space debris contains an amount of H2O or Heavy water (D2O) could a “shield” be made using Non-Polar atomic structures to blow or push debris out of the way?
Thanks for your input, HSHSS. These are certainly some valid options, however, they are technologies that will likely not be available for a while to interplanetary travellers for a very simple reason: cost.
If our space-faring vehicles were to carry some sort of charged partical repulsion system (which is essentially what the NX-01 Enterprise had), they would need to have an incredible amount of power at their disposal. Something like a 10-MW nuclear power generator, which is just not realistic (for many reasons, including cost) for the time being.
As for the artifical atmosphere, I’m not sure how this would be done. Our atmosphere consists of billions of tons of gasses surrounding our little planet. Foreign objects like meteorites and satellites are “burned up” due to friction. An object travelling at 30,000 km/h has just way too much resistance to maintain an irregular structure through the atmosphere. We couldn’t possibly put a large enough gas atmosphere around a shuttle and maintain it without massive energy and raw gas expenditures.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but these options are just a few years beyond our capabilities. I think that for the first few years, we’ll be sending people out in vessels that are built in space using heavy metals, such as lead, mined from the moon or nearby asteroids. This will afford our heroes with a little bit of protection and likely be the most cost effective solution to this problem.
That said, I invite you to prove me wrong. I’d love to know how your solutions might be used