A matter-antimatter propulsion system for manned interstellar flight
- Paper ID
IAF-87-610
- author
- company
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Department of Nuclear Energy
- country
U.S.A.
- year
1987
- abstract
The major problems of interstellar flight are addressed in an integrated design of a star ship, Valkyrie. It employs a large diameter (~1 km) thin superconducting current ring to magnetically channel the reaction products from repetitive pellet explosions (either matter- antimatter or fusion) to generate thrust. The thermal intercept fraction on the star ship is very small, ~10-®. Waste heat is radiated to space by a droplet radiator, which also protects against interstellar dust/gas. Maximum velocities in the range 10 to 20% of light speed appear possible.