New Idea for Interstellar Travel
We know that rockets will never enable interstellar travel – massive velocities require more than rocket-fuel can deliver.
One of the front-running ideas has been solar sails, where the craft are very light and the energy for velocity is supplied by light. Up until now, the talk has been of using massive lasers to shine at the craft to propel them on their way. Apart from the fact that such powerful lasers have never yet been constructed, I have always been sceptical because the craft has no way of slowing down when it gets to the destination star.
However a new idea has been posited – hollow carbon-foam bubbles. Apparently a 1 metre diameter shell could weigh as little as 2.3 milligrams. So light that, if it were released close to our sun (as close as the Parker probe gets) it would be accelerated , just by natural sunlight, up to 15 million miles per hour, able to reach Alpha Centauri (our nearest neighbour) in 185 years. (No lasers needed.) OK it’s still a long time, but we are getting into the ballpark – maybe we could use some modest lasers as well!
However, what really boosts the credibility for me is that if it is accurate in it’s journey, it would be able to be decelerated by the light from the destination star, making the journey a bit more worthwhile than a flyby at millions of miles per hour. However it is difficult to conceive a payload weighing just milligrams beaming back any useful data?…
