Interstellar Spacecraft
Can we build a spacecraft that can travel to the nearest star in less than a human lifetime?
A four-part series of articles:
1 — Chemistry Won’t Get Us to the Stars. What Will?
- Daedalus
- Icarus Firefly
2 — Surfing to the Stars on a Nuclear Blast Wave
- Project Orion
- Medusa
3 — Interstellar Ramjets and Antimatter Drives
- Bussard Ramjets
- matter-antimatter annihilation drives
4 — Sailing to the Stars on a Beam of Light
- Sun-Diver
- Breakthrough Starshot
The table below summarizes the different spacecraft designs that are discussed in the above series of articles.
Spacecraft |
Year Proposed |
Travel Time to Proxima Centauri |
Propulsion System |
Drawbacks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical Rockets | 1417 years in idealized optimal case | Chemical reactions | Much too slow | |
| Daedalus | 1978 | 50 years | Nuclear fusion (DHe3) | Uses Helium-3, which doesn’t exist on Earth and must be mined on Jupiter
Relies on nuclear fusion technology that doesn’t exist yet Fly-by mission only |
| Icarus Firefly | 2020 | 100 years | Nuclear fusion (DD) | Relies on nuclear fusion technology that doesn’t exist yet |
| Orion | 1968 | 130 years | Nuclear weapons | Requires shock absorption technology that doesn’t exist
Political hurdle of using nuclear weapons |
| Medusa | 1993 | 130 years | Nuclear weapons | Political hurdle of using nuclear weapons |
| Bussard Ramjet | 1960 | Nuclear fusion (CNO) | Immense scale
Not enough hydrogen in nearby interstellar medium |
|
| Antimatter Drive | Matter-antimatter annihilation | Creating and storing large amounts of antimatter currently beyond our capabilities | ||
| Sun-Diver | 2003 | 64,000 years | Solar sail | Much too slow |
| Breakthrough Starshot | 2016 | 21 years | Laser sail | No human passengers at that speed
Fly-by mission only |