RE: starship-design: Interstellar mission within fifty years

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>]

> From: "L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>
> 
[...]
> 
> However, I can easily believe that given fifty years, this sort of engine
> could be using Lithium or Boron to produce much more thrust than the current
> generation under development with the added advantage of being aneutronic.
> Antimatter production will probably be a purely space-based industry
> converting solar energy into antimatter for storage in large quantities
> somewhere off-planet 
>
See, Kelly, you have another niche for 
the solar power generators in space!

[...]
> The problem is, even with a thousand fold increase in power provided by
> Lithium, Boron, etc. (which is stretching it), this will only meet the
> lowest level engine specification I am currently proposing to the group -
> which means a trip duration too long for human explorers. It can be
> considered an interstellar drive, just not one we can use to meet our goals.
>
Exactly. So my skepticism seems well-founded anyway.

> >From what I can see of the plans for the next twenty five years in space,
> commercial enterprise will be firmly ensconced throughout near Earth space
> by that time. We will already have acquired much of the experience I was
> talking about and which most members of this list seem to agree is
> necessary. That leaves us the next twenty five years to bring to maturity
> the technologies required to transition from interplanetary to interstellar.
> 
Say, which technologies? Concerning propulsion, you explicitly
stated that the antimatter-catalyzed microfusion will not do.
Hence it is how I wrote - we still need some breaktroughs...

-- Zenon