Global primary energy consumption has increased by a factor of roughly 25–40 since 1800, and has doubled since 1980. In part because of the self-destructive, pathetic and counterproductive efforts of the self-righteous Europeans, energy consumption is accelerating and is 82% fossil fuels. The planet’s biology and climate will not be capable of taking this much longer, and we must colonize space as a relief valve ASAP (while developing all sorts of nuclear and space solar techs also ASAP)..
Yes, it is possible to go to the stars with soon-to-be developed tech on such times scales that a colonization project would be viable.
In an accompanying essay, we explain the simplest way to go interstellar. The key is to mix four technologies, solar sailing, nuclear fusion, magnetic braking, plus well established gravitational assist (but grazing stars). That tech mix will allow the colonization ships to get to the closest star system in a century of travel or so.. The same tech, when it works, could be scaled up, with even higher speeds, to reach much further without using the “generations ships” of science fiction lore. “Generation ships”, as many science fiction works have shown, are highly problematic at best… Moreover, it is hard to see what could be the motivation for building those gigantic contraptions whose return would millennia away.
***
THERE WAS GOD, AND IT WAS US
The solution I propose is to use smaller but much faster ships, the centerpiece being direct a particular type of propulsion thermonuclear fusion, safe and effective. That can be achieved with the aneutronic reaction:
D + ³He → Alpha Particle (He4) + Proton + 18.5 MeV.
The alpha carries 3.7 MeV and two positronic charges, the Proton carries most of the energy, 14.7 MeV, and one positronic charge. By charging the engine positively we can guarantee their ejection without touching the walls. Electromagnetic radiation is neglectable. The fusion engine does not need a shield: all the energy goes into the propulsion beam
The temperature of the naked exhaust is from E = 3/2 kT, namely 114 BILLION degrees Celsius…one thousand times the temperature of the heart of the Sun! However it would get mixed with water to develop thrust, instantaneously dissociating in OH+ and H+ ions, and exit around 6 10⁵ K, around 200 times the temperature of a chemical rocket’s combustion chamber. Expect beautiful blue flames as the radiation would peak in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) / soft X-ray boundary.
The ship’s mass would be around 150,000 tons at launch, 80% being fuel, and 95% of said fuel being simple… water. So we would go to the stars, water propelled. The first human crewed, colonization ship would of course be preceded by ample optical inspection of the objectives with telescopes kilometers across (deployable in space) and robotized missions would forge ahead with simpler, cheaper, less safe and less effective, to set things up.
***
In March 2026, as expected, NASA announced it will fly a nuclear fission powered mission to Mars as soon as 2028. Nuclear fission is the only reasonable way to make the Solar System into our next colonization target. With nuclear power, much of the Solar System can be settled, because it has turned out that much of it has water… A huge surprise and a great gift. Water was the hard problem, now it’s solved. The next hard problem can be solved: it’s enormous energy, and thermonuclear fusion can provide it (fusion will literally fuse the water out of frozen expanses…)
***
Nuclear fusion propulsion reactors ought to be easier to realize than thermonuclear power reactors on the ground, because fusion products will be ejected and thus unable to pollute the fusion reaction as they can do in a power plant.
***
Some European celebrity intellectuals covered with honors recently declared interstellar travel was impossible and besides the future is to use less and less energy (all the way back to Neanderthal, I presume). [1] This outrageous viewpoint reminded me of these fables where animals show disdain for things they can’t get: Europe is not investing in the conquest of space enough, and will pay dearly for that. Adding moral reasons to a politico-economic strategic catastrophe is not wise. Thus I looked into the possibility of interstellar travel, and I was surprised to find that it was feasible with near technology on such a time scale that it could be financed.
Technology is not the problem of intelligence on Earth, as many European intellectuals pretend it is, it’s its gift and the one and only humane solution.
The fundamental problem is that humanity’s powers are now so great that they have exceeded, for several generations, the long term sustainability of civilization, with existing technology. So we need to expand: Mars provides twice the continental real estate of Earth within one atmosphere’s difference (paradoxically much of “Earth” is under water, and more hostile to colonization).
***
It has been proposed to send a solar sail powered by a laser to Proxima at 20% of the speed of light. I have no idea if it would work, I did not study the proposal. Such an object will probably have fatal problems with interstellar dust and communications, IMHO. My own proposal avoids such problems by using large masses (30000 tons habitat), where the physics is familiar and predictable.
It is a bit early to make such plans because we have not identified yet the situation of Proxima b. The planet is a touch bigger than Earth (7% more massive), but it’s tidally locked to its star with always the same side facing it. Proxima b’s terminator zone, where Proxima would be low on the horizon, would be 3000 kilometers across, with a potential habitable surface area of 120 million square kilometers, twice that of habitable ground on Earth )(once one has subtracted mountains, deserts and polar regions)….
We have to wait until the Extremely Large Telescope looks at Proxima b (the European ELT is under construction).The conditions on Proxima b are violent, as the star , a Red Dwarf with 12% of the Sun’s mass, would fill the sky… And with much radiation. Such stars live long agitated lives…
It is also possible that the two Sun-like stars of Centaurus, Alpha and Beta, have planets: we don’t know, their ecliptics are poorly oriented for the present primitive planet detection techniques….
The general idea of flying to stars in a frozen state would also work for further stars, but the travel would extend to centuries, making it unlikely except if one went to higher speeds (say frankly relativistic 20000km/s; that would require quotients of fuel/mass vehicle comparable to what we have today). As far as we know now there are two habitable candidates at 11 light years…
The tech exposed in the accompanying essay ought to be available and dependable within a century. It goes without sayin that, if one is not transporting humans, one could get higher accelerations from the sail system with futuristic sail tech (the one underlying the computations here exist and were tested in labs), and thus greater speeds… for free.
Notice an interesting, orthogonal twist: spaceship Mira would be an AC, an ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS (rendered possible by a decillion qubit quantum computer, or more)… AC would be like us, but instead of being powered by photosynthesis as we ultimately are, Mira’s mind would be powered directly from thermonuclear fusion.
Fusion powered AC minds would not be barred by questions of time and space: they could expand through the galaxy… So we better teach them well. My teenage daughter just informed me she didn’t feel like talking to me anymore at this point. We would have the same problem with Artificial Consciousnesses: they will be our descendants.
So maybe we don’t need, as apes, to colonize the planets: Artificial Consciousnesses will do it for us…
Patrice Ayme
What is striking in the tableau of planets discovered so far (around 7000) is that there is a huge number, a high density of the type of planet we would have though as rare: short orbits, grazing stars. But that’s due to our present detection methods which are indirect in 99.99% of cases. When we can directly image planets with more powerful telescope (which are feasible now, it’s just a matter of financing them), we may suspect that the density of planets similar to those found in the Solar System will be enormous. At least around single stars.
Patrice Ayme
[1] Europeans have understood the exact opposite of reality about energy policy: more is the solution towrds less CO2…. such are Europeans these days, that they all too often understand the opposite of reality…. Ever since Michel Foucault used to kiss Ayatollahs torturing in Iran.Such self-mortifying mental positioning is exactly the trap humanity ought not to fall into if the aim is to rise above the tyrants who want to finish it. Such surrender monkeys do not know it, but they may be worse than the Mollahs terrorizing Iran, because the latter, at least, are technology friendly.
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 