NASA Begins Planning For An Interstellar Mission In 2069 (nypost.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader cold fjord writes: During the 2017 Geophysical Union Conference, scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that they are planning an interstellar exploration mission for the year 2069. The goal is to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, some 4.3 light years away. NASA is working on technology to allow a spacecraft to reach 10% of the speed of light, which might allow them to reach Alpha Centauri in as soon as 44 years.

A number of technologies are being explored, although there are many practical hurdles. The New Scientist adds that the 2016 NASA budget directed NASA to study interstellar travel that could reach 10% of the speed of light by 2069.

Comments

Re:Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's spelled "you're" and "parties". And you have no idea.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But where do you get the energy to initiate the fusion in the first place? It's a similar issue as with open- vs. closed-cycle chemical engines. The energy to pump the propellant has to come from somewhere. Likewise, any practical interstellar fusion drive will necessarily have to have significant net electricity output to power itself. Otherwise it's just a slight boost to your initial energy source and you need yet another power source with nuclear-level of energy density, and we don't seem to know about any other. At best, you could make the argument that if, say, your fusion-products-to-electricity conversion is 10% efficient, then it might make still sense to use it as a thrust booster if you're only generating 4x your input, but there doesn't seem to be a significant jump from generating more energy than you put in to generating more electricity than you put in, unless your energy-to-electricity conversion rate for your fusion units is extremely bad, like 1% or so.

and the math says it'll give you about twice the velocity of a nuclear pulse drive.

Doesn't thermonuclear pulse drive already beat it?

Microscopic Spacecraft

[Gavagai80]

Accelerating any significant mass to .1c may be practically impossible. Perhaps the least unlikely approach, given our continuing miniaturization progress, is a spacecraft that weighs micrograms. Laser acceleration would seem to be an option, but the problem there is deceleration at the destination, and transmission of data back to Earth. What we really need is something super-light capable of using solar power to both accelerate and decelerate to a sizeable fraction of c, and then the transmission problem can be solved by having it make a return trip using the destination star for power.

The ultimate unrealistic extreme of this approach in sci-fi would be the sophons from Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which if I recall have the mass of one proton but unfold into useful spacecraft upon arrival.