Related papers: Starship Sails Propelled by Cost-Optimized Directe…
A highly reflective sail provides a way to propel a spacecraft out of the solar system using solar radiation pressure. The closer the spacecraft is to the Sun when it starts its outward journey, the larger the radiation pressure and so the…
Water has been identified as a critical resource both to sustain human-life but also for use in propulsion, attitude-control, power, thermal and radiation pro-tection systems. Water may be obtained off-world through In-Situ Resource…
We model accelerated trips at high-velocity aboard light sails (beam-powered propulsion in general) and radiation rockets (thrust by anisotropic emission of radiation) in terms of Kinnersley's solution of general relativity and its…
A new mechanism of particle acceleration to ultra high energies, driven by the rotational slow down of a pulsar (Crab pulsar, for example), is explored. The rotation, through the time dependent centrifugal force, can very efficiently excite…
This paper analyzes the suitability of a beamed propulsion concept having properties consistent with the impulse gravity generator described by Podkletnov et al. [physics/0108005]. The use of this propulsion concept for orbital maneuver,…
Recent technological advances could make interstellar travel possible, using ultra-lightweight sails pushed by lasers or solar photon pressure, at speeds of a few percent the speed of light. Obtaining remote observational data from such…
Radiation pressure afforded by natural broadband sunlight upon a transmissive diffractive sail is theoretically and numerically investigated. A grating period of one micrometer is found to convert 83% of the solar black body spectrum into…
A new scheme of proton acceleration from a laser-driven near-critical-density plasma is proposed. Plasma with a tailored density profile allows a two-stage acceleration of protons. The protons are pre-accelerated in the laser-driven…
The scientific mission of ESTCube-1, launched in May 2013, is to measure the Electric solar wind sail (E-sail) force in orbit. The experiment is planned to push forward the development of E-sail, a propulsion method recently invented at the…
Electromagnetic propulsion technology has been thought to provide a potential form of future spacecraft propulsion for some time. In contrast to ion thrusters, which utilize the Coulomb force to accelerate positively charged species,…
New forms of electron beams have been intensively investigated recently, including vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum, as well as Airy beams propagating along a parabolic trajectory. Their traits may be harnessed for…
The PASER is potentially a very attractive method for particle acceleration, in which energy from an active medium is transferred to a charged particle beam. The effect is similar to the action of a maser or laser with the stimulated…
The interaction of micro- and nano-structured target surfaces with high-power laser pulses is being widely investigated for its unprecedented absorption efficiency. We have developed vertically aligned metallic micro-pillar arrays for…
A novel non-reactive thrust principle based on controlling the angular momentum of a material body is proposed. Theoretically, it is shown that asymmetric emission/absorption of low-energy particle fluxes with spin in a direction…
Background: A solar sail presents a large sheet of low areal density membrane and is the most elegant propellant-less propulsion system for the future exploration of the Solar System and beyond. By today the study on sail membrane…
Low-energy heavy-ion beams are fundamentally limited by severe space-charge divergence, which constrains the transportable beam current to a few microamperes in conventional electrostatic accelerators. This limitation is particularly…
Fiber lasers entered numerous applications due to their high efficiency and superior stability. Particularly in space, those lasers have to fulfill additional requirements set by the harsh environment, typically characterized by large…
Decarbonizing aviation remains challenging because energy-dense jet fuels dominate beyond short-range operations, while batteries impose severe range and payload penalties. Here we evaluate a new infrastructure pathway in which…
All known interstellar transportation methods encounter monumental technological or engineering roadblocks, or even rely on speculative unknown science. In particular light of the recent public excitement and ensuing disappointment…
We apply laser light to induce the asymmetric heating of Janus colloids adsorbed at water-oil interfaces and realize active micrometric "Marangoni surfers". The coupling of temperature and surfactant concentration gradients generates…