Related papers: Developing a Launch Package for the PEGASUS Launch…
The French-German Research Institute (ISL) has several railguns installed, the largest of these is the PEGASUS accelerator. It is a 6m long, 4x4 cm2 caliber distributed energy supply (DES) railgun. It has a 10 MJ capacitor bank as energy…
Railguns can convert large quantities of electrical energy into kinetic energy of the projectile. This was demon- strated by the 33 MJ muzzle energy shot performed in 2010 in the framework of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) electromag-…
In the real world application of railguns, the launch efficiency is one of the most important parameters. This efficiency directly relates to the capacity of the electrical energy storage that is needed for the launch. In this study, the…
The most important part of a railgun launch package is the armature where the electromagnetic force is generated leading to the acceleration of the launch package. In case of metal armatures, the most commonly used armature types are the…
A DES railgun increases the launch efficiency when compared to a simple railgun setup. In a NGSPICE-simulation a DES and a simple railgun setup connected to an existing 10-MJ capacitor based power supply are compared. Important parameters…
Launching large (> 1 g) well-characterized projectiles to velocities beyond 10 km/s is of interest for a number of scientific fields but is beyond the reach of current hypervelocity launcher technology. This paper reports the development of…
We report experimental results on the parameters, structure, and evolution of high-Mach-number (M) argon plasma jets formed and launched by a pulsed-power-driven railgun. The nominal initial average jet parameters in the data set analyzed…
A spacecraft pushed by radiation has the major advantage that the power source is not included in the accelerated mass, making it the preferred technique for reaching relativistic speeds. There are two main technical challenges. First, to…
The experimental study of the plasma projectile acceleration in the laser-induced cavity pressure acceleration (LICPA) scheme is reported. In the experiment performed at the kilojoule PALS laser facility, the parameters of the projectile…
We demonstrate laser-driven Helium ion acceleration with cut-off energies above 25 MeV and peaked ion number above $10^8$ /MeV for 22(2) MeV projectiles from near-critical density gas jet targets. We employed shock gas jet nozzles at the…
The final phase of the ICARUS physics program requires a sensitive mass of liquid Argon of 5000 tons or more. The T600 detector stands today as the first living proof that such large detector can be built and that liquid Argon imaging…
The Starshot lightsail project aims to build an ultralight spacecraft ("nanocraft") that can reach Proxima Centauri b in approximately 20 years, requiring propulsion with a relativistic velocity of ~60 000 km/s. The spacecraft's…
The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) enables resolved imaging and spectroscopy of nearby terrestrial exoplanets, but useful science begins only after a spacecraft reaches roughly 650-900 astronomical units (AU). A 20 yr lower-bound trip to…
A new idea for reusing rockets, based on the Energia 2 launch vehicle, using deployable wings is proposed. A mission design is planned with an expected maximum altitude of 500 m. Following that systems engineering was used to manage the…
Laser-accelerated lightsails enable new types of missions that are very different from the Breakthrough Starshot mission to the Centauri system that aims to send 1 gram of payload at 0.2 c. The present work widens the mission design space…
A concept of drone launched short range rockets (DLSRR) is presented. A drone or an aircraft rises DLSRR to a release altitude of up to 20 $km$. At the release altitude, the drone or an aircraft is moving at a velocity of up to 700 $m/s$…
Advanced and novel accelerators (ANAs), driven a by laser pulse or a relativistic particle bunch, have made remarkable progress over the last decades. They accelerated electrons by 10GeV in 30cm (laser driven) and by 42GeV in 85cm (particle…
Radiometer is a light-induced aerodynamic propulsive device under the rarefied gas environment, which holds great potential for the next-gen near-space flight. However, its practical applications are hindered by the weak propulsion forces…
A novel concept of orbital launch system in which all stages are reusable is presented. The first two stages called Midpoint Delivery System (MPDS) deliver the next stages to a midpoint. A midpoint is defined by an altitude of 100 $km$ to…
Lightsail spacecraft, propelled to relativistic velocities via photon pressure using high power density laser radiation, offer a potentially new route to space exploration within and beyond the solar system, extending to interstellar…