Related papers: Interstellar travels aboard radiation-powered rock…
Two technological problems must be solved before daring to interstellar flight: fuel and propulsion. The highest energy-density fuel is antimatter in its solid or liquid state and this fuel is likely to be our primary choice for multi-ton…
The authors describe the general motion of radiation-pushed sails accelerated near the speed of light with directed energy propulsion. Practical applications of the model are also given, including the interstellar flyby mission to the Alpha…
Radiation hazard on board of a relativistic rocket can be of internal and external origin. Because of its highest specific energy density, antimatter is considered to be the preferred rocket fuel for accelerating a multi-ton rocket up to…
Achieving relativistic flight to enable extrasolar exploration is one of the dreams of humanity and the long term goal of our NASA Starlight program. We derive a fully relativistic solution for the motion of a spacecraft propelled by…
It is well known that interstellar travel is bounded by the finite speed of light, but on very large scales any rocketeer would also need to consider the influence of cosmological expansion on their journey. This paper examines accelerated…
We study the drag force on dust grains moving at relativistic velocities through interstellar gas and explore its application. First, we derive a new analytical formula of the drag force at high energies and find that it is significantly…
The spacetimes for Vaidya's radiating stellar exterior and Kinnersley's photon rocket in a cosmological background are obtained by performing the same conformal transformation as is used to obtain the Robertson-Walker metric from Minkowski…
We use moment formalism of relativistic radiation hydrodynamics to obtain equations of motion of radial jets and solve them using polytropic equation of state of the relativistic gas. We consider curved space-time around black holes and…
Large scale directed energy offers the possibility of radical transformation in a variety of areas, including the ability to achieve relativistic flight that will enable the first interstellar missions, as well as rapid interplanetary…
A family of explicit exact solutions of Einstein's equations in four and higher dimensions is studied which describes photon rockets accelerating due to an anisotropic emission of photons. It is possible to prescribe an arbitrary motion, so…
Laser propulsion has been proposed for relativistic interstellar flights, but it faces the significant challenge of requiring extremely powerful laser radiation due to the inherently low momentum transfer between the beam and the sail. The…
Relativistic jets, or highly collimated and fast-moving outflows, are endemic to many astrophysical phenomena. The jets produced by gamma-ray bursts and tidal disruption events are accompanied by the accretion of material onto a black hole…
The fact that we apparently live in an accelerating universe places limitations on where humans might visit. If the current energy density of the universe is dominated by a cosmological constant, a rocket could reach a galaxy observed today…
Lightsails are a highly promising spacecraft concept that has attracted interest in recent years due to its potential to travel at near-relativistic speeds. Such speeds, which current conventional crafts cannot reach, offer tantalizing…
A relativistic spacecraft of the type envisioned by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative will inevitably get charged through collisions with interstellar particles and UV photons. Interstellar magnetic fields would, therefore, deflect 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…
Interstellar transport is an object of interest in many sci-fi stories. In history a lot of sci-fi predictions have turned into reality, such as communications satellites, deep-sea submarines and journies to the moon. In this work we study…
One proposed method for spacecraft to reach nearby stars is by accelerating sails using either solar radiation pressure or directed energy. This idea constitutes the thesis behind the Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to accelerate…
From the point of view of radiation safety, interstellar space is not an empty void. Interstellar gas and cosmic rays, which consist of hydrogen and helium nucleons, present a severe radiation hazard to crew and electronics aboard a…
The problem is discussed of whether a traveller can reach a remote object and return back sooner than a photon would when taken into account that the traveller can partly control the geometry of his world. It is argued that under some…