Starship

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the rocket, see SpaceX Starship. For other uses, see Starship (disambiguation).

Artistic depiction of a fictional starship

A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between planetary systems.[1] The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 1882 in Oahspe: A New Bible.[2]

While

light years in about 40,000 years.[3] Several preliminary designs for starships have been undertaken through exploratory engineering, using feasibility studies
with modern technology or technology thought likely to be available in the near future.

In April 2016, scientists announced

StarChip,[4] capable of making the journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, at speeds of 20%[5][6] and 15%[7] of the speed of light, taking between 20 and 30 years to reach the star system, respectively, and about 4 years to notify Earth
of a successful arrival.

Research

Artist's conception of British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus (1978), a fusion powered interstellar probe

To travel between stars in a reasonable time using

effective exhaust velocity jet and enormous energy to power this, such as might be provided by fusion power or antimatter
.

There are very few scientific studies that investigate the issues in building a starship. Some examples of this include:

  • Project Orion (1958–1965), mostly crewed interplanetary spacecraft
  • Project Daedalus (1973–1978), uncrewed interstellar probe
  • Project Longshot (1987–1988), uncrewed interstellar probe
  • Project Icarus
    (2009–2014), uncrewed interstellar probe
  • Hundred-Year Starship
    (2011), crewed interstellar craft

The

interstellar gas
to provide propulsion.

Examined in an October 1973 issue of

Enzmann Starship proposed using a 12,000-ton ball of frozen deuterium to power pulse propulsion units. Twice as long as the Empire State Building is tall and assembled in-orbit, the proposed spacecraft would be part of a larger project preceded by interstellar probes
and telescopic observation of target star systems.

The NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (1996–2002) was a professional scientific study examining advanced spacecraft propulsion systems.

Fictional types

A common science-fiction device is to posit a

hyperspace, although some posit starships as outfitted for centuries-long journeys of slower-than-light travel. Other designs posit a way to boost the ship to near-lightspeed, allowing relatively "quick" travel (i.e. decades, not centuries) to nearer stars. This results in a general categorization[according to whom?] of the kinds of starships:[citation needed
]

  • Sleeper: Starships that place their occupants into Cryostasis or Temporal Stasis during a long trip. This includes cryonics-based systems that freeze passengers for the duration of the journey. This is a common trope in science fiction, with some notable examples including "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars" by Christopher Paolini and Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward"
  • Generation: Ships in which the destination would be reached by descendants of the original passengers. These ships would necessarily be self-sustaining and self-maintaining for possibly thousands of years. Notable examples of this in fiction are the Godspeed in Beth Revis' "Across the Universe" (and subsequent sequels), as well as the Vanguard from Robert A. Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky"
  • Relativistic: Ships that function by taking advantage of time dilation at close-to-light-speeds, so long trips will seem much shorter (but still take the same amount of time for outside observers).
  • Frame Shift: Ships that take advantage of the fact that certain dimensions are less "folded" than others, to allow shorter travel by shifting one's frame of reference into a higher, more flat dimension to cut down on travel time. Generally this results in speeds close to (but importantly, not greater than) Light speed.
  • wormholes
    ). According to the theory of relativity, faster-than-light travel is impossible.

Theoretical possibilities

The

peer-reviewed.[8] The paper suggests that space itself could be topographically warped to create a local region of spacetime wherein the region ahead of the "warp bubble" is compressed, allowed to resume normalcy within the bubble, and then rapidly expanded behind the bubble creating an effect that results in apparent FTL travel, all in a manner consistent with the Einstein field equations of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes.[9] However, the actual construction of such a drive would face other serious theoretical difficulties
.

Fictional examples

Main article: List of fictional spacecraft § Interstellar

There are widely known vessels in various science fiction franchises. The most prominent cultural use and one of the earliest common uses of the term starship was in Star Trek: The Original Series.

See also

  • Bioship – Type of fictional spacecraft or starship made of biological elements
  • Intergalactic travel – Hypothetical travel between galaxies
  • IXS Enterprise – Conceptual interstellar ship
  • Mother ship – Large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles
  • Project Icarus (interstellar) – 2009 project to update design of Project Daedalus
  • Project Longshot – Design for a 400 tonne nuclear pulse propelled uncrewed spacecraft to reach and orbit Alpha Centauri
  • 100 Year Starship – Grant project to work toward achieving interstellar travel
  • Spaceflight – Flight into or through outer space
  • Space travel in science fiction – Fictional methods, e.g. antigravity, hyperdrive
  • Starship Technologies – Company developing small self-driving robotic delivery vehicles
  • Unidentified flying object – Airborne, submerged, and transmedium phenomena considered unusual and unidentified
  • Airbus A350 XWB
     – Family of long-range, wide-body jet airliners

References

  1. ^ Erik Sofge (20 September 2012). "What Would a Actually Look Like?". Popularmechanics. Archived from the original on 13 July 2001. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
  2. ^ "Oahspe - Index". gailallen.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-11-30.; "Oahspe - Book of Divinity: Chapter XVI". gailallen.com. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
  3. ^ "Voyager 1 Has Date with a Star in 40,000 Years". Space.com. 13 September 2013. Archived from the original on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-24.
  4. ^ Gilster, Paul (12 April 2016). "Breakthrough Starshot: Mission to Alpha Centauri". Centauri Dreams. Archived from the original on 15 April 2016. Retrieved 14 April 2016.
  5. New York Times. Archived
    from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  6. ^ Stone, Maddie (12 April 2016). "Stephen Hawking and a Russian Billionaire Want to Build an Interstellar Starship". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  7. ^ Staff (12 April 2016). "Breakthrough Starshot". Breakthrough Initiatives. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  8. S2CID 4797900
    . (Letter to the Editor)
  9. S2CID 4797900
    .

External links
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