How Will We Travel to Avatar's Pandora?

The article could have mentioned that the fastest *unmanned* spacecraft flying today is NASA's New Horizon mission, which is racing to Pluto at ~68,000 kilometers per hour. It was launched on an Atlas V on January 19, 2006 and accelerated to heliocentric escape velocity by a Boeing Star 48 upper stage. If aimed properly, it would reach Alpha Centauri in about as many years from now as separates us from Mitochondrial Eve.

The movie is based on the assumption of using using antimatter (antiprotons) as a facilitator/catalyst for a combined fission/fusion pulsed nuclear propulsion system. It also assumed that the vehicle could achieve a 6-year transit time to Alpha Centauri – basically an average effective velocity of 0.7c.

There are two major problems with this. First, the highest velocity achievable with the specific impulses available from antiproton-assisted microfission/fusion are much too low to achieve the maximum velocity to realize such transit times. And this leads into the second problem – the vehicle must decelerate to rendezvous at its destination. Therefore, the maximum velocity required of the propulsion system is much larger, probably well in excess of 0.9c.

The concepts mentioned in this paper are intriguing, but mainly for the purpose of ambitious interplanetary flight. A few may have potential for interstellar travel, but not at near the velocities assumed in the film (laser/solar sails and Bussard Ramjet). One option that was not identified was use of antimatter. All of these concepts are theoretically possible and fall within the realm of known physics, but their technological challenges are daunting.

I'm afraid that the road to interstellar flight at the speeds envisioned in Avatar will require application of undiscovered aspects of physics. Concepts like the Alcubierre Drive and Wormholes fall along these lines, but are highly speculative right now.

Dr. Robert Frisbee of JPL did a fairly extensive study of advanced propulsion concepts for interstellar spaceflight about 10 years ago. The results of these assessments all came out in a series of papers over a 5-year timeframe. Drs. Gerald Smith, Steve Howe and George Schmidt did work on antimatter and advanced/politically-correct pulsed nuclear propulsion during that time too. Although this work is very immature technologically, it does offer the promise of opening up space to ambitious human exploration beyond cislunar space and the inner solar system. For that point alone, it deserves recognition as a necessary investment for the future.

Now remember that along with new propulsion for interstellar flight there remains a host of other problems to consider as well such as logistics, materials technology, life support engineering, command and control and so on.
Also consider too that in the coming years that unexpected breakthroughs will occur in many areas that we can't foresee right now.
So we might get there sooner than we think or much later than we think.
I voter sooner because a lot of bright people dream this dream and work to make it happen.

Why would we want to go there anyway, they're just going to blow our stuff up and kick us out

A more recent summary of Dr. Frisbee's interstellar propulsion assessments has been compiled into Ch.2 of the 2009 book, FRONTIERS OF PROPULSION SCIENCE, publisher AIAA, Millis & Davis editors. Pay close attention to the energy requirements.

But this book goes beyond technology, onto unfinished physics. Notions of space drives and faster-than-light travel are examined at a rigorous level of detail, including the Alcubierre warp drive, wormholes, and the FTL implications of quantum entanglement. The intent is to give aerospace engineers and scientists a reliable introduction along with citing the references upon which that state-of-art is based.

Regarding ultimate feasibility?... Although no breakthroughs appear imminent, enough progress has been made to form starting points for deeper, more focused inquires. Even if the breakthroughs remain elusive, more will be gained from attempting to solve them than by conceding to uncertain impossibilities. And if they do become possible... well, I'll leave that up to your imagination.

One last note: A small group of volunteer professionals are tackling the challenges of interstellar flight - reaching beyond normal work - and are working together under the auspices of the "Tau Zero Foundation." It's a young effort, but check out their news blog, "Centauri Dreams."
(Google any of those terms to find the links)

Hello,

I had just had the possibility to speak with you, Marc. There is a lot of laboratory physics but nothing an engineer can really handle. It was Eugen Sänger in 1953 to introduce antimatter annihilation propulsion, or as he described it: photon propulsion and using Einstein’s special relativity theory. At Stuttgart University, there was an attempt to design an antimatter rocket motor. It would not be so difficult if one would deliver the antimatter. This was the original idea. But transporting yourself in your own universe, this is just something in the heads and not on the drawing boards. Yet.

The best way to travel to the stars IMO is in a virtual sense, by means of a super telescope that will allow us to get detailed information about earth-like planets in reasonable proximity. This would probably be some kind of synthetic aperture array telescope, like the proposed Darwin project of ESA: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22372

A main advantage over physical visitation to nearby stars is that observations are immediate rather than years-delayed. It would not only take very long to build a starship, it would take a long time to arrive, and then at least four+ years for the data to come back to us.
Another advantage is that we can "visit" many stars by a super-scope, not just one.

Even more powerful syn-scopes may come later in this century. The cost of a starship would be so unreasonably high that it's almost certainly better to put just some of that money into advancing the technology of synthetic aperture array telescopes, for the next hundred years or so anyway.

(The best way to travel to the stars IMO is in a virtual sense)

You may not remember when the club of Rome first calculated the future of mankind in the 1950th. This has been “virtual” too. But we are on the way and did not change anything. It might be good to put the head out of the sand.

Indigenous cultures that still practice the art of Shamanism use a technique called 'journeying' in which they can travel to non ordinary reality to consult with spirit guides. This technique as I understand it allows them as well to 'journey' anywhere in the Universe.

I bet they have already visited many places such as Pandora.... at no cost to the American taxpayer!

A star ship constantly accelerating at 1G could achieve light approximating speeds in less than a year.

I'd probably use an interstellar vessel with a magnetic sail powered by tens of thousands of large solar powered electron beam guns orbiting within the orbit of Mercury to achieve light approximating speeds. Deceleration towards the target star system could then be achieved by using the magnetic sail to deflect charged particles in interstellar space.

These would pretty much be one way trips until the new star system also developed the infrastructure to manufacture tens of thousands of solar powered electron beam guns. But it should be pretty easy for astronauts (star voyagers) to survive off the planetary and asteroid resources within a new star system.

Marcel F. Williams