Fuel Can’t Take Us to the Stars but We Can Still Conquer Them
It’s not rocket science
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 captured our imagination when it reached the edge of the Solar System in 2012, but it will take another 40,000 years to arrive at the closest star, traveling 35,000 miles per hour.
Understanding why this is requires that we delve into the most overlooked fact about space flight: we burn almost all our fuel escaping the gravity well of our planet, therefore our spacecrafts must coast along the rest of the journey, relying on gravity assist from other planets to increase their speed.
Is it possible to bring more fuel? Yes, but then even more fuel is required to deal with the additional weight — that’s the essence of the rocket equation. Even building a ship in space (to leave Earth’s orbit with a full tank) will still require thousands of years to reach our closest neighbor.
Is there a better fuel? Yes, it is possible to explode nuclear bombs behind our starship to accelerate it forward and to slow it down at the end of the journey. Outlandish but doable. Nevertheless, imagine if we could do away with fuel and find other ways to accelerate a ship with our current technology.
The Breakthrough Starshot project plans to take advantage of this…
