Project Valkyrie

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The Valkyrie is a theoretical spacecraft designed by Charles Pellegrino and Jim Powell, designed to be able to accelerate to 92% the speed of light and decelerate afterward, carrying a small human crew to another star system[1].

Contents

[edit] Design

The Valkyrie's high performance is attributable to its innovative design. Instead of a solid spacecraft with a rocket at the back, Valkyrie is built more like a train, with the crew quarters, fuel tanks, radiation shielding, and other vital components being pulled behind the engine on long tethers. This greatly reduces the mass of the ship, because it no longer requires heavy structural members and radiation shielding. Where a comparable conventional design like Project Daedalus would weigh several thousand tons Valkyrie weighs a mere 100 tons (dry)[2]. This is a considerable advantage because in a rocket every extra kilogram of payload (dry mass) will require a corresponding extra amount of propellant or fuel, so the Valkyrie requires much less fuel than an equivalent conventional design.

The Valkyrie would have a crew module trailing 10 kilometers behind the engine. A small 20-cm-thick tungsten shield would hang 100 meters behind the engine, to help protect the trailing crew module from its harmful radiation[3]. The fuel tank might be placed between the crew module and the engine, to further protect it. At the trailing end of the ship would be a second engine, which the ship would use to decelerate. The forward engine and the tank holding its fuel supply might be jettisoned before deceleration, to reduce fuel consumption[4].

[edit] Engines

Initially the Valkyrie's engine would work by using small quantities of antimatter to initiate an extremely energetic fusion reaction. A magnetic coil captures the exhaust products of this reaction and it is expelled with an exhaust velocity of 12-20% the speed of light (35,975-58,900 km/s). As the spacecraft approaches 20% the speed of light more and more antimatter is fed into the engines until it switches over to pure matter-antimatter anninhalation[5]. It will use this mode to accelerate the remainder of the way to .92 c. Pellegrino estimates that the ship would require 100 tons of matter and antimatter, with an undetermined excess of matter to insure the antimatter is efficiently burned, although another calculation suggests that to reach a speed of .92 c and deccelerate afterward Valkyrie would require a mass ratio of 22 (or 2200 tons of fuel for a 100 ton spacecraft)[6].

At such high speeds incident debris would be a major hazard. While accelerating, Valkyrie uses a device that combines the functions of a particle shield and a liquid droplet radiator. Waste heat is dumped into liquid droplets that are cast out in front of the ship. As the ship accelerates the droplets (now cool) effectively fall back into the ship, so the system is self-recycling. During deceleration the ship will be protected by ultra-thin umbrella shields, augmented by a dust shield, possibly made by grinding up pieces of the discarded first stage[7].

[edit] Criticism

The chief feasibility issue of Valkyrie (or for any antimatter-beam drive) lies in its requirement of quantities of antimatter fuel measured in tons. Antimatter cannot be produced at an efficiency of more than 50% (that is to say, to produce one gram of antimatter requires twice as much energy as you would get from annihilating that gram with a gram of matter). Since a half a kilogram of antimatter would yield 9 X 10^16 joules if annihilated with an equal amount of matter[8], this quickly adds up to enormous energy requirements for its production. To produce the 50 tons of antimatter Valkyrie would need would require 1.8 X 10^22 joules, or the entire power output of the Itaipu hydroelectric plant for 45,000 years.

This may be solved by creating a truly enormous power plant for the antimatter factory, probably in the form of a vast array for solar panels with a combined acreage of millions of square kilometers. Alternately the antimatter-fusion hybrid drive the Valkyrie uses to accelerate up to .2 c would require much less antimatter and, with an exhaust velocity of 30-60,000 km/s, still compares quite favorably with competing engines such as the inertial confinement pulse drive used by Project Daedalus or Project Orion (nuclear propulsion). And the Valkyrie's lightweight construction could be applied to a wide variety of space vehicles.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Atomic Rocket: Slower Than Light
  2. ^ Atomic Rocket: Slower Than Light
  3. ^ BBC - h2g2 - The Valkyrie Spacecraft - The Next Giant Leap?
  4. ^ Atomic Rocket: Slower Than Light
  5. ^ BBC - h2g2 - The Valkyrie Spacecraft - The Next Giant Leap?
  6. ^ Atomic Rocket: Slower Than Light
  7. ^ Atomic Rocket: Slower Than Light
  8. ^ Star Wars vs Star Trek: Physics and Astronomical Constants and Errata

[edit] External links