Take a trip to Svalbard for one of the best views!
We’ve Launched into the black and have found our space-legs, it’s time to be blasted with radiation and other such nuisances. Our sun, like all stars, is basically a nuclear fusion reactor. Quarks (the noise made by a posh duck) are being pressured together by the sheer mass of the sun to form protons, and again those protons are forced together, inadvertently creating a whole load of heat, light and all sorts of other particles. Since we’re all mushy sacks of meaty water we don’t have much defence when it comes to protecting our cells and DNA from all this bombardment. We rely on the Earth’s iron core to provide a vast electromagnetic shield which diverts and deflects the majority of the danger. Most electrons that fall into the magnetic field end up taking a trip to the poles, resulting in events like the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). When our spaceships leave our protective magnet they are swamped in a bath of harmful particles which can have a serious impact on the astronauts health. During the Apollo missions the astronauts reported seeing flashes and streaks of light, even when their eyes were closed. This is known as Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomena and is thought to be the work of cosmic rays which consist mostly of gamma, X-ray and other high energy photons. As a cosmic ray shield, each ship could house a large, powerful magnet, just like the Earth to divert the most harmful parts of the radiation. This would come with it’s own problems though, like disrupting electronics systems. Maybe thick lead plating is the way to go, but one thing’s for sure and that’s that we need to put a little more research into radiation shielding.
This A-Wing pilot actually had a name: Arvel Crynyd
From repulsion to propulsion: this is probably our least efficient section of space travel, leaving us a disappointingly long way from doing barrel rolls or firing proton torpedoes into a thermal exhaust the size of a Womp Rat. What kind of thrusters do our favourite spaceships have? Let’s use the A-wing from Star Wars, they are one of the fastest ships in the Star Wars universe and can travel at 1300 km/h. An A-wing going at full pelt would take just over 12 days to reach the moon from Earth. The shortest time a real craft has taken to get to the moon is a grand total of 8 hours and 35 minutes. Finally a point for real life! Well, not really. The New Horizon probe used huge rockets dedicated to pure speed and flying in a straight line while the A-wing is a mass produced small interceptor designed for agility and combat. Our craft are lacking this maneuverability that top class fighter pilots are able to control. This is most probably due to our very unrefined chemical rocket and alternative thruster technology.
Not very powerful but they look pretty.
At the current time none of our spacecraft have been designed for anything other than orbiting and landing on low gravity bodies. The chemical rockets work fine to get human cargo from one place to another rather quickly, but it’s not so efficient for probes and other unmanned craft. When time isn’t much of an issue it’s best to go with the lowest fuel consumption. A far more economic way of propelling ourselves is with Ion Thrusters which require less than one sixth of the fuel for a typical liquid fuel rocket. Xenon gas is ionized by an anode bombarding it with electrons. These positively charged ions are then passed through a positive end of an electronic field and are accelerated through the negative end by the potential difference across the two poles of the field. The ions leaving the engine create thrust and are also neutralized with a cathode to prevent charge build up. As the ions are accelerated one way, it’s down to Newton’s third law to also accelerate the thruster in the other direction. The current problem with ion thrusters is that they don’t provide much thrust, sure the ions are expelled at great velocity but their momentum is very small due to their tiny mass (Momentum = Mass x Velocity). Which means this type of propulsion is best suited for fine tuning orientation and stabilization.
It was a terrible film but Angels and Demons made anti-matter look rad!
Out of all the techno babble of the science fiction genre one particular phrase seems to stand out from the rest: “Anti-matter”. Stuff that cancels out matter, sounds great right? Well it does more than just cancel out matter. When matter and anti-matter come into contact they annihilate each-other (actual scientific term) and release a whole load of radiation and possibly other particles. This can be expressed as E=mc² meaning that the energy (Joules) released from an annihilation is equal to the mass (Kilograms) of the matter and anti-matter concerned multiplied by the speed of light in a vacuum squared (meters per second). A proposed rocket method for using anti-matter is the heating of an exhaust fluid. When electrons and positrons (the anti-matter version of an election) annihilate, a lot of gamma radiation is expelled. All this radiation can be harnessed to super-heat a liquid or gas propellant, working in a similar way to a nuclear reactor. The heated gas expands which raises the pressure in the rocket, expelling the gas at a high speed. The only problem with using anti-matter is that it’s pretty hard to get your hands on (it’s literally impossible, actually). It takes the boffins at CERN thousands of times the amount of energy to create a positron than the positron can release, rendering the whole process incredibly inefficient. Storing anti-matter is also an odious task as the moment it comes into contact with matter it’s gone. This means strong magnetic fields are required to keep it in place, also using up precious energy.