Spaceship Concepts

(see http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/warp.htm)

• Inspiration from science fiction: Enterprise from Star Trek.
  "Warp drive" to achieve faster than list travel.
  Controlling gravity ("Inertial Dampers", "deflectors", "synthetic gravity").
• Project Daedalus: a design study for sending a probe past Barnard's star with a 50 year trip time. (Barnard's star is about 6 light-years away.) It used micro fusion explosions which relied on obtaining the appropriate fuel isotope from Jupiter that it scooped up on its way out of the solar system.
• Brussard's interstellar ramjet: relies on scooping up the lonely protons that drift in interstellar space, and then somehow getting them to fuse to make a nuclear rocket.
• Forward's interstellar laser sails: light sails use the momentum of light (from a laser on Earth) to push the ship outwards.

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