![]() A starship doesn't need to be sleek or have a pointy nose-even the stocky Battlestar Galactica is pointlessly aircraft-shaped. Perhaps the small ships that carry people from surface to starship will remain winged, but truly interstellar vehicles can scrap aerodynamics and all of the design principles that are beholden to reducing wind resistance. In both the near and far-term future, experts such as Millis imagine interstellar vessels won't spend much of their time in an atmosphere. Like the Russian Soyuz capsule, SpaceX's Dragon currently splashes down in the ocean (though SpaceX plans to move toward rocket-powered launchpad landings). And wings aren't even required for landings. The only real-world spacecraft that bother with wings are ones designed to make regular landings on runways, such as the retired Space Shuttle, the upcoming Lynx (a suborbital two-seater from XCOR) or the Dream Chaser, an in-development orbital craft from Sierra Nevada. One look at the Icarus design-or its predecessor, the Daedalus-and it's clear what starships don't need: wings. We asked Millis, who once led NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, to take us through the basics of starship design. It's simply the design that might make sense to build first. But according to Millis, Icarus isn't a definitive, catch-all prediction of what an interstellar craft might look like. The skyscraper-size behemoth is comprised almost entirely of rows and clusters of spherical fuel tanks. Icarus, as it's currently envisioned, isn't the sleekest space ride. The foundation has proposed candidate technologies and designs, including the Icarus unmanned fusion-powered probe, which would accelerate (theoretically, of course) to one-tenth or one-fifth the speed of light. Millis, founder of the Tau Zero Foundation. One of the participants of the 100 Year Starship project is Marc G. In fact, the 100 Year Starship initiative-which began as a DARPA-funded contest to lay the foundations for a flight across the stars, gathering physicists, entrepreneurs, and anyone seriously interested in long-distance space travel-just finished its annual symposium this past weekend. While a manned interstellar mission isn't exactly on NASA's upcoming schedule, researchers haven't abandoned the topic to science fiction. Shevell, V.Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Power Plant Suitable for Satellite Vehiclesįinal Establishment of Sizes and Trajectoriesį. General Characteristics of a Satellite Vehicle To visualize the impact on the world, one can imagine the consternation and admiration that would be felt here if the United States were to discover suddenly that some other nation had already put up a successful satellite.” But the most riveting observation, one that deserves an honored place in the Central Premonitions Registry, was made by one of the contributors, Jimmy Lipp (head of Project RAND’s Missile Division), in a follow-on paper nine months later: “Since mastery of the elements is a reliable index of material progress, the nation which first makes significant achievements in space travel will be acknowledged as the world leader in both military and scientific techniques. The central argument turns on the feasibility of such a space vehicle from an engineering standpoint, but alongside the curves and tabulations are visionary statements, such as that by Louis Ridenour on the significance of satellites to man’s store of knowledge, and that of Francis Clauser on the possibility of man in space. The resulting report arrived two days before a critical review of the subject with the Navy. ![]() He tasked Project RAND to undertake a feasibility study of its own with a three-week deadline. LeMay, then Deputy Chief of the Air Staff for Research and Development, considered space operations to be an extension of air operations. Interest in the feasibility of space satellites had surfaced somewhat earlier in a Navy proposal for an interservice space program (March 1946). More than eleven years before the orbiting of Sputnik, history’s first artificial space satellite, Project RAND - then active within Douglas Aircraft Company’s Engineering Division - released its first report: Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship (SM-11827), May 2, 1946.
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