There has long been a fantasy about a rocket, powered by the sun, that could explore interstellar space. But now it could be real. (From 2020)
program are studying all aspects of the mission, from cost estimates to instrumentation. But simply figuring out how to get to interstellar space in any reasonable amount of time is by far the biggest and most important piece of the puzzle.
Unlike a conventional engine mounted on the aft end of a rocket, the solar thermal engine that the researchers are studying would be integrated with the spacecraft’s shield. The rigid flat shell is made from a black carbon foam with one side coated in a white reflective material. Externally it would look very similar to the. The critical difference is the tortuous pipeline hidden just beneath the surface.
Cozying up to a sun-sized thermonuclear explosion creates all sorts of materials challenges, says Dean Cheikh, a materials technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who presented a case study on the solar thermal rocket during the recent conference. For the APL mission, the probe would spend around two-and-a-half hours in temperatures around 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit as it completed its Oberth maneuver.
The big takeaway from his research, says Cheikh, is there’s a lot of testing that needs to be done on heat shield materials before a solar thermal rocket is sent around the sun. But it’s not a dealbreaker. In fact, incredible advances in materials science make the idea finally seem feasible more than 60 years after it wasby engineers in the US Air Force. “I thought I came up with this great idea independently, but people were talking about it in 1956,” says Benkoski.
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