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Alpha Centauri 8 www.Astronomy.com Thank you for registering on Astronomy.com! We hope you enjoy these two articles that provide you with just a small sample of what Astronomy magazine has to offer. Please remember that this copyrighted material is for your use only. It is unlawful to share or distribute this file to others in any way, including e-mailing it, posting it online, or sharing paper copies with others. If you have suggestions or comments on this product, please contact us at [email protected]. Sincerely, The staff of Astronomy magazine TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE Please note: Packages are color intensive. To save color ink in your printer, change your printer setting to grayscale. SAVING PACKAGE Save the package when you download the PDF. Click on the computer disk icon in Adobe Acrobat, or go to File, Save. MY PRINTER WON’T PRINT THE TEXT CORRECTLY Close all other programs/applications and print directly out of the Acrobat Reader program, not your Web browser. Printing problems are caused by not enough free system memory. PAGES ARE NOT PRINTING FULL SIZE Set your printer to print 100% and make sure “print to fit” is not checked under printer setup or printer options. To boldly go ... How humans will travel to Alpha Centauri Long thought to be the province of science fiction, interstellar flight might not be as impossible as you think. by Bill Andrews pace, we all know, is the final frontier. But years ago. Starting just eight years later, a dozen men given our current technological state, it trod on the surface of another world, the Moon, for might stay that way for some time. Unlike the first time in history. We were, briefly, a multi- climbing the next mountain or sailing the world species. Since 1972, the closest mankind has next sea, exploring the next planet — let gotten to the stars is low Earth orbit. Salone the next star system — will surely take humanity We’ve done much better with our unmanned quite a while. The warp drives and wormholes of sci- probes. When the New Horizons mission explores ence fiction make for interesting stories, but in the real Pluto and its surroundings in 2015, it will complete world the immensity of space appears unconquerable. our tour of the solar system. All the major planets and But does it have to be that way? It’s easy to shrug the biggest moons (along with the Sun and certain off the convenient but impossible propulsion systems asteroids and comets) have already had at least one of fictional starships, but let’s not be too quick to dis- robotic probe study them in detail. No one has set count our real achievements. In just over 100 years, foot on Saturn’s moons, but scientists can explore our species has learned how to fly, how to launch into them virtually through these missions and learn space, and how to begin working and living there. If almost as much. we put our minds to it — if humanity prioritizes We’ve done all this despite the daunting distances interstellar travel above all else — what would it take between planets. In many cases, the key is simply wait- for us to reach Alpha (α) Centauri, the closest star ing. Although the 2.97-billion-mile (4.78 billion kilo- system outside our own? meters) trip the New Horizons probe has to take to reach Pluto is a long one, it’ll get there given enough First steps time — in this case, about nine and a half years. Of After millions of years confined to the ground, course, that’s still a long wait, and this happens to be humanity first left our planet in 1961, more than 50 the fastest spacecraft ever launched, speeding away from Earth at some 35,800 mph (57,600 km/h). Bill Andrews is an associate editor of Astronomy. He’s Other probes have gone even farther, but it’s taken always enjoyed pondering the various fictional and them decades to do so. Currently, the Voyager 1 space- nonfictional forms of interstellar travel. craft is the farthest man-made object, an achievement earned from nearly 35 years of constant movement. How humans will travel to Alpha Centauri Traveling to another star has long been a sci-fi dream for humans, but such a trip may be closer than we think. Don Dixon for Astronomy www.Astronomy.com 23 is possible,” says Ian O’Neill, founder of Astroengine.com, Space Science Producer for Discovery News, and the holder of a Ph.D. in solar physics. “But is a mission to another star practical? Probably not.” Let’s start with a familiar space travel technology, the space shuttle. Its main engine used a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen mix with an energy density of approximately 100 megajoules per kilogram; relatively speaking, that’s not much energy (about a tenth of what a refrigerator uses in a year). “To fly to Alpha Centauri in a shuttle in 100 years would require fuel tanks 55 times larger than the mass of the observable uni- verse,” says Andreas Tziolas of the Univer- sity of Alaska Anchorage, and also a vice president at Icarus Interstellar, a nonprofit The nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri (at center), is still an enormous distance away: research organization aiming to create a 4.22 light-years, or 24.7 trillion miles (39.9 trillion kilometers). Australian Astronomical Observatory/David Malin realistic unmanned interstellar probe. “For a reaction engine, which carries its fuel, And despite passing Pluto’s orbit, the probe’s farther away. But Proxima’s proximity to us heats it up, and expels it for propulsion, we current distance of more than 11 billion still makes it a useful destination: It’s far would want to use something with very miles (18 billion km) from the Sun remains enough away to require a new mindset for high energy density.” firmly within the solar system, which space travel, but still close enough to be Nuclear power, specifically the fission extends out to the Oort Cloud some 4.6 tril- conceivably reachable. (or splitting) of uranium and plutonium lion miles (7.5 trillion km) away. So, we already know that a decades-old nuclei, provides much more energy, about Given enough time, the probe will cer- probe could, technically, reach the Alpha 100 terajoules/kg (TJ/kg), or a million times tainly leave our neck of the galaxy and Centauri system if we’re willing to wait long better than the shuttle’s system. This would begin an interstellar trip. That’s when the enough and it continues functioning. But require hundreds of thousands of tons of real journey begins. could we do any better with today’s tech- gas (most likely hydrogen) to fuel the reac- nology? And, more importantly, could tions. And due to the extremely high tem- The nearest destination humans survive the trip? peratures the components would be The closest star to the Sun is a red dwarf exposed to — on the order of hundreds of called Proxima Centauri, which lies 4.22 Getting there thousands of degrees Celsius — this tech- light-years away — 24.7 trillion miles (39.9 The best answer right now: perhaps. “Using nology requires more-advanced materials or trillion km). This dim star is likely a mem- the technology available to mankind today, ingenious cooling systems than we currently ber of the Alpha Centauri system, which yes, I’d say a manned interstellar spaceship have. Nonetheless, Tziolas says, “As a power includes the binary stars Alpha Centauri A and B, themselves 4.44 light-years away. To reach distances like that would take Voyager 1 a lot longer than a few decades. Even with the speed boosts it got from slingshotting around the most massive planets, the probe’s present velocity is just 37,100 mph (59,700 km/h). Assuming Voy- ager was headed straight for the system, it’d take about 76,000 years to arrive. For con- text, that’s longer than any known civiliza- tion has stood and almost half as long as Homo sapiens have been around. And that’s just to the nearest star! It has no known planets, and even if it did their habitability would be questionable at best because of Proxima Centauri’s dimness and other unfavorable characteristics. The near- The Voyager 1 probe is now the farthest man-made object, some 11 billion miles (18 billion est known “interesting” stars, with possibly kilometers) from the Sun, after traveling through the solar system for nearly 35 years. NASA/JPL Earth-like planets in orbit, are many times 24 Astronomy • July 2012 Exploring the neighborhood source, nuclear fission is very promising, Current location of Voyager I: The solar system is already vast, especially for interplanetary transits.” 11 billion miles (18 billion km) but it’s only a fraction of the Even more promising, and problematic, immense interstellar gulf to the is a nuclear fusion-powered propulsion nearest star, Proxima Centauri, method, which combines light atomic likely a part of the Alpha (α) Centauri system. Astronomy: Roen Kelly nuclei and can reach energy densities of 300 TJ/kg. Tziolas says deuterium-helium-3 fusion was “the reaction of choice” for Proj- Uranus ect Daedalus, a 1970s study that first Saturn Neptune showed that interstellar flight is possible Jupiter with current or near-future technologies. (Project Icarus is a follow-up to Project Daedalus.) Unfortunately, Tziolas says a big problem is “the extreme scarcity of helium-3 Kuiper Belt on Earth, which would require us to mine the atmospheres of gas giants to accumulate sufficient quantities.” Orbit of Pluto: On average, 3.7 billion miles O’Neill also points out that fusion pro- (5.9 billion km) pulsion may be too violent for any passen- gers on such a ship.
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