Mission Flight Type

This is a summary of the various types of flights we might use to send a mission to another star (Round trip, pickup and return by follow on flight, construction of return equipment at target star, Multi-star, Multi generation, hibernation, and one way). It briefly describes each flight type and its advantages and disadvantages.



Round trip

Ship and crew return to Earth at mission end.

Advantages

€Simplest option, and one with little likely hood of public objection.

€More likely to get more volunteers and better qualified volunteers for flight.

€This option implies that the mission is fairly short. I.E. within the professional life of the crew. This would imply its short enough to return information in a useful amount of time. (I.E. it would get there and back, before a later faster flight could do it.)

€It would return far more information than an interstellar communications link could manage.

€It obviously avoids the grisly public relations and crew morale problems of a one way mission.

Disadvantages

€Technically more challenging. Getting a ship to the target starsystem is hard enough. Getting it back would make it harder. But this must be traded off against the added complexity of a ship capable of supporting its crew for the rest of their lives.

€It has to be a fast enough ship to get back in an acceptable amount of time. Too slow and theirs no practical reason to send it.




Pick up and return by follow on flight

Advantages

€Most of the advantages of the round trip model, and would allow the first ship to be a mobile research station or other specialized ship, with faster courier ships providing round trip flights.


Disadvantages

€High risk and more complicated. Multiple ship types, and concerns that the first ship might be left stranded. The multiple ship types (the first being a big heavy slow boat, the latter faster smaller ships) is probably manageable and might even have advantages. The problem of assured crew return would have to be handled conclusively.



Crew constructs equipment for return flight

This option come up with light/microwave sail craft, beamed power craft, and fuel launcher craft. The crew would construct automated duplicates of the systems that launched the ship from Sol space.

Advantages

€Would establish launcher facilities in both star systems. Which could allowing faster two way flights with specialized fast light ships.

€The crew might get back faster with their ship using the constructed launcher systems for assistance.

.
Disadvantages

€If they can't build the equipment, they don't get home.

€The construction phase may require so many resources that the first flight is devoted just to infrastructure construction. With little or no exploration being done in the first mission. This obviously would cool public interest and slow down the return of productive information. At the very least the crew would have to be divided into a exploration, construction, and support sub-crews.



Multi-Star System Flight

Ship proceeds to, and explores, another starsystem after completion of first mission, in first starsystem.

Advantages

€One mission explores multiple star systems.


Disadvantages

€Technical feasibility is low since wear and tear on the ship would accumulate, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic failure.

€Because of the extremely long flight times with likely technology, the mission would take so long as to be undesirable. At some point the ship would be superseded by newer faster ships sent straight out from earth, decades after its launch.



Multi-generation
Succeeding generations of crew continue the mission

Advantages

€This is the one of the standard concepts suggested to get around the extremely long flight times.

€Could allow extremely long flight times.

.
Disadvantages

€The ship would have to be huge to support the active crew, retired/incapacitated crew, children, and all the extra support facilities and personnel they would require.

€The crew, ship, and equipment would need to be even larger than that to allow them to be able to completely rebuild the ship from the inside out as it, and its systems, exceeded their service lives.

€Any ship that takes that long to get to where it wants to go, will probably find it gets there after newer faster ships from earth. So their is little reason to launch it.

€The flight would take so long few people would be enthusiastic in launching it, even if they didn't consider the likelihood of faster follow on craft. I.E. why spend money on something you'll never see the results of, nor even ever know if they made it.

€The follow on generation(s) in the ship will have no allegiance or commitment to the mission or its originators (they, never agreed to anything).

€The follow on generations would have no hands-on experience with the exploration systems they would be expected to use. Or for that matter, any experience with planets and starsystems.

€Its harder to get qualified people to go on such a flight. People who want to explore wouldn't want to spend the rest of their life stuck in a ship, knowing they will never contribute anything but their genes.



Hibernation flight

Crew spends the flight in suspended animation


Advantages

€This is the other one of the standard concepts suggested to get around the extremely long flight times.

€The ship would not need to support the inactive crew.

€The crew wouldn't need to spend years of their lives waiting around in the ship with nothing to do until they get to the star system.

€The crew will still be fresh and familiar with their jobs when then are waken up in the star system.


Disadvantages

€The ship systems will still exceeded their service lives, but their may not be enough people around to service them. The sleepers could wind up dying on route as the ship died around them.

€The sleepers would have to be extremely well shielded from radiation, since their cell repair mechanisms would be as dead as they are.

€Any ship that takes that long to get to where it wants to go, will probably find it gets there after newer faster ships from earth.

€The flight would take so long few people would be enthusiastic in launching it.


One-way
-
Suicide (explore and die before your time when supplies end)-
One-way (Enough supplies are shipped to stay in target system until 'natural' death)

(For some inexplicable reason this option has one or two strong advocates within L.I.T.. I want it absolutely known that I neither approve or in anyway support such an option. Nor would I in any credible situation expect it to generate anything but revulsion among the general tax paying public. Kelly Starks - The Author.)

Advantages

€The ship need only be designed for a one time, one way flight. This limits the technical mission risk and requires less resources. (Assuming you don't want to try to upgrade the ship to be self sufficient, which would take far more resources.)

€Least likelihood of back contaminating Earth.

€Establishes temporary outpost in starsystem.

€Allows investigation of the starsystem to continue until all exploration resources are exhausted or worn out. Presumably for a decade or so, depending on the service life of the shuttles or their support facilities, or the service life of the remotes.

Disadvantages

€To put it mildly the public acceptance of sending explorers out to die the mission and die on the frontier is low. Risking dying maybe, but assigned/left to die by superiors -- no way. Every politician within ear shot will run in front of the closest camera to announce that he or she will personally lead the witch-hunt to track down everyone connected with suggesting this idea.

It has been suggested (adamantly) by some members of the group, that this might be justifiable under some situation, or that this would be acceptable as a colonization mission, especially if the colony could be made completely self sufficient from the start. Aside from the technical impossibility of doing the latter. Its unlikely in the extreme, that such risks would be acceptable in an initial mission. At the very least the mission would have to be designed as a two way flight with the option of founding a colony or outpost. Also their would be considerable debate as to why we would want to set up a permanent outpost in a place we don't know anything about, and have no idea if we'd want to stay at. This debate would get louder when the continuing cost of supply flights was discussed.

Other problems would be:-

The potential supply of skilled personnel would obviously drop, if they knew they were to be abandoned in the system when they finished the mission. Especially given that their project life expectancy (due to the lack of 'modern' medical facilities) would drop by a few decades, all but a few years of which they'd spend trapped in a traveling, or derelict ship.-

Lower information return to Earth due to limited baud rates of interstellar communication.-

Projected types of crew death:



Summary table

This table give a summary overview of the different flight types by:
€Technical Risk, or the danger this type of flight would pose to the crew.
€Technical Feasibility, or how difficult it would be to do such a flight.
€Political Risk, or how controversial would this kind of flight be. Would it take to long to be interesting to a democratic government? Would it sound extremely bad in the press?
€Political Feasibility, or how difficult it would be to get the public and politicians to pay for this kind of flight.
€Desirability, or if we could do it any way we'd like, would we really want to do it this way?

Mission
Type
Technical RiskTechnical
Feasibility
Political RiskPolitical
Feasibility
Desirability
Round tripmediummedium low Highhigh
PickupMed-highmediummediummediummedium
Construction and returnhighmed-highmediummediummedium
Multi-starEx-High.Med-lowlowMediummedium
Multi-genEx-highLowhighmediumlow
HibernationhighLowmediummediumlow
One-waymed-lowMediumEx-highNilLow



Alternative Robot Missions



Do people need to go at all? Odds are you won't get funding for an unmanned program. But what are its pluses and minuses?



Robotic fly by's

Advantages

€Could use a smaller lighter ship and could tolerate longer flight times.

Disadvantages

€Requires extremely good A.I. systems and reliability (which may or may not be likely by 2050), and would generate far less public interest.

€Why bother? You could do nearly as well with huge telescope arrays in our star system, and do it a lot faster and cheaper.



Robotic exploration

Advantages
€Could use a far smaller lighter ship and could tolerate longer flight times.

€Would provide ground survey data that could be worth launching an interstellar mission. (I.E. The telescopes back home couldn't do it as well.)

Disadvantages
€Again requires extremely good A.I. systems and reliability, and would generate less public interest.

€Would be less capable than a manned mission.


mail me