THROUGH HARDSHIP TO THE STARS" DREAM OR REALITY

Ship colony: how many people need to fly to the stars? 
realistic scenario flight to another star system involves sending a large group of people - hundreds of thousands of people.Generation after generation, they will go to the goal - another star system. And today, scientists seem to have decided on the exact number of colonists, which will help cut the risk of death of the expedition to a minimum.

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  Dr. Harold White (Harold White) continues its work on the hyperspace engine in the Johnson Space Center NASA.The project is still not out of the experimental stage, but it does not prevent developers to imagine how life might look like in their own version of the Enterprise spaceship sci-fi series "Star Trek."
  
• Experts around the world believe that the first engineering project interstellar spacecraft was unmanned probe fusion "Daedalus", developed in the early 1970s by the British Interplanetary Society. Is not it strange that in the spaceship took enough virtual British aerospace? Maybe it's because the relevant Soviet and American industries were busy with more urgent tasks? Or we do not know much?
  main problem faced by the researchers was the need to keep within the stated 50-year term of the flight: for this unit was required to report truly tremendous speed. When the project began, the fastest machine was the probe Pioneer 10, cutting the space at a speed of 51,810 km / h. On the way to Jupiter it took him half a year, but if his goal was to Barnard's Star, the journey was stretched to 123 thousand. Years. Thus, the acceleration that it was necessary to give the "Daedalus" is far beyond existing technologies.
  To overcome this difficulty, the developers have formulated the concept of a two-stage machine. Necessary acceleration was achieved through a series of low-power nuclear explosions taking place inside a special propulsion system. The fuel it uses microscopic granules of a mixture of deuterium and helium-3, irradiated by high-energy electrons. According to the draft, the engine must have occurred up to 250 explosions per second. Nozzle could be a powerful magnetic field produced by power plants ship.
  
• Research in the field of space rocket engine (in later years) will focus mainly on the creation of a nuclear rocket engine (NRE) that uses energy fission reaction. Will be created and will be widely used in space exploration NRE to a solid core having a specific thrust of ~ 1000 sec. Experience in the implementation of such programs and the development of chemical rocket engines operating at high pressure in the combustion chamber, will serve as the basis for creating the NRE with gas-phase core having a specific thrust of 2000-5000 sec when operating in space conditions.
• Creating a single-stage spacecraft with gas-phase NRE for flights to deep space will mark the birth of space transportation systems.
  Such spacecraft will be fully adapted to perform commercial operations in the future and will become a vehicle for wealthy tourists, moderately funded scientists and researchers, and will also serve as current problem when performing important national programs, including the creation of space stations and outposts circumplanetary.Space propulsion system will have the same reliability as modern jet engines in air transport.
  
• Anthropologist Cameron Smith of Portland State University has long interested in the topic of space flight, and even brought home a space suit to test the feasibility of space projects by enthusiasts.
  Inside ICARUS will be similar to a high-tech liveable cities for up to 10-12 thousand. man
  Cameron Smith believes that the interstellar colony ship shall carry not less than 10 000 people, or even better - 40 000 Calculations show that only such a number can ensure the success of the mission in the event of the death of a large percentage of the crew.
  Also, Cameron Smith, together with archaeologist William Gardnerom- O'Kerni created a computer model that simulates a community of people who commit interstellar travel. Scientists "drove" through the model several different scenarios and can now explain why the success of the interstellar mission largely depends on the initial population size.
  
• Dr. White has been developing power plants for space ships near future: ion and plasma accelerators. He wrote a new theoretical work, in which the proposed solution to the problem of the engine Alcubierre who could afford to travel faster than the speed of light, at the same time without contradicting Einstein's postulate.
  This engine creates a bubble of space around the vehicle, inside which you can navigate to the enormous distances.However, within the same solar system move with superluminal velocity would not work.
  
• Such a structure is described in fiction series "Battlestar" Galactica "and it really is a good fit for interstellar travel.
  
• Dimensions of ship ICARUS compared with skyscrapers and modern space transportation systems