| INTERSTELLAR SHUTTLES INTERSTELLAR SHUTTLES 1 INTERSTELLAR SHUTTLES 2 INTERSTELLAR SHUTTLES 3 BALLPARK FIGURES SOME MATH INTERSTELLAR TRAFFIC STATISTICS/SUPERSTITION THE DEEP SLEEP |
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| Star map drawn by T.A. Heppenheimer from his classic book "Colonies in Space" 1976. This map shows stars out to 20 ly. Since 1976 more stars, mostly red and brown dwarfs have been discovered within this range. Visit Notable Nearby Stars. The stars circled are pairs of stars in succession to which fly-bys are possible. As we reach farther out into space we would see more stars lined up well enough for more fly-bys. If we build beamrider booster stations in orbit around these stars it will be possible to deflect ships as they fly-by so that they could navigate to stars beyond that are not so neatly lined up with each other. Instead of decelerating entire star ships, just small pods that detach or rendesvouz with the star ships would decelerate to or accelerate away from the star. Star ships could be built and propelled up to cruise velocity at bright A, F and G type stars. As they fly-by various stars, deflection will not take as much energy as braking on a mass beam and reaccelerating up to full speed. Some ships may perform a great arc through the galaxy and return to point of origin after many fly-bys and deflections. More likely, ships will follow winding paths through the galaxy and end their voyages at a bright star, a sort of terminus, where stellar energy complexes built by robots decades, even centuries, earlier, supply power to reaccelerate the ship up to 0.3c to 0.5c and send it back the way it came. When a network of stellar energy complexes and propulsion beams exists around hundreds, even thousands of stars, many thousands of ships could ply to and fro enabling two-way interstellar travel for large numbers of people and electronic beings like androids. Cargos, if there are any since local resources from asteroids, moons, comets, KB type objects, small planets and planetary atmospheres will be used primarily in other star systems, would travel by slow robotic freighters at only 0.1c or less. |
| To quote Gerald David Nordley, "The point is that a million beam drivers for an interstellar propulsion system is not unreasonable for a civilization that made ten million automobiles a year before robotics." See: article |
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