Beyond Starship: What could the next spaceship be like
I’m thrilled that Elon musk is doing everything he can to get Humanity to Mars so I wanted to highlight a few technologies that are exciting in how they could turn humanity into a massively multi-planetary, space-faring and may be even a multi-star civilization
As Elon has said before, it is very likely that consciousness is a very rare phenomenon in the universe and even more likely that intelligent consciousness is even more rarer and so it is incumbent upon us to safeguard this gift that we possess and ensure the flame is kept alive
Helping Humans become a multi-planetary, spacefaring civilization and also building a much more stronger and resilient Terrestrial civilization will ensure any risk to the flame of intelligent consciousness is adequately diversified and safe from any catastrophe.
To get our civilization to the next level we would need a next level energy source that will power this growth. This energy source will not only give us the cheap power to build the next gen civilization but will also help stabilize our current civilization
In this regard, that Molten salt reactors that are being attempted by Terrapower and Flibe Energy will help get closer to leveraging thorium as a energy source that will get us to the next level. Very thrilled to see that Bill Gates is backing
Plasma rocket engines (Vasimr engine) that AdAstraRocket is developing runs on electricity that could be created from Molten salt reactors on a spaceship. Btw, Thorium Molten salt reactors were built in 50s for a nuclear powered aeroplane project at the Oak Ridge National lab.
I tried to imagine how these technologies would sit in a future spaceship and thought that the molten salt reactor would be at the center to keep nuclear radiation away from humans and the engines would be on the spokes and humans could live on the rim
Just a thought experiment about what an updated Von Braun spaceship could be like. This was Von Braun’s Sketch from 1946
http://astronautix.com/v/vonbraunstation.html
Here is my twitter thread on the same topic
