Abstract Presented to DARPAR 100 Year Starship Study Public Symposium

We have the technology today for a self sustaining exploration of our closest stars within the 100 year Starship time frame as the name suggests. However we don't have the right propulsion system to make this work with all the ones talked about today. I am suggesting a new type of propulsion system that can take us to our nearest star using only the energy and mass that we left our solar system with and most importantly using today's technology. Because of the immense distances as suggested once we start our journey we cannot slow down on our way to pick up more fuel or sustenance to sustain a colony of humans.

To reach our closest star within 5 light years away, today most self sustaining propulsion systems cannot rely on the advanced ion propulsion systems that we are now developing because the amount of mass that is needed to feed these plasma eating system's would be more massive than what we can take with us. Solar sails depends on our sun's photons for its initial push as a result cannot get us to our closest star within 100 years because the sun's push diminishes the further away from the sun it gets.

A Self Propelling Light Emitting Starship, SPLES, uses the deflection of photons reflected off of a targeted light mass sail material area, similar to what a solar sail uses. The light emitted from the light source can cover 10 times less area per m² than a solar sail pushed by the sun at earth distance therefore the surface area of the sail can be greatly reduced. To lighten the load in the vacuum of space we don't need a glass enclosing vacuum tube for a lightbulb-like energy source to work, most of space is in a vacuum. To lesson the mass of the light source the filament can be made of carbon and the insulator made from aerogel.

By using a large continuous power source like a traveling-wave fission reactor that can sustain generating electrical energy for the one hundred year voyage without stopping to pick up fuel, we will have a constant energy source to speed the craft up closer to the speed of light than any other current proposed propulsion system. The initial push from the light will be minimal, similar to an ion propulsion system, however the exhaust speed of this craft as it slowly accelerates towards the stars is the speed of light. Although an object made of mass according to the current laws of physics cannot travel the speed of light a SPLES can get us much closer to light speed than any proposed propulsion system we have today.