Realistic Designs

I will now talk about realistic starship designs that can be modified to carry Colo Claw Fish through the final frontier.  Although I shun nay sayers who are opposed to future interstellar travel, I stressed time and time again that I will not dignify the opposite end of the spectrum which is handwavium wishful thinking.  I will start off with the ISV Venture Star  from my current favorite movie, Avatar, which is by far one of the most  realistic starship designs that has ever been seen in cinemas.  Check out the Realistic Designs page of the Atomic Rockets website for more information on the ISV Venture Star.


ISV Venture Star

Here is an inventory of realistic starship designs for Colo Claw Fish Carriers to use:


Antimatter-powered Colo Claw Fish Carrier

Ah, antimatter, one of the most potent rocket fuels that one could use, even much more powerful than fusion. The advantages of anitmatter propulsion is more bang for your buck and total efficiency as well as getting pretty close to the cosmic speed limit, the speed of light.  The drawbacks of antimatter are that for now it is extremely difficult and expensive to produce antimatter as well as the gamma rays associated with matter-antimatter reactions.  The beamed core is one of  the best designs for an antimatter Colo Claw Fish Carrier since it puts its propulsion a safe distance away from the crew and Colo Claw Fish.  The ISV Venture Star is another great candidate for a Colo Claw Fish Carrier in which the propulsion is in front of the payload to reduce mass.


Bussard Ramjet Colo Claw Fish Carrier

My favorite design for a Colo Claw Fish Carrier is that of the Bussard Ramjet pictured above.  You may have noticed that in a previous post that I used the Bussard Ramjet to transport Sparkles the Colo Claw Fish from Naboo to Alpha Centauri.  The Bussard Ramjet was named for the physicist who designed it in 1960,  Dr. Robert W Bussard.  The Bussard Ramjet works by collecting hydrogen atoms that float in interstellar space sucking them into an engine via a massive frontal ram scoop and field wires before fusing them into helium and spitting them out the back.  There is one hydrogen atom for every ten cubic centimeters of interstellar space, and the Ramjet may need to carry on board propellant to accelerate it to a fast enough speed to collect enough hydrogen to keep its engine humming.  In principle, the Bussard Ramjet could  accelerate to just under the cosmic speed limit.  Drawbacks include the difficulty in building such a ship as well as advancements in physics and engineering knowledge.


Warpship Colo Claw Fish Carrier

Faster-than-light is handwavium in its full glory; but there is one exception, the warp drive featured in another  one of my favorite works of science  fiction, Star Trek.  Warp drive is based off of some sound principles in physics and has been worked out by Miguel Alcubierre and others.  You do not accelerate, space moves for you in which you contract space in front of you and expand space behind you, thus your destination comes to you.  But if the Starship Enterprise were real, it would look like the warpship image above.  Warp Drive would require a far greater understanding of dark energy than we have today, negative energy equal to Jupiter, and huge leaps in physics and engineering knowledge.  The warp bubble must be stable at all times  or else it would collapse, crush the ship inside, kill the crew, or maybe even create an artificial black hole.  Thee is a concern that you might not get there faster than light could without first turning the ship into plasma or creating other causality headaches, but I think that this is unlikely,the other drawbacks mentioned earlier are far more likely.  I would  not want to send my Colo Claw Fish on a warpship unless warp drive is perfected to where the warp bubble easily remains stable.


Wormhole from Naboo to Alpha Centauri

I believe that the only possible way for do intergalactic travel is via wormholes which have been worked out  by Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, and others.  That is even if warp drive is possible.  I also used a wormhole in a previous post to get a Bussard Ramjet carrying Sparkles the Colo Claw Fish from Naboo in a galaxy far, far away to Alpha Centauri only 4.37 light-years away from Earth.  Wormholes can  take one into the distant future or the remote past and be time machines.  Drawbacks include having to hold open a wormhole  so it does not crush a passing ship inside as well as quantum leaps in our understanding of the laws of physics and engineering knowledge and massive energy requirements.  Now you have a feel for realist Colo Claw Fish Carrier designs.