Last week, an innovative concept was proposed which claims to reduce the time that will be spent for Mars travel to merely three days through so-called photonic propulsion technology. But a new proposal threatens to radically shorten this period to an astounding 30 minutes.
The idea was revealed by Phillip Lubin, who is a physics professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Lubin was also responsible for the photonic propulsion technology proposal. This time, however, he identified the use of high-powered lasers to propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light. Lubin wrote in an email to Headlines and Global News that using a "directed energy propulsion," which involved firing laser at a spacecraft, can revolutionize space travel because it will lead to the achievement of frictionless acceleration.
"As an example, on the eventual upper end, a full-scale (50-70 GW) DE-STAR 4 - Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and Exploration - will propel a wafer scale spacecraft with a one meter sail to about 26 percent the speed of light in about 10 minutes," Lubin was quoted as saying in a Daily Mail report. "[It would] reach Mars (1 AU) in 30 minutes, pass Voyager 1 in less than 3 days, pass 1,000 AU in 12 days and reach Alpha Centauri in about 15 years."
As a proposed precursor to interstellar travel, Lubin's concept has been met with a bit of skepticism due to some perceived flaws. For example, there is the question about deceleration once the low-mass probe approaches Mars, according to an email from Lubin. There is also a concern about space junk, which could hinder the spacecraft's progress or even pose serious harm to the vessel itself. Finally, some experts cite the issue of time dilation, a concept demonstrated in the film "Interstellar." Here, time slows down for the spacecraft as it passes a wormhole, according to Digital Trends. This means that while space travel takes 30 minutes, it could equal a decade here on Earth.
Lubin states that his proposal is still a concept and will be refined further in the future. For more information, the physicist has published his laser propulsion proposal in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
