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These are some spacecraft designs that are based on reality. So they appear quite outlandish and undramatic looking. In the next page will appear designs that are fictional, but much more breathtaking. Obviously these are all NASA style exploration vehicles, they are not very suited for interplanetary combat.
This is a generic picture of an antimatter powered rocket, courtesy of NASA.
This design for a fusion propulsion spacecraft is from the NASA report TM-2005-213559 by Craig H. Williams, Leonard A. Dudzinski, Stanley K. Borowski, and Albert J. Juhasz of the Glenn Research Center (2005). The goal was to produce a modern design for the spacecraft Discovery from the movie 2001. The report has all sorts of interesting details about where the movie spacecraft design was correct, and the spots where things were altered in the name of cinematography. The movie ship had no heat radiators, and the diameter of the centrifuge was too small. Arthur C. Clark was well aware of this, but was overruled by the movie people.
There are problems with attempting to confine ionized plasma in a reaction chamber long enough for most of it to undergo nuclear fusion. In the Gasdynamic Mirror propulsion system, they attempt to avoid that by making the reaction chamber a long and skinny tube, so the plasma just travels in a straight line. The trouble is that it has to be really long.
This design for a nuclear powered magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) propulsion spacecraft is from the NASA report TM-2003-212349 by Melissa L. McGuire, Stanley K. Borowski, Lee M. Mason, and James Gilland (2003). This is for a hypothetical mission to the Jovian moon Callisto. There are three spacecraft: a one-way tanker, a one-way cargo ship, and a round-trip manned ship. Note the manned ship uses an inflatable TransHab for the habitat module, it is surrounded by tanks for radiation shielding.
Note the similarity to this 1962 Ernst Stuhlinger design for a Mars ion-drive rocket.
This design for an antiproton-catalyzed microfission/fusion propulsion spacecraft is from the University of Pennsylvania. Click for larger images.
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This is a 1970's era NASA concept for a modular space tug and a nuclear thermal rocket booster. The "waldo" arms on the crew module are interesting. Images courtesy of NASA. Magazine cover by David Hardy. Two images following magazine cover by Robert McCall. Click for larger images.
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P.A.R.T.S. is a 2002 study by the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a resuable Earth-Mars cargo spacecraft utilizing a VASIMR propulsion system powered by an on-board nuclear reactor. The report has lots of juicy details, especially about the reactor. Thanks go out to William Seney for bringing this study to my attention.
