Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2012, exploring the highly theoretical ‘VARIES’ antimatter spaceship concept designed for deep interstellar travel.
Our known universe is so incredibly vast that we truly can’t even fully imagine its true physical size. But what we certainly can heavily imagine is boldly travelling directly through this freezing, dark space. Distant galaxies are countless light years apart, which unfortunately makes human interstellar space travel an incredibly hard task to ever accomplish. It is absolutely necessary to radically develop totally new spaceships that could actually help us find vital answers hidden in wild space.
The VARIES Concept
This highly futuristic technological concept is beautifully explained in the stunning artistic impressions digitally created by Adrian Mann.
Brilliant scientists and dedicated engineers at Icarus Interstellar Inc and DARPA are actively working towards genuinely making this wild sci-fi dream finally come true. DARPA’s ambitious 100-Year Star Ship Project specifically focuses on actively building a highly possible, fully life-supporting spaceship system to safely travel directly through deep space.
According to Richard Obousy, the President and Co-Founder of Icarus Interstellar, they are currently working diligently on a totally new, highly advanced antimatter-rocket system. The Vacuum to Antimatter-Rocket Interstellar Explorer System (VARIES) is a massive unmanned spaceship that cleverly uses incredibly volatile antimatter to powerfully propel the heavy starship directly into deep space.
Harnessing Antimatter from the Vacuum
As per the complex laws of quantum mechanics, the cold vacuum of space incredibly actually has bursting microscopic particles and antiparticles that spontaneously appear and vanish. VARIES theoretically propels itself by actively harvesting the valuable antiparticles just before they violently collide with regular particles, and cleverly uses them to quickly generate a massive electric field with the direct help of an incredibly powerful laser system.
The theoretical laser to be heavily used here absolutely requires a very high energy intensity, and its very existence largely depends heavily on major future developments in advanced laser technology. The official conceptual images show the spaceship’s massive laser system in full operation as it successfully feeds the harvested antimatter particles directly to the propulsion apparatus.
Recharging in Deep Space
Much like the fictional Destiny spaceship famously seen in the Stargate Universe TV series, the VARIES starship absolutely needs to be carefully designed to safely recharge itself completely when it travels extremely near a massive star. With an incredibly large array of advanced solar panels, it is theoretically highly possible to cleanly generate more than enough electrical power for its energy-hungry laser system to function.
Credits: Icarus, Adrian Mann (Images), Discovery, Metro Goldwyn Mayer
