Pellet bean propulsion

March 28, 2023

A newly proposed ‘pellet-beam’ propulsion system could theoretically beam a heavy spacecraft to outside the confines of our Solar System in less than 5 years.
The pellet-beam concept was partly inspired by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which is working on a ‘light-sail’ propulsion system.
This system requires two spacecraft – one that sets off for interstellar space, and one that goes into orbit around Earth.
The spacecraft orbiting Earth would shoot a beam of tiny microscopic particles at interstellar spacecraft.
Those particles would be heated up by lasers, causing part of them to melt into plasma that accelerates the pellets further, a process known as laser ablation.
Those pellets could reach 120 km/second(75 miles/second) and either hit the sail of the interstellar spacecraft or repel a magnet within it, helping to propel the spacecraft to huge speeds that would let it whizz out of our heliosphere – the bubble of the solar wind around our Solar System.
This is new propulsion architecture for fast transit of heavy (1 ton and more) payloads across the Solar System and to the interstellar medium.