Spaceship R & D - More Designs - 29.10.11

That's right! More homework on my birthday weekend!

Here's some more development of the spaceship. Most of these designs are using the hadron / particle collider for energy (the shiny thing at the back of the body of the ship), but I'm still not sure if I'd rather use a reactor like in the original sketch of this ship...

I do like the idea of using the collider as the energy source, it ties in nicely using simple particles from the 'tanks' used for the replicators... And it will have a cool 'tail' effect when it flies. The last drawing is obviously still in development, the shading is very very basic, no details and lots of things are missing, and you also can't really see what the scale of the thing is going to be... Also I don't like the colour!

Spaceship R & D - Ship Designs - 29.10.11

It's my birthday tomorrow, but here I am doing homework like a good little boy! I hope that's worth an extra 1% (only kidding... but not really).

Today I have some drawings to show! Some development sketches for the spaceship, getting pretty close with the design now. Just a matter of drawing some details and tweaking various bits now, I have a lot of fun with this kind of stuff!

Also, as it's something I've been curious about for a while now I scanned a few images in a few times, to see which file format was best for this, it seems that .tiff slightly blurs the lines, .png is the same quality as .jpeg but a slightly larger file size, though it does preserve alpha channels. Anyway, for scanning purposes it seems .jpeg is the superior format!

My initial thumbnails, trying to get an idea of shape and form.

A side and top concept of one of a ship, didn't seem large enough or human enough so I moved on.

Experimenting with conal shapes, again didn't seem human or practical, also a quick sketch of a 'space city', there could be lots of these dotted around relatively local space that humans colonize.

The first ship was my interpretation of a Star Trek ship, and I'm actually pretty fond of that one. It was also this page where the idea for a hadron collider as the energy generator on the ship.

Here is my favourite of the designs, the one I've been developing more. I'm still torn between using a 'reactor' vs using the hadron collider idea, though it seems fairly insignificant it affects the design of the ship quite a bit as you'll see in my next post.

Ok so that's my initial ship development sketches, I had a lot of fun playing with symmetry and shapes here. I think that's enough for one post. I'll be back with more later!

Spaceship R & D - Star Trek - 28.10.11

You can't have a series about space and not look at least in the general direction of Star Trek, I used to watch it as a teen and it was one of the things that got me so interested in space in the first place! Not to mention there are a few ingenious ideas for technology, which thanks to Star Trek's popularity are pretty much accepted in science fiction.

One of the biggest issues that a deep space exploration team face is the requirement for supplies, the longer you're away from a port the more supplies you need. Star Trek's answer for this was the 'replicator' an ingenious technology that essentially creates whatever food for you right in-front of your eyes; and not in a robot chef kind of way either, no no... In an "it's appearing out of thin air" kind of way!

Amazing, I'm going to assume that in order to create the food you need at least the base materials, the elements that makes up the food for example. This could mean that instead of 'fuel' we could use (for lack of a better word) tanks of elements to construct the food from. It's a small detail I know... But I do get carried away with this space stuff sometimes.

Let's have a look at the designs of the spaceships:

These are the human ships in the series, there are also various other races ships, which look completely different to the fairly recognizable design of these.

All of the human ships, or at least most of them are relatively similar in design. They feature a disc at the front, and 2 large engines at the rear, there is also usually a 'body' to which the disc and the engines are connects.

As you can see, when it comes to designing spaceships you can be as imaginative as you'd like, it doesn't really matter about practicality because there isn't really any drag in space! Alas... I'm a practical person, and any ship in any series of mine is going to be of a practical design!

So I won't be taking any influence from Star Trek for the design of the ship, I'd like to incorporate the replicator - it's a very practical idea! There is one other thing in Star Trek that's important - the ships are fast! Very fast! They travel through enormous sections of space almost instantly using something they call 'warp':

That's what I'm talkin' about! With this technology reaching Alpha Centauri won't even take 20 seconds! Perfect. Although the speeds will be similar, i'd like to go about it without directly ripping off Star Trek. "Warp speed now" is an obvious Star Trek rip off, and I don't want there to be any confusion.

I have an idea for what to use as the 'reactor' that I'll go over when I show some designs etc, but for the actual traveling I'm still pretty stumped, perhaps opening some kind of 'rift' or using worm-holes, or I could just stick to the obvious, and just make the engines make the ship go very VERY fast... 

Yes... Very very fast it is! Maybe even very very very fast, who knows.

Matty out!

Spaceship R & D - Mass Effect Normandy - 26.10.11

An important part of any space based program is of course the spaceship, and I thought it best to get the designs complete before I really concentrate on the story just so there are no continuity problems (despite the fact I'm not actually going to be animating the series).

I'll start off with a few images I used in my pitch to give a few examples of spaceships designs in other films / series:

This is the 'Normandy' from the 'Mass Effect' games by Bioware, it's a great example to use because the ship is human in origin (and looks like it) and the crew size is relatively similar to what I picture for the crew in the series:

Here you can see the design of the ship. Futuristic design using geometrical shapes, symmetry and an aerodynamic form. Interestingly there is no 'viewing window' from the bridge at the front of the ship, all of the piloting is done via screen.

Here is the 'mess hall' where the crew can relax, socialise and eat.

Here is the view of the bridge (straight ahead) from the communication room. The pilot sits at the front, while the captain sets destinations etc from the comms room, where there is a map of the cosmos.

An example of the crew's quarters, the rooms are small but practical much like a studio apartment.

The engine room, this is the reactor that fuels the ship.

There are a few things that I love about the ship here, firstly the crew quarters, and the overall design of the ship, but from the game the use of the 'Galactic map' to plot courses would be a great way to introduce each mission in my series.

This is the 'Galactic map' in the center of the comms room aboard the Normandy. From here the captain can plot courses anywhere in the galaxy!

Here is the comms room, including the 'Galactic map', which you can see clearly here is a hologram.

I'll definitely like to use a galactic map in my series, and use it to introduce each episode. 

I also like the idea of using an aerodynamic design, despite the fact that there is essentially no drag in space (drag is created by a solid object moving through a liquid or gas, and as there is no liquid or gas in space (aside from negligible particles) there is no drag). 

An aerodynamic design firstly looks noticeably human, and also if in one of the episodes the crew descend into a planet with an atmosphere the ship should be able to fly there.

Though for the sake of propulsion I have given up on trying to stick to real technology as the distances are simply too massive, unless the episodes were thousands of years apart. For this reason, the ship should be able to almost instantly travel through huge portions of space.

Mass Effect also has an interesting feature for that; the 'mass relay', which is essentially a portal into which a vessel flies, and is then propelled or 'fired' at incredible speed to another mass relay anywhere in the galaxy. What this implies though, is that space exploration is well enough established to have been to these places and built the relays, which isn't what we're doing with the series. A good idea, but not the one for us... Instead the ship should be capable of traveling at similar speeds without the need for the relay. Like the 'warp engine' from Star Trek. I'll look at that next!

Episode 2 - 25.10.11

With the sheer amount of content for the pilot episode I decided that it'd be best as a double length episode, similar to how many series start. This gives me a better chance to  introduce the characters and have enough interesting content to get the audience to want to watch again. 

For the second episode the team has exited our solar system and is heading for the nearest star system to us - Alpha Centauri.

Synopsis

With their first mission behind them the crew set off towards the nearest star - Alpha Centauri; a solar system of 2 stars, 5 lightyears away! Along the way the ship's systems detect a 3rd star not visible from Earth that is actually closer to us - Proxima Centauri, which they scan before moving on to their original destination. Shortly after finishing the mission the crew receive a mysterious broken transmission from an unknown source, after analysing the signal they find out that it is an alien message over 3000 years old, but there is no indication of from where the signal came.

Research for the Episode:

Alpha Centauri 

 This image shows the relative sizes of (from left to right) the Sun, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and finally the red dwarf - Proxima Centauri.

Alpha Centauri is a binary star system, meaning that the system actually has 2 stars orbiting each other! 

It is found in the constellation Centaurus.

The 2 stars are each named Alpha Centauri A and B, together making Alpha Centauri AB. There is also a 3rd star - Proxima Centauri only 4.2 lightyears away from us (0.8 lightyears closer than Alpha Centauri AB), it is a red dwarf star much smaller than our sun and only 0.0056% as bright, invisible to the naked eye from Earth.

Alpha Centauri A is approximately 110% the mass of our sun, and 150% as bright, Alpha Centauri B is 90% the mass of our sun and 50% as bright.

Binary star systems appear to 'dance' with each other, in some cases a much smaller star can appear to orbit around a much larger star much like a planet, but in most cases the 2 stars orbit around a point between the 2; known as the barycenter. In the case of the much smaller star orbiting the larger star, the small star appears to do this because the barycenter is inside the larger star.

In the case of Alpha Centauri AB the stars are relatively similar sizes and orbit each other like in the first image. The distance between the 2 stars varies from as close as the Sun and Saturn out to as far away as the Sun and Pluto. The stars take 87 years to complete one full orbit around this barycenter.

Proxima Centauri does not appear to orbit the stars, but is seemingly close enough to be gravitationally tied to them.

It is believed that planets could exist in the system, and given the steady motion of the stars, the star type and age of the stars some astronomers believe that it is one of the most promising candidates for hosting extraterrestrial life (meaning any alien life; from single cell to sentient (intelligent)). These planets could orbit far out around the barycenter of both stars, or closer tied to an individual star.

To be in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A a planet would have to be about as far out as half way between Earth and Mars is from our Sun, and for B about as close as Venus.

After Thoughts:

Now that we are out of our own solar system we have really very little knowledge of anything but stars out there and so to keep the series interesting it could be better to include various things which could be theoretically true, such as the existence of planets around the stars etc and possibly direct interaction with other species.

Episode Ideas - Pilot - 22.10.11

Really beginning to put some thought into what I want to do with the series now has made me realise a few things that I had overlooked.

Being aimed at being quite educational I'd like to stick to facts and reality wherever it's possible. So I thought that perhaps the crew should be entirely human. Possibly picking up crew as the series progresses... That would make the exploration part feel much more believable. If we'd already found so many other species to form a galactic super-crew a huge portion of that exploration would have already been done.

It'd be like having a sailing exploration series on Earth based in the current day! There's not much left to find! So that's decision made... The crew will at least in the beginning be human.

The series will be from the point of view of humans, beginning to take our bigger steps into real space exploration. The pioneers of space exploration!

With that in mind I thought a good starting point could be an episode as the crew is leaving Earth on their expedition. We could do an episode about our own solar system, as they test their scanning equipment etc, which would give a brief summary about each of the planets and their moons.

Episode 1 Synopsis:

The team is assembled and after saying their good-byes they are ready for take off, after a final system check the crew blast off into space! To ensure all of the equipment is completely accurate the first mission is simple; to scan data from all of the planets in our solar system and gather energy for the first interstellar expedition. Along the way we find out many interesting facts about our neighboring planets and their moons, before finally with the mission complete and energy at full, the crew launch into space towards their next destination - Alpha Centauri; 5 lightyears away.

Our Solar System:

This will be a collection of information that could be used in the episode, be warned... It will be sizable:

The Sun!

Our sun is what is known as a 'Yellow Dwarf', and it's spectral class is G2V. This is a sort of ranking system for stars used in astrology; the G2 means that the surface temperature of the sun is approximately 5778 K (Kelvin), or around 5505 ˚C. The V means that it is (like most stars) a 'main sequence' star, meaning it generates it's energy via nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium at a rate of 4,000,000 metric tonnes per second. In contrast to the relatively cool surface temperature, the temperature at the core is 15,700,000 K! The sun accounts for 99% of the total mass in our entire solar system.

As the sun is made up of plasma, it is not solid, this means that the sun rotates at different speeds at it's equator than at it's poles, the time of a rotation at it's equator is 25.6 days and 33.5 days at the poles. It is a near perfect sphere - the pole-to-pole circumference only differs from the equatorial circumference by around 10km.

We use our sun as the measurement of size for other suns so it is therefore 1 solar mass. We are located in the Milky Way galaxy approximately 26,000 lightyears from the galactic core, orbiting it at around 220km/s.

Mercury

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun with an orbit of 87.9 Earth days. The gravity on Mercury is around 0.38g relative to the gravity on Earth, which is 1g. The planet has the mass of 0.055 Earths. It has no moons.

Venus

The second planet from the sun, it orbits the sun every 224.7 Earth days. It is a relatively similar size to Earth at 0.815 the size of Earth. The surface gravity is 0.9g, which again is quite close. The average distance to the sun is 108,209,184 km. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth, meaning the surface pressure is equal to being 1km under water on Earth. The atmosphere is very rich in carbon dioxide, which traps in heat making the surface temperature actually higher than that of mercury at 460 ˚C (mercury's surface temperature varies from -220 ˚C to 420 ˚C), despite being more than twice the distance away from the sun. Venus is the second brightest object in the night sky viewed from Earth, after the moon.

Earth

The first planet in the solar system with a moon, our home planet is what we use to compare other planets, the gravity is 1g, a pound weighs a pound. The volume is 1 and the mass is 1.

Mars

The fourth planet from the sun, it has 2 moons; Deimos and Phobos. Mars is much smaller than Earth (0.151 Earths).  The average distance from the sun is 227,939,130 km, a year on Mars lasts 668.8 Earth days. The surface temperature ranges from -87 ˚C to 20 ˚C. For unknown reasons the core of Mars has stopped spinning, meaning that the planet has no magnetosphere and therefore no protection against solar winds and radiation, which has boiled off almost all of Mar's atmosphere. It also means that volcanic activity has halted, making it a totally geologically dead planet.

Ceres

The only dwarf planet in the inner solar system, Ceres orbits between Jupiter and Mars. Originally considered the largest asteroid in the inner asteroid belt, it has since been discovered to be spherical and has a rocky core and outer icy mantle., and may even harbor a liquid ocean under it's icy mantle. It orbits the sun every 4.6 years.

Jupiter

The 5th planet from the sun and the largest in our solar system, and the first of our 4 outer gas giant (Jovian) planets. Jupiter's mass is 1000th that of the sun, but 2.5x the mass of every other planet in the solar system combined! Jupiter has a staggering 64 moons, 4 of which are very large; Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, these are known as the Galilean moons (after their finder Galileo Galilei in 1610) the largest of these moons - Ganymede is larger than Mercury. Perhaps the most famous feature of the planet the 'great red spot' is a perpetual storm high in the atmosphere, it is big enough to fit 3 Earth sized planets inside. The gravity of Jupiter is 2.5g due to it's large mass. The average distance from the sun is 778,547,200 km, taking 4,332.59 Earth days to complete a single orbit. Although named gas giants, they do have solid cores, deep within the atmosphere under a thick layer of metallic liquid hydrogen. It is so cold on Jupiter that it rains liquid methane, cold enough to snap-freeze skin, this falls towards the core, evaporate quickly and re-enters the atmosphere as a gas.

Amazingly scientists believe that the frozen moon Europa may harbor life, although the frozen surface acts as a insulating layer allowing liquid water to exist even at such a distance from the sun, it is possible that life exists at the ocean floor around thermal vents, if that is the case it could completely change the way we see the universe and the rarity of life.

Saturn

The 6th planet in the solar system and 2nd Jovian (meaning Jupiter-like (gas giant)) planet. It is the second largest planet in the solar system. Wind speeds in the atmosphere of Saturn can reach up to 1,600 km/s, much faster than those found on Jupiter. Saturn is host to 62 known moons with stable orbits as well as hundreds of 'moonlets' within the large planetary ring. The largest of Saturn's moons; Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter's Ganymede, and the only one to possess a notable atmosphere. The planetary rings extend out to 120,700 km above Saturn's equator and are largely made up of ice water, some of which originates from the ice volcanos of Enceladus (another of Saturn's moons), where water erupts through the frozen surface in geysers, immediately freeze and due to the low gravity of the moon extend miles into the sky sometimes caught by Saturn's gravity. The average distance from the sun is 1,433,449,369.5 km and takes 10,759.22 Earth days to complete an orbit of the sun. The gravity on Saturn is 1.095g quite close to that of Earth despite it's size, this is because of saturns low density, which is 1/8th that of Earth. Saturn has a core composed of mostly nickel and iron, under a thick layer of metallic liquid hydrogen.

Uranus

7th planet in the solar system Uranus is the 3rd largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus contains much more ice (water, methane and ammonia) in its atmosphere than Jupiter and Saturn, giving it it's blue colour. Uranus has 27 moons. An interesting feature of the planet that makes it unique in our solar system is that it's poles are in-line with the direction of it's orbit (it's poles are on the sides, where most planets have their equator). The average distance from the sun is 2,876,679,082.5 km and takes 30,799.095 Earth days to orbit the sun (84.381 years). It has the coldest atmosphere in the solar system at -224 ˚C. The core consists mostly of rock and nickel, under a thick mantle of ammonia, methane and water ice.

Neptune

Neptune is the 8th and final planet in the solar system and last of the 4 gas giant planets. It is the 4th largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter, Saturn, and VERY slightly smaller than Uranus (only around 1,500 km smaller in diameter). It has 13 moons, the largest of which is Triton. Although Neptune and Uranus are near identical in many ways, they are distinguishable by the visible weather patterns of Neptune. These are driven by the highest sustained wind levels in the solar system, getting up to 2,100 km/s! Like Uranus, Neptune has a nickel and rock core underneath a very thick mantle of ammonia, methane and water ice. It is an average distance of 4,503,443,661.5 km from the Sun and takes a staggering 60,190 Earth days to orbit the sun (that's 164.79 years!)

Pluto

Originally classed as the 9th planet in the solar system Pluto has been re-categorized as a dwarf planet due to the discovery that it is part of the Kuiper Belt (the belt of debris at the edge of the solar system). Pluto is 1/3rd the size of our moon and only 1/5th the mass, hence it's reclassification. It is made up mostly of rock and ice, like most objects in the Kuiper Belt. It has an inclined orbit (it orbits diagonally around the sun compared to the 8 planets, at about 17˚), and it's eliptical shape orbit brings it temporarily closer to the sun than Neptune. Despite it's size Pluto has 4 moons, the largest of which is Charon. They are often described as a binary planetary system, because of the large relative size of Charon, it doesn't actually orbit around Pluto, rather it and Pluto orbit around a point between them (like they're dancing). Pluto ranges from over 7 million km from the sun to as close as 4.4 million km, and takes 90,613 Earth days to orbit (248.9 years).

Eris, Haumea and Makemake

Another dwarf planet of the Kuiper Belt was discovered in 2005. This dwarf planet is very close in size to Pluto and also made of rock and ice. It's orbit is farther out than Pluto and also has a much larger incline (it orbits diagonally at 44˚ around the sun). Like Pluto, Eris also orbits eliptically but does not cross the orbit of Neptune, it will however, in around 800 years be closer to the Sun than Pluto for quite some time due to the length of time their orbits take. At it's farthest distance from the sun Eris is more than 3x the distance of Pluto at it's farthest point. Eris takes 557 years to orbit the sun.

Other dwarf planets in our solar system are Haumea; an eliptically shaped object about 1/3rd the mass of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, and Makemake; another Kuiper Belt object around 1/5th the size of Pluto. Haumea, Makeme, Eris and Pluto are now considered 'Plutoid' planets (dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Neptune).

I can't in good will bring myself to change the font to Courier as I usually do... The post would possibly block out the sun! Edit: scratch that... I did it anyway for continuity's sake. This post has taken me a very long time to compile, but I feel like there are plenty of interesting facts to pick and choose from for the episode, and probably even enough to spread into a double pilot episode.

Initial Character Sketches

These are the images I originally did when I first pitched the idea (they are pretty rough), but the idea was originally intended to be entirely made in a 2D Flash style; simple and cartoony.

I have since decided I'd rather have the series be in a cartoony 3D style. Quite similar to that of the Star Wars: Clone Wars series. I think the 3D style compliments the series much better and the ability to render and texture realistically when necessary will help make the surroundings (planets, stars, the universe) much more believable.

Here are some images from the Clone Wars to get an idea of how I see the series being shown.

I think the style lends itself very well to a futuristic space themed series. The moody lighting in particular helps create a sense of atmosphere, and lighting is much much easier to get right if you're doing it in 3D...

Title and Space Prettiness!

After a fair amount of thought I've decided that I actually rather like the title I've had all along for my series. So, it will from now on be officially called 'Deep Space Explorers'.

Now that the title is officially chosen I can get on with creating a proper title and header to decorate this blog with, so it is immediately identifiable as my futures blog and not my 3 minute blog. Here's an image of the header as it is right now... Not sure if it's finished yet, I'll have another play around in photoshop and see if I can improve it... I do like it as it is though...

That'll be running along the top of the page instead of the current cheese header from my other blog. I had a lot of fun drawing this! It was a great excuse to stare at various pictures of planets and stars. I was worried that I may have been getting carried away with gas clouds, nebulae etc, but when you look at the real images from NASA's website, the appearance of nebulae and space is incredibly varied and often much more bold than you'd ever though possible outside of CG or drawings.

Here are some images from NASA's website that I used as reference:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html

This amazing image is a bubble nubula and a cloud nebula meeting. You would never think that such things actually exist in space, and are happening right now!

All of these images are of nebulae; gases and debris in space. They look like some artists' abstract creation but they're in fact real. These are images taken (mostly from the Hubble telescope). The colours, and forms are as varied as you could possibly imagine!

This is a galaxy from the Hubble deep field research. It is a spiral galaxy similar to the shape of our own milky way galaxy and is probably much like our own galaxy looks to outsiders. The star-like objects that you can see in this image are in fact entire galaxies!

So as you can see, I can fairly safely go pretty OTT with the use of nebulae if I so wish and it would look no less realistic than... Real nebulae. 

But ultimately it all depends on how it makes the image look, it could look too busy with lots of colours all over the place, and as I said I do rather like it how it is. 

Anyway that's all for now! Matty out

Research: Propulsion System

I've been looking at various websites about different possible methods of intergalactic propulsion and stumbled across some very interesting things. The diversity of the ideas is really quite astonishing!

Currently for all of our expeditions to space we use rocket propulsion; a technology that has existed since fireworks were invented in ancient China! It's literally the same thing in principle, the numbers are just much bigger and the goal is to not have the thing you're lifting blow up... Otherwise they're essentially the same.

The difficult part of space travel at the moment is leaving Earth. Once you're in space the resistance is so little that you can move around using relatively little fuel. The only method at the moment is using rockets. SpaceX have been developing improved types of rocket that are considerably more efficient to launch, but still fair from being practical in the truly long-term. Non-the-less, definitely worth a look:

SpaceX Falcon 9

The falcon 9 uses an ingenious configuration of 9 Merlin engines for thrust, and is the worlds most powerful gas generator cycle kerosine engine and can even tolerate the failure of an engine.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy

Using 3 separate cores with the same 9x merlin engine configuration, the Falcon Heavy is a rocket currently in development at SpaceX and provides lift equal to that of fifteen 747 engines at full power. This allows for the transportation of extremely heavy loads into space.

However, igniting tonnes of fuel at the back end of a rocket enough to push it up into orbit is incredibly inefficient! As you might expect... The huge rockets that you see on launch pads that are fired into space are in fact simply enormous fuel tanks. More than 90% of the mass of the rocket is fuel... So already I know I certainly don't want to have anything to do with that in my series. No no no... Besides, blowing up stuff at the back of a stick is fairly boring on the sciency end of things.

Once you have your craft in space, away from the resistances and gravity of Earth, you can move around much more efficiently. Let's have a look at some of the options!

An engine currently in development at NASA is the plasma engine named the VASIMR (VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) could be a very efficient way of traveling through space.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/future_propulsion.html

I apologize for the patronizing video, but sadly the video I wanted to link has been blocked in the UK. I believe I can still link it for other people to view outside the UK but if you are in the UK, the following will probably be a blocked video. The above video does a fairly decent job of explaining what the engine is and does.

The basic concept is that the material is ionized and heated into a plasma state (like a super microwave), which respond extremely well to magnetic forces, and then uses magnetic fields to accelerate the particles out of the back of the engine to generate thrust. The concept is very similar to that of a rocket, but much more efficient.

The current main drawback of the technology is the lack of thrust it generates, currently not capable of generating enough to achieve orbit. Once in orbit however, the lack of resistance in space mean that acceleration is cumulative (you don't slow down). So over time, the engine would generate enormous velocities.

The strengths of the system, is the efficiency. VASIMR uses much less fuel than regular rockets, and the fuel for the plasma can be various commonly found elements such as hydrogen. Also, the use of magnetic fields could be modified to not only propel the craft but also to protect the crew from radiation... Very practical!

Efficient as the engine is, and will be it would still take an enormous amount of time to travel to even the nearest star system. So, even if this is the propulsion system I choose for the ship, additional things will be needs for inter-stellar travel.

I'll take a look at other options in another post!

Matty out.