Destination Alpha Centauri

In this post I will be talking about the most likely destination for Project Orion II; Alpha Centauri, assuming  habitable planets are discovered orbiting at least one of the two stars.  Alpha Centauri is most commonly known by its Bayer designation, but other names include Rigel Kentaurus, Rigel Kent, and Toliman.  This star system turns out to be two suns, Alpha Centauri A being slightly larger and brighter than our Sun and Alpha Centauri B being slightly dimmer and smaller than our sun.  There is also a red dwarf called Proxima Centauri which is only 4.22 light-years away and it could be a third part of the Alpha Centauri star system.  Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light-years away. 

Scale Size Comparison of our Sun and Alpha Centauri

T^here is loose evidence  that the Alpha Centauri star system may have rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.  Alpha Centauri has a higher metalicity; meaning higher metal content than our solar system does, so it is likely that rocky planets may have formed there.  It is unlikely that gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn would have formed in this star system since the Star at closest approach are 11 AU apart.  Avatar depicted three gas giants orbiting Alpha Centauri A, one of them being Polythemus around which Pandora orbits.  The maximum distance that a planet can have a stable orbit around either one of the stars is 2 AU.

  



Distance to Proxima & Alpha Centauri

Hopefully there will be habitable planets orbiting at least one of the two stars in the Alpha Centauri Star System.  I look forward the the construction of telescopes in Chile such as the Large Magellanic Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.  The best place to view Alpha Centauri is the southern hemisphere, because you cannot see it in most of the northern hemisphere.


A hypothetical Earth-like planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

Who knows what life we might find at Alpha Centauri is it turns out that  there are Earths orbiting one or both of  the stars in the habitable zone.


Colo Claw Fish, a possible life form for an Earth at Alpha Centauri.

 A Project Orion II probe will take forty to fifty years to get from our solar system to Alpha Centauri factoring in acceleration and deceleration phases of the mission.  The Orion II Starship will travel at a top speed of ten to twelve percent of the cosmic speed limit, the speed of light.