Medusa Drive

The Medusa drive is the technology that enabled comparatively fast travel between Sol and Alpha Centauri. Its most prominent feature is the spinnaker, a large parachute-like sail connected to the spacecraft with a tether several kilometers in length.

by Georgewilliamherbert

Nuclear explosives are ejected from the front of the spacecraft and detonated near the spinnaker. The blast pushes the sail forward, which pulls the spacecraft along. The tether is attached via a winch. By letting out additional tether after the explosion and reeling it in when there's no pull, the acceleration spikes are smoothed out, leading to a constant acceleration of about 1g. This can be sustained for years at a time, enabling travel between the star systems in just 4.13 years of subjective and 6 years universal time.
The Medusa drive powered spacecraft are widely regarded humanity's greatest technological archievement. Besides smaller prototypes, two types of ship were built: The Taurus Class Interstellar Spacecraft for passengers and Libra Class Interstellar Spacecraft for Cargo.

Manufacturing

Due to their size, interstellar spacecraft need to be constructed in orbit. This happened in the Hephaestus Shipyards in orbit around Saturn. Since the production of the nuclear explosives has, sadly, been well perfected in the 20th century, the main challenge in manufacturing medusa drives is the spinnaker, which is extremely large and needs to be made from cutting edge materials with enormous tensile strength.

Inventor(s)

Development of the medusa drive was funded by the New Worlds Foundation.

Access & Availability

Due to the need for what is basically nuclear bombs, not many of these drives exist. In addition, interstellar spacecraft, in which the medusa drive is used, are extremely expensive due to having to support crew and passengers for several years in total isolation.