Only James Cameron would bother putting this much conceptual realism into a ship that appears for only a few minutes of screentime. Bless that man's devotion to tangible world-building.
That ship also has a hydroponics module for growing fruits and vegetables to feed he skeleton crew and passengers on ship during the 5 year fight time and between Earth and Pandora.
@@AnibalPacaco Suspicious way of asking that question. Almost suggests distrust of the original comment, at least when said like that. Sussy man, sussy.
This must be the best fictional spacecraft ever and mostly within the realm of established science while not stretching engineering too far. Also it feels like a risky piece of tech, just like the sailships of the past were very vulnerable and fragile. Epic design!
@@gearandalthefirst7027 Hermes from the martian is probably the most accurate movie spaceship. It could literally be build right now if the money was put toward it.
@@oliverfranke7650 I'd say the most accurate sci-fi would be primer considering that every theoretical physicist who talked about it said it was but I couldn't understand a word of what they said (or what the movie was about. But no spaceships there, only time travel:(
I'm not a fan of the movie, but my appreciation for it have just increased by 475%. There are entire movie franchises out there with less thought put into them.
Daamn, thanks for this detailed explanation. I recently rewatched Avatar and I was confused about the propulsion system of the Venture Star for a long time actually (the movie doesn't explain all of it). Thank you so much for this great video.
Hey you're welcome! The movie doesn't explain any of it but James Cameron is notoriously detail oriented with this stuff so theres plenty of official info out there. Hopefully we see more ISV stuff in the future films, including a version of the cut scene with the main engines!
@@hoojiwana there WAS ONE?! Oh man, i dont think I have the patience to wait for Avatar 2 now. I mean, we've seen Ion engines in Star Wars, Plasma motors in Star trek, not sooo realistic with them. We have seen realistic plasma motors in For all Mankind (Pathfinder, NERVA motor) and The Expanse. I don't think I can say we've ever seen realistic anti-matter engines light before. I am highly intrigued to say the least.
as far as I can tell the movie barely even touched on this at all. and they don't tell you about the "one way trip if your not an exec" which is some truly wasted grim dark potential. Exactly what I would expect from the director of Titanic.
@@asier6964 Anybody who thinks that the humans are the "good guys" after Jake's opening monologue clearly wasn't paying attention to how despite the situation back on earth is.
I though they will skip the ships this time in TWOW. BOY was I wrong, they banked on it BIG TIME. Mild SPOILERS for the beginning of the movie below: The are multiple ships decelerating towards pandora. The whole burn looks like a major star on the night sky. And then they show one of them (presumably stripped of its nimble stuff) landing on Pandora. Its antimattter engines nuking everything living miles underneath. DAMN what a start of a movie.
When I saw it land, first thing in my mind was "I've never seen the ISV Venture Star enter the atmosphere." and I was horrified when I saw it incinerating everything in the vicinity upon descending.
@@Big_Red1 I had absolutely no idea the jet of flames they shot are that long and being constantly active for 5.5 months for acceleration and deceleration, that's a ton of heat on the engines.
It was an awesome sequence, but I was confused why they landed the space craft on the surface? Seems like a very inefficient and risky course given they have the shuttles. Why can't they simply ferry their gear from space to planet? I'm assuming the ISV that lands won't be taking off again.
The ISV Venture Star is very heavily inspired by the Valkyrie, a similar design of antimatter ship without the photon sail, designed by Charles Pellegrino who consulted on the movie
6:20 In the original Valkyrie design this was done with a very large droplet radiator, but it's not as visually impressive as a solid panel radiator 6:25 the original Valkyrie design also made use of only one engine, with a combined defocusing / shadow-shield system (which also includes the matter fuel) to shield everything downstream of the engine from the emissions of the engine, which are mainly concentrated around the reaction zone of the engine. 6:34 In the Valkyrie design this was not needed since the ship ran on pure antimatter. The antimatter was created by literally strip mining Mercury with self replicators to create enough solar collectors and antimatter plants. In the case of the movie, yeah it's a ridiculously powerful laser, but one would argue you'd need as much to do any interstellar travel. The engines on the Venture Star put out very similar levels of power. 6:49 Because the laser emitters are on Earth, and can only point towards Pandora. You can't pull the ship back from Pandora to Earth with a laser sail system unless you use disposable sails to bounce the light backwards.
@@cj-gw5fd In that case, then it's because it takes a lot of time and effort. In the Project Valkyrie design the solar panels needed to create enough antimatter for an outbound leg would cover the entire surface of Mercury. You'd need at least that much power if not more to construct a similarly scaled laser installation, and I don't think shipping unobtainium 4 light years leaves a lot of margin to duplicate their Earth-side launch infrastructure.
Finally found someone who can explain all these engineering designs. As an engineering student, the most fascinating thing in these science fiction movies are not the plots, it's these excellent designs based on current tech with only a few futuristic tech settings.
The radiators are probably only used during downtime between firings of the drives, drawing off the heat of a small onboard reactor that manages things like life support, lighting, recycling, etc. When the drives are in operation, waste heat can be extracted by the reaction mass you're dumping into the drive plume, by becoming part of the thrust plume that excess mass is itself stealing energy (heat) from the drive, which will lose some of it's Isp in exchange for increased thrust. Granted this still wouldn't get rid of ALL the waste heat from the drives, but if the drives are bimodal and can run as fusion plants with much less power generation you will need at least significantly smaller radiators, though not no radiators at all.
The problem with the ISV engines is the extreme amount of energy required to maintain the level of acceleration cited for the design. It takes something lake 800-1600 megatons of TNT worth of energy every second for over half a year to work. Although antimatter has this level of energy density even a 99.9999% efficient engine would produce so much waste heat as to vaporize the radiators almost immediately. There is no getting around the need for massive radiators to cool the engines even with magicly capable unobtanium. As there isnt a remotely realistic way to get the efficiency high enough that radiators are unnecessary. They are also massive heatsinks not just pure radiators. Thus why they are so thick instead of more efficient thin designs. Even chemical rockets still need radiative cooling, they happen to get away with using only the engine bell as a radiator. Last even a multi-gigawatt nuclear reactor with a efficiencies of 30% could get away with radiators that are 1/100th the size of the ISVs. The higher your efficiency the smaller your radiator and with Avatars magic tech they should be able to cool reactors with radiators the size of a car.
I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember that the mirror actually gets moved between the two ends of the vessel depending on the phase of flight. So, IIRC it's actually installed "in front" of the engines during the Centauri to Sol accelaeration phase. For the Earth to Pandora speed up however, the Sail itself seem to work as the particle shield.
I don't think you'd want to use the sail as a particle shield, since it's designed to be reusable. Also since the shielding direction is always from "tail" to "nose" it makes sense to just rotate the ship
That's not possible. As the particle shields only have mounted maneuvering thrusters, and are otherwise disconnected from the ship, even minor X/g acceleration as stated in the video would mean that the ship would accelerate into it's own particle shield. That problem doesn't arise when the ship is traveling at a constant speed, so if particle shields were to be used in the acceleration phases, they would need to be rigidly attached to the vessel.
Most likely the coolest space craft design there is. Too many other sci-fi stories feature ugly blocks of metal or air craft in space, when instead there is a very prominent real spacecraft to take inspiration from: the Apollo LEM.
The expanse has pretty realistic designs for spaceships. The only technology they have is the Epstein drive, an extremely efficient engine capable of producing thrust for weeks at a time. No artificial gravity generators or anything like that. Gravity comes from ships accelerating continuously (with rocket boosters on the bottom and the decks layered like in an office tower). Also spinning components for locations where continuous thrust isn't practical such as space stations. Communications between planets takes hours or even days depending on the distance between the communicators. Space battles take place over hundreds of thousands of kilometers, with the biggest ships carrying missiles that can take hours to reach their targets.
The amount of antimatter required for this trip is astonishing, and the power of the drives is approaching solar flare levels. Just to have enough solar power to power antimatter production on the needed scale is Dyson swarm level. I do love the idea of laser propulsion, though, it'd probably be easier to build a laser station on the polyphemus side than it would be to use antimatter for half the delta-v.
When Grace said to Jake that Pandora was the most hostile environment known to man, I was like "you both survived the interstellar journey to Pandora, that was far more dangerous then anything Eywa's world can throw at you"
The only issue is that they have completely failed to secure Navi natives into their ranks to subjugate the rest of the Navi. East India company used Indians for like 95% of their army
I have thought, ever since I saw it, that an adapted version of this could be built as a "train" between Earth and other planets in the solar system. Strap a couple of VASIMIR drives to it, put shields at the front too, and use compact nuclear reactors such as the Soviet TOPAZ design to feed the drives and overall ship systems. Have a larger set of radiators, and deployable solar panels for when approaching the inner solar system, and you have a very capable ship, able to transport huge loads at very high speeds. Build a bunch of them and have them continuously travelling back and forth from other planets, like a terrestrial train. One in orbit at Earth, one in transit to the planet, one already coming back, one in orbit at the other planet, and one in maintenance at orbit. We would have to build one or two space stations way larger and more complex than the ones we have today to build and service them, of course, and maybe build them orbiting other planets, like Venus and a Jupiter, in order to have resources for emergencies, and safer procedures and communications. Starship's cargo capacity may allow for all of this, like other vehicles like the SLS or the Vulcan(when they become available)...
@@ihsanauliarahman1057 For within the solar system, VASIMIR or ion thrusters are adequate. I mean, we would love to have something wat more powerful, but it won't happen until we routinely use nuclear reactors in space, and then fusion reactors become available to start miniaturization.
@@dsdy1205 It was barely stated, but it's there. Probably due to the fact that a heavy ship going fast enough can ram with an explosion bigger than the entire supply of nukes
@@theloweffortchannel7211 well, that much is clear haha, I was wondering if there was an in-universe usage of same that precipitated the treaty, but I suppose they didn't go that far into detail
No. Unobtanium was found only on Pandora in Solar and Alpha Centauri Systems. And Gas Giants are not included. Please, don’t ask why? It’s not quantum mechanics, pal! Can’t you figure it out yourself?!
The only explanation I can think of, is this Unobtanium came from somewhere else as an asteroid, and only managed to hit Pandora... Like how the vibranium meteor struck Wakanda. Also in the level of technology where antimatter engines can be built, surely the scientists in the solar system can analyze it's molecular structure to synthesize their own. It's density is normal and it is stable so that rules out degenerate matter or radioactive materials, so it can only be made from one or many of the 84 stable elements on the periodic table.
It would be great to get an update to this video from you to cover what's new with the ISVs that came back in Avatar TWOW. There appeared to be about a dozen, and the dropoff sequence, powered by this engines, was intense.
You need an extremely powerful energy source for the laser. Big sail to catch the photons. Then protection from interstellar dust. Then how to decelerate. Then cryo pods for X year journey. 90% of scifi: "Ha ha spaceship go woosh"
With enough mirrors, the Sun would make a dandy continuous source for the carrier wave that sends and 'catches' the spaceship. Set it up right, and it would never need to be turned off.
@@Pete...NoNotThatOne As much as I love Avatar's worldbuilding, I was pretty impressed by Kim Stanley Robinson's standalone book "Aurora" as well. I read it some years ago, but one bit always stuck out to me. At one point on the return trip, the AI of the ship actually considers "heliobraking" as an option, considering that the laser array meant to send/receive ISVs had been shut down decades prior to their (unexpected) return. Crazy stuff, but considering the speeds they were traveling at...well, it might make sense to dive into the Sun's outer layers - considering they had virtually no other options for slowing down at the time.
@@DeltafangEX I haven’t read that one, I’ve been through his Mars trilogy a while ago. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll have to check it out. If you’re really into bizzaro stuff which is still scientifically literate, try some of Peter Watts’ efforts, particularly Blindsight. It’s a new take on the First Contact scenario, and _really_ out of left field. And it has vampires 🧛♂️
Note that flying this thing would require the infrastructure to generate mind-boggling amounts of energy, like "More than we've ever used as a species up to 2021" mind-boggling. I feel like the state of Earth shown in the director's cut of the movie is kind of a comment on that, because with this sort of wealth they could, in fact, fix it. But don't, because why bother if it won't make money...
Read the 'Troy Rising' series of books by John Ringo. The killer of space based industry is us getting out of our own gravity well. Fix that, and the power and resources available to us are effectively inexhaustable (for several hundred years anyway). Sol, with enough mirrors spun up would provide more than enough power this kind of interstellar mission.
@@carldooley9344 Well, yes, of course the Sun could provide enough power. And the second they built the infrastructure to gather and process the energy, they would have the means to fix Earth. Unless they did something stupid, like, dunno, giving an enormous corporation complete control over the power network and letting them decide what to use it for.
@@juanfernandez1696 I hold out hope still, yes. Because if we do something so insanely stupid in reality, we'll deserve the inevitable mass extinction event that follows.
I love the amount of thought put into this world, and Cameron decides to name the ultra rare macguffin material Unoptanium. Although the canon explain is pretty good
@@TheAxxon It is about four years I'm pretty sure, using the formula T = t * sqrt(1 - (v^2)/(c^2)) where t is the time from an outside observer, and T would be the time experienced by the crew, at 70% light speed, the crew would experience 3.86 years.
You should also consider that the laser sail would be perforated by interstellar debris during the acceleration phase. I don't know how much debris there would be, but at least until it's out of the solar system, it likely would've already sustained some holes.
You can go with multiple extremely thin layers (Whipple shield), so the first layer gets holes in it, but the particles are getting vaporized and smaller. The second layer deals with smaller particles so can last longer, etc. Figure the first layer gets smelted on-site on Pandora, and the ISV has another layer to replace it for the return trip. Imagine what it was like building the first ships without unobtainium, plus sending out the antimatter refineries to Pandora to allow a return trip.
@@toddkes5890 Good point. Though I imagine it'd just be discarded and replaced back on Earth where it's far, far cheaper and easier to do so, and be designed to be tough enough to handle one one trip (acceleration from Earth, and decelerating on return to Earth, as it's not used at the Pandora end at all). I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere how many trips the ISVs are capable of making before they're completely knackered. I imagine the matter-anti matter cycle engines have a pretty short life span due to the thermal stresses.
While having a laser array in the Alpha Centauri system too makes perfect scene it also is very plausible that for quite some time you have it only on one side. Because building a laser array of that size and power without the industrial base of earth will be very difficult.
Indeed. I'm sure it would have been economically feasible to construct one in-situ after a few more decades - the VS mostly carries data cubes for 3D printer blueprints, after all.
Fun fact about superconductors. It isn't a unique property of Unobtanium that they float given a magnetic field, all superconductors do. Only issue being the only ones we've found so far need to be super cold for that to happen. Mercedes made a hoverboard a few years back using this exact principal
Wasn't the ship pointed in the wrong direction as it approached Pandora in the opening sequence of the movie? And also it shows the mirror facing the engines which I never understood. Shouldn't the mirror have been facing the opposite way to shield from the laser? Maybe it was mirrored on both sides and we just never saw the other side of it. But not sure why the surface facing the engines needed to be mirrored. Also it seems the ship was sort of a sitting duck if there were any objects in the path that the shields could not protect from. I'm not sure if it had any maneuvering capability once at speed. Any slight evasive action by a thruster to avoid impact with a large meteor could alter their trajectory with Pandora and cause them to miss the target and the ship would be lost and all crew and passengers would have to be euthanized. Sounds like a nerve wracking 5 year journey!
It doesn't use the main engines when right near a planet, something I didn't mention! And yes the shield appears to be double sided. As for larger objects, theres essentially no chance of meeting something big being out between stars. Even if there was, they have the smaller manuvering engine to do slight course corrections to avoid things (if spotted long enough in advance).
A "little" late to this, but presumably the mirror shield is double sided so that they have a backup on hand if the aft facing surface becomes too damaged by interstellar debris to protect the ship from the deceleration lasers on Earth return. Seeing as not having a backup would lead to either large portions of the ship becoming molten debris and/or it hurtling right out the other side of the Solar system with no hope of recovery, having a backup mirror is kind of important.
This mirror shield isn't like the thin film of reflective material that makes the laser sail, it also acts like multi-layered armour that stops incoming debris, so is presumable very heavy. Moving it will require a lot of large electric motors, which will add extra mass.
@@kerbodynamicx472 The shields already move by themselves because they need to be repositioned as a shield for interstellar debris. They literally could just be stored sideways. This was a misthought on James Cameron's part.
Jump to navigation Jump to search This article is about the star. For other uses, see Proxima Centauri (disambiguation). Coordinates: Sky map 14h 29m 42.9487s, −62° 40′ 46.141
6:56 Maybe if there’s a remote spacecraft that’s equipped with the debris shield several kilometers ahead of the ISV deployed while the main ship is in its acceleration/deceleration phase the whole journey be covered.
One reason I can think of for not using the the laser on Pandora too would be that if the ship was designed that way they would need a laser to already be on Pandora in order to slow down. So they would need a ship like this one to be able to get there the first time and to get there and back however many times it would take to bring all the equipment necessary just to build the laser on pandora. Then they would have to build a whole new ship designed to use the the lasers both ways as to not have to carry the engines this one has around as dead weight which would waste cargo space. So it would probably be more cost effective to just keep using this system instead of having to build and transport all the other infrastructure needed for a laser to be used both ways after which this ship would become useless.
Absolutely this - not mention the infrastructure to power the thing. It's clear that the operation on Pandora (in the first movie) was a bare bones strip mining operation to get what you need and nothing more. Anything not directly related to that end was a waste of money. Harvesting fuel for the engines would be the absolute maximum trouble they'd be prepared to go to. It'll be interesting how it develops in the future films as it's clear the humans now see Pandora as a target for settler colonialism, not just a source of resources to be exploited.
@@lmlmd2714 one thing I wonder though that is similar to this issue is if the engine on the Venture Star were built with unobtanium, which comes from Pandora, how did they get to and from Pandora in the first place?
man the world of avatar is a hell, lets hope it will never come true! also great video were did you get all the infos? also you animationen is so so so good! lets hope you will take spacedock place!
Unfortunately we don't have engines that are anywhere near efficient enough. Looking at the size of the fuel tanks on this ship we could probably pull a 1.5g burn for a handful of minutes with modern technology. The ISV Venture star is capable of doing that for 170 days each way (meaning if they can't produce the anti-matter fuel at Pandora it would need to be able to perform that burn for 340 days). Increasing a ship's Delta-V to the levels needed for interstellar travel is probably the biggest challenge with creating a vessel like this, and engines of this class are are vaguely theoretical at best for modern science.
It is implied that the Lasers would be in space and thus would ignore the earth's rotation. In addition, if the lasers were on earth, the waste heat would be immense and cause lots of problems.
@@TheSnivilous They have insanely efficient radiators - the Venture Star's can dissipate its waste heat during the voyage, they can just use more/larger ones on the lazor spess station. Or, since they have such insane amounts of energy at their disposal, capture a bigass asteroid and build the laser on it, use the rock itself as a heat sink along with the aforementioned radiators.
So, now what I want to know is how long it took one of those ships to set down on a planets surface. 30 km long plasma exhaust plumes, and the ground is directly exposed once the ship is 100,000 ft above ground level. Jeez...
I dont know if the ship itself set down it looked like it lowered the payload to the surface and then took off again BUT i hate the idea that these ships could enter the atmosphere at all. they are obviously just for operating in a vaccum!
Funnily enough, in this deleted scene (ruclips.net/video/iSaKqwWe9ZQ/видео.html) where the ISV fires up its engines, one can see that the ship has a shield at the front and the back. My theory would be that during engine acceleration phase, half the mirror shields are moved to front and attached to the solar sail mast in order to offer a modicum of protection.
The economics of cryosleep for the 2 trips of 10 years would be interesting. If people could Cryosleep, how many rich people would, to wait for better health/longevity tech 10/20/50/100 years into the future? And the wealth management vampi..I mean bankers and lawyers who will manage their funds for the 10/20/50/100 years.
If the reflectivity of the sail was so high... how did the reflected light (noting the shape of the sail in the video) not incinerate the ship and everything/one in it.
The design of this ship is PERFECT. But I have one note. Why not to turn the antimatter engines nozzles back away from the crew modules? The plasma and radiation will be directed behind the ship, far away from the crew modules. Even though they have some radiation shielding, they would not save the people inside because of the MASSIVE amount of radiation caused by the engines. Also the crew would be literally cooked inside of them due to extreme heat of plasma plumes
Only James Cameron would bother putting this much conceptual realism into a ship that appears for only a few minutes of screentime. Bless that man's devotion to tangible world-building.
Few minutes? I don't think it's even a whole minute... I really hope we'll se more of this beautiful spaceship in the sequels.
The amount of information on this ship on the wiki is awesome. Whoever wrote it knows their stuff well.
and then he messed up with the soundtrack lol
@@CarlosAM1 How so?
@@CarlosAM1 To sum up, instead of alien music, it western stereotype music... thing.
That ship also has a hydroponics module for growing fruits and vegetables to feed he skeleton crew and passengers on ship during the 5 year fight time and between Earth and Pandora.
And how do you happen to know that???
@@AnibalPacaco there is a book tile “the science of avatar” and also on the wiki.
@@AnibalPacaco Suspicious way of asking that question.
Almost suggests distrust of the original comment, at least when said like that.
Sussy man, sussy.
That would be an underlying issue Cameron would put serious thought into addressing. he does live on a farm in New Zealand
@@ArkainNetwork I don't ever want to see you use that word again
This must be the best fictional spacecraft ever and mostly within the realm of established science while not stretching engineering too far. Also it feels like a risky piece of tech, just like the sailships of the past were very vulnerable and fragile. Epic design!
Perhaps from a movie, there's more accurate ones in literature but that kind of hard scifi isn't always worth reading
@@gearandalthefirst7027 Hermes from the martian is probably the most accurate movie spaceship. It could literally be build right now if the money was put toward it.
I'd argue that. The most accurate SciFi is The Expanse.
@@oliverfranke7650 not at all, they got a magic fusion drive that seems pretty much impossible unless we discover magic ;-)
@@oliverfranke7650 I'd say the most accurate sci-fi would be primer considering that every theoretical physicist who talked about it said it was but I couldn't understand a word of what they said (or what the movie was about.
But no spaceships there, only time travel:(
2:47
Well... That's grim. Where the... where the occupants told of this little "safety" measure?
No doubt they signed a waiver for it, they were after all, signing away at a minimum 15 something years of their lives as well.
They were being incredibly well compensated, I guess they’d consider it a suitably small risk.
Given that it's represented as a corporate/military venture it'd be a need to know basis so probably either buried in ultra fine text or not at all.
i am certain that the crew of the Nostromo told them all about it.
@@JeanLucCaptain What crew? The only one left was fashionably late.
I'm not a fan of the movie, but my appreciation for it have just increased by 475%. There are entire movie franchises out there with less thought put into them.
What’s the name of the movie
@@saeedmhomed8150 Avatar from 2009
How can you not be a fan of that!?
@@rokzila People have different standards y'know?
@@avery1647 Its a great movie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Daamn, thanks for this detailed explanation. I recently rewatched Avatar and I was confused about the propulsion system of the Venture Star for a long time actually (the movie doesn't explain all of it). Thank you so much for this great video.
Hey you're welcome! The movie doesn't explain any of it but James Cameron is notoriously detail oriented with this stuff so theres plenty of official info out there. Hopefully we see more ISV stuff in the future films, including a version of the cut scene with the main engines!
@@hoojiwana there WAS ONE?! Oh man, i dont think I have the patience to wait for Avatar 2 now.
I mean, we've seen Ion engines in Star Wars, Plasma motors in Star trek, not sooo realistic with them.
We have seen realistic plasma motors in For all Mankind (Pathfinder, NERVA motor) and The Expanse.
I don't think I can say we've ever seen realistic anti-matter engines light before. I am highly intrigued to say the least.
as far as I can tell the movie barely even touched on this at all. and they don't tell you about the "one way trip if your not an exec" which is some truly wasted grim dark potential. Exactly what I would expect from the director of Titanic.
@@JeanLucCaptain early in the film you need to think that humans are the good guys. Those details break the illusion.
@@asier6964 Anybody who thinks that the humans are the "good guys" after Jake's opening monologue clearly wasn't paying attention to how despite the situation back on earth is.
I'm really excited about this one, did not expect you to look into spaceships from something like Avatar. Great content!
I though they will skip the ships this time in TWOW. BOY was I wrong, they banked on it BIG TIME.
Mild SPOILERS for the beginning of the movie below:
The are multiple ships decelerating towards pandora. The whole burn looks like a major star on the night sky. And then they show one of them (presumably stripped of its nimble stuff) landing on Pandora. Its antimattter engines nuking everything living miles underneath. DAMN what a start of a movie.
When I saw it land, first thing in my mind was "I've never seen the ISV Venture Star enter the atmosphere." and I was horrified when I saw it incinerating everything in the vicinity upon descending.
yeah that whole sequence was epic and scary.
Really gave a sense of scale to just how large and powerful those engines really are.
@@Big_Red1 I had absolutely no idea the jet of flames they shot are that long and being constantly active for 5.5 months for acceleration and deceleration, that's a ton of heat on the engines.
It was an awesome sequence, but I was confused why they landed the space craft on the surface? Seems like a very inefficient and risky course given they have the shuttles. Why can't they simply ferry their gear from space to planet? I'm assuming the ISV that lands won't be taking off again.
The ISV Venture Star is very heavily inspired by the Valkyrie, a similar design of antimatter ship without the photon sail, designed by Charles Pellegrino who consulted on the movie
6:20 In the original Valkyrie design this was done with a very large droplet radiator, but it's not as visually impressive as a solid panel radiator
6:25 the original Valkyrie design also made use of only one engine, with a combined defocusing / shadow-shield system (which also includes the matter fuel) to shield everything downstream of the engine from the emissions of the engine, which are mainly concentrated around the reaction zone of the engine.
6:34 In the Valkyrie design this was not needed since the ship ran on pure antimatter. The antimatter was created by literally strip mining Mercury with self replicators to create enough solar collectors and antimatter plants. In the case of the movie, yeah it's a ridiculously powerful laser, but one would argue you'd need as much to do any interstellar travel. The engines on the Venture Star put out very similar levels of power.
6:49 Because the laser emitters are on Earth, and can only point towards Pandora. You can't pull the ship back from Pandora to Earth with a laser sail system unless you use disposable sails to bounce the light backwards.
For the last point I think he's asking why not make a laser sail propulsion system at pandora.
@@cj-gw5fd In that case, then it's because it takes a lot of time and effort. In the Project Valkyrie design the solar panels needed to create enough antimatter for an outbound leg would cover the entire surface of Mercury. You'd need at least that much power if not more to construct a similarly scaled laser installation, and I don't think shipping unobtainium 4 light years leaves a lot of margin to duplicate their Earth-side launch infrastructure.
Finally found someone who can explain all these engineering designs. As an engineering student, the most fascinating thing in these science fiction movies are not the plots, it's these excellent designs based on current tech with only a few futuristic tech settings.
I never notice they had put so much thought into the ship Avatar
The radiators are probably only used during downtime between firings of the drives, drawing off the heat of a small onboard reactor that manages things like life support, lighting, recycling, etc. When the drives are in operation, waste heat can be extracted by the reaction mass you're dumping into the drive plume, by becoming part of the thrust plume that excess mass is itself stealing energy (heat) from the drive, which will lose some of it's Isp in exchange for increased thrust.
Granted this still wouldn't get rid of ALL the waste heat from the drives, but if the drives are bimodal and can run as fusion plants with much less power generation you will need at least significantly smaller radiators, though not no radiators at all.
The problem with the ISV engines is the extreme amount of energy required to maintain the level of acceleration cited for the design.
It takes something lake 800-1600 megatons of TNT worth of energy every second for over half a year to work.
Although antimatter has this level of energy density even a 99.9999% efficient engine would produce so much waste heat as to vaporize the radiators almost immediately.
There is no getting around the need for massive radiators to cool the engines even with magicly capable unobtanium. As there isnt a remotely realistic way to get the efficiency high enough that radiators are unnecessary. They are also massive heatsinks not just pure radiators. Thus why they are so thick instead of more efficient thin designs.
Even chemical rockets still need radiative cooling, they happen to get away with using only the engine bell as a radiator.
Last even a multi-gigawatt nuclear reactor with a efficiencies of 30% could get away with radiators that are 1/100th the size of the ISVs. The higher your efficiency the smaller your radiator and with Avatars magic tech they should be able to cool reactors with radiators the size of a car.
So why not run the heat through heat exchangers and harvest the energy. Appears to me to be a inefficient design.
I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember that the mirror actually gets moved between the two ends of the vessel depending on the phase of flight. So, IIRC it's actually installed "in front" of the engines during the Centauri to Sol accelaeration phase. For the Earth to Pandora speed up however, the Sail itself seem to work as the particle shield.
I don't think you'd want to use the sail as a particle shield, since it's designed to be reusable. Also since the shielding direction is always from "tail" to "nose" it makes sense to just rotate the ship
@@dsdy1205 The thing is that the sail has to be deployed in the direction of accelaration during the Earth to Pandora speed up.
@@scelonferdi ah I missed the part where you specified it was during the Earth to Pandora speedup
That's not possible. As the particle shields only have mounted maneuvering thrusters, and are otherwise disconnected from the ship, even minor X/g acceleration as stated in the video would mean that the ship would accelerate into it's own particle shield. That problem doesn't arise when the ship is traveling at a constant speed, so if particle shields were to be used in the acceleration phases, they would need to be rigidly attached to the vessel.
@@OriginAlpha_ In the deployed configuration? Sure!
But there is the attached one we see at the start of the movie.
An excellent presentation and explanation of this ship.
im so lucky i found this channel, i really wish there are more channels that talk about this kind of topic
Most likely the coolest space craft design there is. Too many other sci-fi stories feature ugly blocks of metal or air craft in space, when instead there is a very prominent real spacecraft to take inspiration from: the Apollo LEM.
The expanse has pretty realistic designs for spaceships. The only technology they have is the Epstein drive, an extremely efficient engine capable of producing thrust for weeks at a time.
No artificial gravity generators or anything like that. Gravity comes from ships accelerating continuously (with rocket boosters on the bottom and the decks layered like in an office tower). Also spinning components for locations where continuous thrust isn't practical such as space stations.
Communications between planets takes hours or even days depending on the distance between the communicators.
Space battles take place over hundreds of thousands of kilometers, with the biggest ships carrying missiles that can take hours to reach their targets.
@@MG-ec9qx only thing missinng is radiators. special for those fusion engiens
The amount of antimatter required for this trip is astonishing, and the power of the drives is approaching solar flare levels. Just to have enough solar power to power antimatter production on the needed scale is Dyson swarm level. I do love the idea of laser propulsion, though, it'd probably be easier to build a laser station on the polyphemus side than it would be to use antimatter for half the delta-v.
When Grace said to Jake that Pandora was the most hostile environment known to man, I was like "you both survived the interstellar journey to Pandora, that was far more dangerous then anything Eywa's world can throw at you"
So RDA is like east india company of 22nd century.
Very much lol they even have military elements
The only issue is that they have completely failed to secure Navi natives into their ranks to subjugate the rest of the Navi. East India company used Indians for like 95% of their army
I have thought, ever since I saw it, that an adapted version of this could be built as a "train" between Earth and other planets in the solar system. Strap a couple of VASIMIR drives to it, put shields at the front too, and use compact nuclear reactors such as the Soviet TOPAZ design to feed the drives and overall ship systems. Have a larger set of radiators, and deployable solar panels for when approaching the inner solar system, and you have a very capable ship, able to transport huge loads at very high speeds. Build a bunch of them and have them continuously travelling back and forth from other planets, like a terrestrial train. One in orbit at Earth, one in transit to the planet, one already coming back, one in orbit at the other planet, and one in maintenance at orbit. We would have to build one or two space stations way larger and more complex than the ones we have today to build and service them, of course, and maybe build them orbiting other planets, like Venus and a Jupiter, in order to have resources for emergencies, and safer procedures and communications. Starship's cargo capacity may allow for all of this, like other vehicles like the SLS or the Vulcan(when they become available)...
Is VASIMIR a suitable technology for sub-liminal travel speed?
@@ihsanauliarahman1057 For within the solar system, VASIMIR or ion thrusters are adequate. I mean, we would love to have something wat more powerful, but it won't happen until we routinely use nuclear reactors in space, and then fusion reactors become available to start miniaturization.
The antimatter engines would also do a great number on _The Well of Souls_ when aimed at it from orbit.
It would also do a great number on the entire moon, including the entire mining base which is the point of going there
The lore has banned WMDs on space, KKVs and torch driving would be considered that as well.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 oh wow I didn't know they had lore on that; did they say how the treaty came into existence?
@@dsdy1205 It was barely stated, but it's there. Probably due to the fact that a heavy ship going fast enough can ram with an explosion bigger than the entire supply of nukes
@@theloweffortchannel7211 well, that much is clear haha, I was wondering if there was an in-universe usage of same that precipitated the treaty, but I suppose they didn't go that far into detail
I think the most unrealistic part of this film was the fact that 'Unobtainium' was only found on Pandora.
They didn't even have some sort of handwave explanation either.
true it should be found throughout the system, in asteroids for example, much easier to mine and you don't have to deal with the natives
No.
Unobtanium was found only on Pandora in Solar and Alpha Centauri Systems.
And Gas Giants are not included.
Please, don’t ask why? It’s not quantum mechanics, pal! Can’t you figure it out yourself?!
And only that one body in the entire solar system of presumably a dozen or more bodies.
The only explanation I can think of, is this Unobtanium came from somewhere else as an asteroid, and only managed to hit Pandora... Like how the vibranium meteor struck Wakanda. Also in the level of technology where antimatter engines can be built, surely the scientists in the solar system can analyze it's molecular structure to synthesize their own. It's density is normal and it is stable so that rules out degenerate matter or radioactive materials, so it can only be made from one or many of the 84 stable elements on the periodic table.
And now in way of water we saw at least one of the 2 propulsion Systems, the engines and oh boy now i can believe those are powered by anti matter
It would be great to get an update to this video from you to cover what's new with the ISVs that came back in Avatar TWOW. There appeared to be about a dozen, and the dropoff sequence, powered by this engines, was intense.
holy crap this looks extremely underrated!
Damn, i've seached about this for so long... great job.
You need an extremely powerful energy source for the laser. Big sail to catch the photons. Then protection from interstellar dust. Then how to decelerate. Then cryo pods for X year journey.
90% of scifi: "Ha ha spaceship go woosh"
I mean... Science-FICTION??? But yeah I get your point! (:
With enough mirrors, the Sun would make a dandy continuous source for the carrier wave that sends and 'catches' the spaceship. Set it up right, and it would never need to be turned off.
I think Cameron is the only one who actually researches and develops _flight plans_ for fictional spaceships.
@@Pete...NoNotThatOne As much as I love Avatar's worldbuilding, I was pretty impressed by Kim Stanley Robinson's standalone book "Aurora" as well. I read it some years ago, but one bit always stuck out to me.
At one point on the return trip, the AI of the ship actually considers "heliobraking" as an option, considering that the laser array meant to send/receive ISVs had been shut down decades prior to their (unexpected) return.
Crazy stuff, but considering the speeds they were traveling at...well, it might make sense to dive into the Sun's outer layers - considering they had virtually no other options for slowing down at the time.
@@DeltafangEX I haven’t read that one, I’ve been through his Mars trilogy a while ago. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll have to check it out.
If you’re really into bizzaro stuff which is still scientifically literate, try some of Peter Watts’ efforts, particularly Blindsight. It’s a new take on the First Contact scenario, and _really_ out of left field. And it has vampires 🧛♂️
I did not expect some one that made this good of a video to only have 25 subs keep it up dude
Really the most thorough and plausible of filmed SF spacecraft. Well done Mr Cameron.
Note that flying this thing would require the infrastructure to generate mind-boggling amounts of energy, like "More than we've ever used as a species up to 2021" mind-boggling.
I feel like the state of Earth shown in the director's cut of the movie is kind of a comment on that, because with this sort of wealth they could, in fact, fix it. But don't, because why bother if it won't make money...
Read the 'Troy Rising' series of books by John Ringo. The killer of space based industry is us getting out of our own gravity well. Fix that, and the power and resources available to us are effectively inexhaustable (for several hundred years anyway). Sol, with enough mirrors spun up would provide more than enough power this kind of interstellar mission.
@@carldooley9344 Well, yes, of course the Sun could provide enough power. And the second they built the infrastructure to gather and process the energy, they would have the means to fix Earth.
Unless they did something stupid, like, dunno, giving an enormous corporation complete control over the power network and letting them decide what to use it for.
@@paulzuk1468 do you really think it could possibly go any other way?.
@@juanfernandez1696 I hold out hope still, yes.
Because if we do something so insanely stupid in reality, we'll deserve the inevitable mass extinction event that follows.
@@paulzuk1468 well then let's hope the world realizes that profits are useless to the dead.
I do love spaceships that capture the age of sail vibe, where space travel is a long and dangerous endeavor.
I love the amount of thought put into this world, and Cameron decides to name the ultra rare macguffin material Unoptanium.
Although the canon explain is pretty good
Just went on a time dilation calculator. 5.4 years @ 70% lightspeed means the craft only experiences approx. 112 days between thrust and deceleration.
I was wondering about the skeleton crew that flew this and this explains alot lol
You are sure you calculated that right? Seems more like +4 years.
@@TheAxxon It is about four years I'm pretty sure, using the formula T = t * sqrt(1 - (v^2)/(c^2)) where t is the time from an outside observer, and T would be the time experienced by the crew, at 70% light speed, the crew would experience 3.86 years.
@@davidl3743 Ye I roughly used 5 years to calculate it, however it surly not 112 days for the crew ;)
That seems wrong. Time dilation isn't very strong at only 70% lightspeed. Eg at 99% lightspeed time dilation is only 49%.
Update Now this things can land and drop the crates from space to Pandora.
and literally destroy anything in its path at the same time :/
@@brendancopster7378 Why bring a daisycutter bomb, when the engines work even better for that?
Replicating this on Kerbal Space Program would be awesome
I love this ship design, and it's partly inspiring my interplanetary ship designs in KSP!
Great video !! nobody makes avatar videos anymore, and you sir made an excellent one. Congrats and thank you.
wow this channel is so underrated keep up the great work :)
I just discovered your channel and i find it to be a little jewel that makes me keep liking youtube.
Excellent video. I don't see why anyone would have to make another on the same subject.
Most realistic sci-fi vehicles ever put to screen
You should also consider that the laser sail would be perforated by interstellar debris during the acceleration phase. I don't know how much debris there would be, but at least until it's out of the solar system, it likely would've already sustained some holes.
You can go with multiple extremely thin layers (Whipple shield), so the first layer gets holes in it, but the particles are getting vaporized and smaller. The second layer deals with smaller particles so can last longer, etc. Figure the first layer gets smelted on-site on Pandora, and the ISV has another layer to replace it for the return trip.
Imagine what it was like building the first ships without unobtainium, plus sending out the antimatter refineries to Pandora to allow a return trip.
@@toddkes5890 Good point. Though I imagine it'd just be discarded and replaced back on Earth where it's far, far cheaper and easier to do so, and be designed to be tough enough to handle one one trip (acceleration from Earth, and decelerating on return to Earth, as it's not used at the Pandora end at all). I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere how many trips the ISVs are capable of making before they're completely knackered. I imagine the matter-anti matter cycle engines have a pretty short life span due to the thermal stresses.
Hey, good luck man! , keep the interesting subject. Hope you're channel grow exponentially best of luck.
The venture star can be created right now if we want to. Its so cool
Nice overview on a cool movie ship! You should do a overview of the Antares form defying gravity mini series. It looks like the ISV Venture star.
That's a pretty cool ship, I'll look into it!
This just proves that if there's profit involved, Humanity can build anything.
Great video !
The moment you started talking about the laser acceleration them the antimatter engines, I thought, "Why not just put a laser at Pandora?"
While having a laser array in the Alpha Centauri system too makes perfect scene it also is very plausible that for quite some time you have it only on one side. Because building a laser array of that size and power without the industrial base of earth will be very difficult.
Indeed. I'm sure it would have been economically feasible to construct one in-situ after a few more decades - the VS mostly carries data cubes for 3D printer blueprints, after all.
This seems like how things will actually work when it’s time for interstellar travel.
This is the content that Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard would chat out in their free time sitting on that couch
Can u make avalon starship from passengers movie?
Please make a video about *ISV MANIFEST DESTINY* which was in Avatar 2
+
Fun fact about superconductors. It isn't a unique property of Unobtanium that they float given a magnetic field, all superconductors do. Only issue being the only ones we've found so far need to be super cold for that to happen. Mercedes made a hoverboard a few years back using this exact principal
I hope we have ships like this in the future.
We will.
Not….we’ll be extinct before we get there
@@YorktownUSA when 😈
@@YorktownUSA But first we need to clean up our earth or it’s gonna end up like the type of earth in Avatar (dying)…
@@skiing6872 We'll have motivation to leave then.
Wasn't the ship pointed in the wrong direction as it approached Pandora in the opening sequence of the movie? And also it shows the mirror facing the engines which I never understood. Shouldn't the mirror have been facing the opposite way to shield from the laser? Maybe it was mirrored on both sides and we just never saw the other side of it. But not sure why the surface facing the engines needed to be mirrored.
Also it seems the ship was sort of a sitting duck if there were any objects in the path that the shields could not protect from. I'm not sure if it had any maneuvering capability once at speed. Any slight evasive action by a thruster to avoid impact with a large meteor could alter their trajectory with Pandora and cause them to miss the target and the ship would be lost and all crew and passengers would have to be euthanized. Sounds like a nerve wracking 5 year journey!
It doesn't use the main engines when right near a planet, something I didn't mention! And yes the shield appears to be double sided. As for larger objects, theres essentially no chance of meeting something big being out between stars. Even if there was, they have the smaller manuvering engine to do slight course corrections to avoid things (if spotted long enough in advance).
A "little" late to this, but presumably the mirror shield is double sided so that they have a backup on hand if the aft facing surface becomes too damaged by interstellar debris to protect the ship from the deceleration lasers on Earth return. Seeing as not having a backup would lead to either large portions of the ship becoming molten debris and/or it hurtling right out the other side of the Solar system with no hope of recovery, having a backup mirror is kind of important.
“It’ll be a fresh start on a new world”
Sounds like Chris Evans. Now you can’t unhear it
didn't realize you had a personal channel. should do an episode on DSG technologies. I'll collab as I'm obsessed and keep imagining applications.
hope you get more views look like you put a lot of work into this and it was a really good video I really like it
You are so thorough ... I appreciate you and your efforts
Wouldn't it be more efficient to retract mirror instead of wasing % of the thrust because of that additional angle ?
This mirror shield isn't like the thin film of reflective material that makes the laser sail, it also acts like multi-layered armour that stops incoming debris, so is presumable very heavy. Moving it will require a lot of large electric motors, which will add extra mass.
@@kerbodynamicx472 The shields already move by themselves because they need to be repositioned as a shield for interstellar debris. They literally could just be stored sideways. This was a misthought on James Cameron's part.
Yeah, but this angling also doubles as security feature for hubs.
James Cameron does what James Cameron does, because James Cameron, is James Cameron.
hard to argue with that lol. It's true for literally anything.
I think the ship does not use laser sails for the Pandora part of the trip because they could not put lasers on Pandora
wow, I really enjoyed that, thanks for making that content.
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This article is about the star. For other uses, see Proxima Centauri (disambiguation).
Coordinates: Sky map 14h 29m 42.9487s, −62° 40′ 46.141
Amazing content
Kanye West: Yo Avalon, Imma happy for you Imma let you finish, but ISV Venture Star had one of the best spaceships designs of all time. Of all time!
Glad to see sci fi authors thinking so deep on what they are doing...
This was a crazy ship that was all of less than 3 minutes....
6:56 Maybe if there’s a remote spacecraft that’s equipped with the debris shield several kilometers ahead of the ISV deployed while the main ship is in its acceleration/deceleration phase the whole journey be covered.
Please do a video on the U.S.C.S.S. Prometheus
I do love its engine layout!
To be honest, it does look very cool
I'm a fan of the venture star and like the realism, but I didn't know about the releaseable debris shields.
wait that was polyphemus? I thought it was Jupiter.
finally a good explanation!
This straight up blew my mind!!!
And here we are 15 years later, preparing a bunch of lasers to send thousands of "mini-ships" to Proxima b still in this half of the 21st century
One reason I can think of for not using the the laser on Pandora too would be that if the ship was designed that way they would need a laser to already be on Pandora in order to slow down. So they would need a ship like this one to be able to get there the first time and to get there and back however many times it would take to bring all the equipment necessary just to build the laser on pandora. Then they would have to build a whole new ship designed to use the the lasers both ways as to not have to carry the engines this one has around as dead weight which would waste cargo space. So it would probably be more cost effective to just keep using this system instead of having to build and transport all the other infrastructure needed for a laser to be used both ways after which this ship would become useless.
Absolutely this - not mention the infrastructure to power the thing. It's clear that the operation on Pandora (in the first movie) was a bare bones strip mining operation to get what you need and nothing more. Anything not directly related to that end was a waste of money. Harvesting fuel for the engines would be the absolute maximum trouble they'd be prepared to go to. It'll be interesting how it develops in the future films as it's clear the humans now see Pandora as a target for settler colonialism, not just a source of resources to be exploited.
@@lmlmd2714 one thing I wonder though that is similar to this issue is if the engine on the Venture Star were built with unobtanium, which comes from Pandora, how did they get to and from Pandora in the first place?
James really did his science homework
man the world of avatar is a hell, lets hope it will never come true!
also great video were did you get all the infos?
also you animationen is so so so good! lets hope you will take spacedock place!
100% The best movie of all time!
Interstellar whipple shields? That's some serious thought put into an action movie space ship
The energy for the laser acceleration could have been powered by a Dyson swarm which would not have been available from the Proxima system.
What "original 4km long ship that traveled to alpha centauri" are you refering to plz?
I really feel like this ship can be achievable within this lifetime if we tried.
Well manufacturing large quantities of antimatter is near impossible
Unfortunately we don't have engines that are anywhere near efficient enough. Looking at the size of the fuel tanks on this ship we could probably pull a 1.5g burn for a handful of minutes with modern technology. The ISV Venture star is capable of doing that for 170 days each way (meaning if they can't produce the anti-matter fuel at Pandora it would need to be able to perform that burn for 340 days).
Increasing a ship's Delta-V to the levels needed for interstellar travel is probably the biggest challenge with creating a vessel like this, and engines of this class are are vaguely theoretical at best for modern science.
We can’t produce the energy required fir 70% light speed. And obviously we don’t have magic energy space ore from the Pandora
No maybe in 5 lifetimes
Nope. Humans don't live that long. Probably achievable within the lifetime of a Greenland shark (400-500 years)
Holy shit how did you figure this out, simply amazing
All this information was in the initial design by James Cameron and Ben Proctor et al
seems they watched isaac arthurs channel for the disign of this spaceship or just did realy nice research. nice video!
Just found this, great video.
Excellent video
Does Gaia And Proxima B Have Life Within Toliman and Proxima Centauri
1:03 How does this laser-driven thing work? The laser is emitted on earth, but how does the emitting device cope with earth''s rotation?
It is implied that the Lasers would be in space and thus would ignore the earth's rotation. In addition, if the lasers were on earth, the waste heat would be immense and cause lots of problems.
@@allenbrooks5178 the waste heat would be a bigger issue in orbit where you can only radiate I would think
@@TheSnivilous They have insanely efficient radiators - the Venture Star's can dissipate its waste heat during the voyage, they can just use more/larger ones on the lazor spess station.
Or, since they have such insane amounts of energy at their disposal, capture a bigass asteroid and build the laser on it, use the rock itself as a heat sink along with the aforementioned radiators.
You need to revisit this now with what the new movie revealed.
6:55 because lazers like that are hard to build. Infrastructure at Pandora wasnt ready.
So, now what I want to know is how long it took one of those ships to set down on a planets surface. 30 km long plasma exhaust plumes, and the ground is directly exposed once the ship is 100,000 ft above ground level. Jeez...
I dont know if the ship itself set down it looked like it lowered the payload to the surface and then took off again BUT i hate the idea that these ships could enter the atmosphere at all. they are obviously just for operating in a vaccum!
I hadnt realized so much thought went into avatar...
"If cryo failed they'd be euthanised"
hold up
Funnily enough, in this deleted scene (ruclips.net/video/iSaKqwWe9ZQ/видео.html) where the ISV fires up its engines, one can see that the ship has a shield at the front and the back. My theory would be that during engine acceleration phase, half the mirror shields are moved to front and attached to the solar sail mast in order to offer a modicum of protection.
One other main issue was the insame amount of antimatter needed to propel the ship.
The economics of cryosleep for the 2 trips of 10 years would be interesting. If people could Cryosleep, how many rich people would, to wait for better health/longevity tech 10/20/50/100 years into the future? And the wealth management vampi..I mean bankers and lawyers who will manage their funds for the 10/20/50/100 years.
If the reflectivity of the sail was so high... how did the reflected light (noting the shape of the sail in the video) not incinerate the ship and everything/one in it.
It's not a sail. It's just a shield. By that point, sail is folded and stashed.
The design of this ship is PERFECT. But I have one note. Why not to turn the antimatter engines nozzles back away from the crew modules? The plasma and radiation will be directed behind the ship, far away from the crew modules. Even though they have some radiation shielding, they would not save the people inside because of the MASSIVE amount of radiation caused by the engines. Also the crew would be literally cooked inside of them due to extreme heat of plasma plumes