Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.

High-Speed Magnetic-Sail Interstellar Precursor Missions Enabled by Metastable Metallic

Hydrogen

Adam J. Crowl*

*Corresponding author: adam@crowlspace.com

Abstract
The recent observation of metallic hydrogen in high-pressure diamond anvil experiments raises the prospect
of superconducting metastable metallic hydrogen. With a hypothesised critical temperature close to near
Earth orbit temperatures (300-400 K), superconducting metallic hydrogen would simplify the launching of
magnetic-sail propelled interstellar precursor missions. Alternative materials might be available, sufficient
for high performance magnetic-sails. With cruising speeds of 300-600 km/s these would propel high-speed
missions to the Suns gravitational focus at 750 AU and to the hypothesised Ninth Planet at 1000 AU. A
magnetic-sail can also brake against the Local Interstellar Medium (LISM), for orbital missions to the Ninth
Planet.
Keywords: Magnetic-Sail, metallic hydrogen, Ninth Planet

Nomenclature Acronyms/Abbreviations

AU: Astronomical Unit (=149,597,870,700 m) Mag-sail Magnetic-Sail

R: magnetic-sail Radius DS4G Dual Stage 4-Grid ion drive. High
Jc: superconducting critical current of performance Ion Drive design.
kg/kWe specific power, kilograms per kilowatt
superconducting wire material.
(electrical) supplied.
Je: Mag-sail engineering critical current, which ISM Interstellar Medium
incorporates insulation, rigging and meteorite bumper. LISM Local Interstellar Medium, which is the ISM
A: Effective area of mag-sail interaction with plasma immediately outside the Suns Heliosphere.
flow (Solar Wind or Interstellar Medium.) PIX Planet Nine, hypothetical Trans-Neptunian
Ac: Area constant for effective area Super-Earth.
I: Mag-sail supercurrent SOTA - State-Of-The-Art.
Ic: Supercurrent Constant, used to determine effective Isp Specific Impulse
Area. MW megawatt
r: Heliocentric radial distance. STP Standard Temperature & Pressure (273 K and
r0: Reference radius, taken to be 1 AU. 1 atmosphere pressure).
ri: initial launch radius of mag-sail vehicle GPa Gigapascals (109 Pa).
g0: Solar gravity at 1 AU.
g: local strength of Solar gravity.
gi: local strength of gravity at initial radius.
n0: Reference number density of Solar Wind, per cubic
metre. Equal to 6 x 106 at 1 AU.
nr: number density at radius r from the Sun.
mp: average mass of Solar Wind particles, assumed to
be 2.2 x 10-27 kg.
vSW : velocity of the Solar Wind, on average 500 km/s.
u: velocity variable of mag-sail vehicle
vr: relative velocity, equal to (vSW u)
T: Thrust generated by plasma flow
a: acceleration variable of mag-sail vehicle
a0: initial acceleration variable
ar: net radial acceleration, equal to (a g)
v: target hyperbolic velocity
ve: escape velocity
c: speed of light (299,792,458 m/s.)
E: magnetic energy stored in mag-sail field
L: self-inductance of mag-sail loop
0: free-space magnetic permeability = 4 x 10-7 H/m

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 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Near interstellar missions, for studying the Local
ISM and possible additional major planets, range
somewhere between 100 to 10,000 AU, challenge
currently achievable solar escape trajectories. The
Voyager spacecraft missions recently reached their
40 year mark, yet have only travelled about 140 AU,
just beyond the Heliosphere. To reach the Suns
Gravitational Lensing Radius, at about 600 AU, or a
possible PIX, at between 900 to 1200 AU, will
require faster cruise speeds, of the order of 200-300
km/s.
To do so with nuclear electric propulsion, such
as the DS4G ion drive, requires challenging
specific-power levels, for both the power source and
the engine itself. To reach, for example, 1,000 AU
in 20 years and brake into orbit around Planet Nine
requires a specific jet-power of 600 W/kg (computed
following Moeckel [1]). With a 75% efficient ion-drive
and an equal mass of drive and power-source, the
power requirement for the reactor is approaches
~0.5 kg/kWe, far above current SOTA of 20-50
kg/kWe [2].
Alternatives to nuclear electric power might be
available with near term extensions to current
technology. Genovese [3] has proposed a laser-
powered DS4G ion-drive able to reach 1,000 AU in
25 years. Massing 23 tons total, with a 5 ton
payload, consuming 10 tons of xenon during
acceleration, it would require a 4 ton collector-
receiver to collect 8 megawatts of laser light, to
convert to electrical power at 50% efficiency. None
of the technologies are far removed from current
SOTA capabilities, merely requiring a commitment
to large in-space development.
The scale of the required in-space assets is one
problem to address. Ideally lasers would be
powered by a solar array in a suitable orbit. Ultra-
low specific mass solar-arrays have been produced
in prototype, with 5 kg/kWe seen as feasible [4].
Thus 8 MW of laser light, with 80% laser efficiency,
implies 10 MW of solar array massing 50 tons. Laser
arrays are estimated presently to have a specific
power of 0.1 kW/kg, but are moving towards 1
kW/kg [4], thus implying 100-10 tons of lasing
equipment, plus a large optical system. All up the
system would mass +100 tons, to power a 23 ton
probe for several years of acceleration. Such a
system could be orbited by a single SpaceX BFR
launch, but represents a large investment to provide
a single vehicle with 4 MW of jet-power. It can then
be reused for future missions, but only after
providing dedicated power to individual missions.
1.1 Magnetic-Sails
Instead of an indirect coupling between solar
energy and a space vehicle, direct interaction
seems less labour intensive. Solar Sails using the
light-pressure of sunlight for such missions have
been studied elsewhere, but the Solar Wind
represents 232 exawatts of charged particle energy
also freely radiated by the Sun. Coupling a vehicle
to the Solar Wind via magnetic fields is a Magnetic-
Sail or Mag-Sail [see Figure 1.]
Figure 1: Mag-Sail schematic
First proposed by Robert Zubrin and Dana
Andrews, following work by Jonathan Vos Post, [5],
the mag-sail has been approximated as a mini-
magnetosphere. However, as Gros [6] has recently
argued, the conditions for formation of an artificial
magnetosphere cant merely be assumed. Instead
Gros [6] analyses the magnetic-sails operation as a
single-loop magnetic-mirror, pushed by reflection of
solar-wind ions from its magnetic field.
To achieve a hyperbolic velocity away from the
Sun, a mag-sail must always accelerate at greater
than the local force of gravity. The Solar Winds
dynamic pressure averages 2 nanopascals, at 1
AU, while the Suns gravity is 6 x 10-3 gee, which
implies at least 3 million square metres of solar wind
must be reflected for each kilogram of vehicle mass
to equal the local gravity. Mag-sails produce very
large, but low intensity magnetic fields, via a low-
mass superconducting wire-loop to capture as
much solar-wind as possible. Originally modelled as
miniature magnetospheres, Gros [6] has argued
that the magnetosphere approximation isnt always
applicable and a mag-sail becomes ineffective
below a certain minimum supercurrent. Relaxing the
magnetosphere approximation means the mag-sail
is thus modelled as a magnetic mirror.
In the magnetic-mirror approximation, the
effective area of the mag-sail is a simple function of
its relative velocity to the solar wind. As it
accelerates, the thrust, which is a product of the
area and the square of the relative velocity, remains
semi-linear, only declining as the Solar Wind
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 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.
particle density declines. The higher the initial
particle density, the higher the final velocity that can
be achieved by a given mag-sail.
To achieve the desired cruising speed (~200-
300 km/s) a mag-sail must start its acceleration very
close to the Sun and minimise the mag-sail mass.
For the latter requirement, the recent synthesis of
boron-doped Q-carbon with a very high critical
current of 43 MA/cm 2 at 30 K in a 2 tesla external
field [7], shows real promise and its performance will
be assumed for this analysis. However, like most
superconductors, it requires cryogenic conditions to
sustain a supercurrent. Potentially, multi-layer
reflective foil could be used to keep the Mag-Sail
cold [8], with a solid hydrogen block like that used
by the WISE mission - to provide a cooling reservoir
for the inner Solar System acceleration phase. If the
acceleration phase proves sufficiently short, close
ventures to the Sun should be possible.
1.2 Metastable Metallic Hydrogen
Room temperature superconductors would
minimise the insulation mass required, but have
proven elusive to produce. A critical temperature of
203 K has been observed in pressurised hydrogen
sulphide [9] and polyhydrides are theorised to
achieve higher temperatures still [10.] Even better
performance is expected from 100% hydrogen in
metallic form
Long theorised to be a room temperature
superconductor, solid metallic hydrogen has
recently been observed in diamond anvil
experiments at approximately 4 GPa [11]. Also
theorised to be metastable at STP [12], bulk
production of superconducting metallic hydrogen
would allow close mag-sail operations to the Sun.
With a critical temperature of 400 K a metallic
hydrogen mag-sail, if coated in reflective insulation,
can venture to 0.25 AU from the Sun, where the
black body temperature of a black body cylinder
would be ~500 K, [see Table 1 for various distances
and Equilibrium temperatures for different
Reflectance values]. As solar wind particle density
is observed to decline with the inverse square of
radial separation from the Sun, this would produce
(1/4)-2 = 16 times more initial thrust.
T-Eq T-Eq
Launch Black- R= T-Eq
Radius Body 0.9 R=0.9999
(AU) (K) (K) (K)
0.25 497.2 279.6 49.7
0.5 351.6 197.7 35.2
1 248.6 139.8 24.9
Table 1: Equilibrium Temperatures of Cylindrical Wires
Once past the Heliosphere, and the dominance of
the Solar Wind, a different operational mode
becomes possible. Braking against the ISM to slow
to aerocapture speeds for an orbital mission to a
possible PIX is then an option for a mission design.
2. Material and methods
In the following discussion, the performance of
magnetic-sails launched from various distances
from the Sun will be examined, using a simple
physically justified approximation.
Next section will use a numerical analysis of the
braking effectiveness of a range of mag-sail
parameters to a nominal aerocapture speed of 30
km/s into a possible hydrogen/helium atmosphere
of a PIX at 1,000 AU.
For this analysis, a simple Microsoft Excel 2016
spreadsheet model using the relevant equations of
Gros [6] was employed.
Future modelling will be a full orbital analysis of
a trajectory using a Jupiter gravity assist to put a
vehicle on a transfer orbit in close proximity to the
Sun, using either the Copernicus or OTIS software.
Additional future work would verify the scaling
relation derived by Gros [6], via particle-in-cell
computations and hard data from vacuum chamber
experiments with physically scaled mag-sail
models.
3. Theory and calculation
The thrust from reflecting a stream of Solar-Wind
particles of constant mass is:
= 2( ) 2 (1)
The Solar Wind numerical density declines with
the inverse square of the radial distance from the
Sun:
0 0 2
() = (2)
2
Using the data for the Solar Wind at 1 AU [ref]
the numerical value of 0 0 2 is 1.343E+29. The
mass of the vehicle can be divided between the
Payload and the mag-sail, the latter of which is
defined as:
= 2 ( ) (3)
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 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.

Thus the total mass is:

= + (4) Launching from an initial radius, the net

acceleration can be approximated as a function of
The effective area, in this case from a fitting the radius alone:
function derived by Gros [3], is defined as:
( 2 )( 2 )
3 () = (8)
( ) = [ ( )]

(5) 2

As the solar wind number density (thus the
where the Area constant is equal to: outwards radial acceleration) and the force of
gravity decline as inverse square laws, this allows
A = 0.081 2 the kinetic energy per unit mass to be computed via
the Work integral:
with the critical current:
2
= (1/) . = 2 (9)
IC = 1.55 106 amps 2 2

Which results in:

Replacing , with / in equation (2), and the
Solar Wind numerical density, gives the following
2 1 1
equation for the net radial acceleration against the = ( ) 2 [( ) ( )] (10)
2
Suns gravity :

3 2 0 0 2
After some rearranging:
0 0 ) 2 1
= 2 [ln ( )] ( 2 ( 2
) (6)

2
The thrust is the product of the relative velocity = [( ) 1] [1 ( )] (11)
2 .
and the effective area, itself a function of the inverse
of the relative velocity. The effective area therefore If the final radius is very large, this gives
increases as the relative velocity decreases, for a approximately the desired thrust to weight ratio to
mag-sail accelerating in the direction of the Solar achieve a given hyperbolic velocity, as a ratio with
Wind. This product, for a fixed current value, is the local escape velocity:
almost constant over the whole range of the ratio of
the relative velocity to the solar-wind velocity (1
2
0), see Figure 2. ( ) = 2 + 1 (12)

1.40000
1.20000
For example, launching from 0.25 AU, where the
1.00000 escape velocity is ~84 km/s, to reach a desired
0.80000 hyperbolic velocity of 240 km/s, requires the initial
acceleration to be ~ 9.11 times the local force of
0.60000 gravity, i.e. ~0.865 m/s2.
0.40000 The above approximation is true when the ratio
of the wire supercurrent is ~e times the critical
0.20000
current. For higher ratio values, (e.g. e3) more
0.00000 detailed numerical analysis of the relevant
0.00E+002.00E-014.00E-016.00E-018.00E-011.00E+00 equations, shows the required initial acceleration is
a small multiple (e.g. ~1.6 times) of this
Figure 2: Average Impulse vs Relative Velocity as Fraction of approximation.
Solar Wind Speed.
To minimise the mag-sail mass, but maximise
Therefore the effective area an optimal supercurrent, and thus
wire cross-sectional area and loop-mass, is
3
[ln ( )] 2 (7) desirable. To determine the optimal current at

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 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.

launch we first combine Equation (3) and (5) into the

ratio of the effective Area to the Mag-Sail mass:

3
0.0812 [( )] Jc/Je ri Ms (kg) R (km)

= (13) 0.25 1595 60
2( )
10 0.5 2747 104
1 4996 188
We define the term ( ) = and re-write the
. 0.25 545 41
equation, which gives:
5 0.5 875 66
0.081 [()]3 1 1484 112
=( )( ) (14)
0.25 163 31
2 0.5 242 46
The derivative is thus:
1 376 71
0.081 [()]2
( )=( )( ) (3 ln ) (15) Table 2: Mag-Sail Mass & Radius
2

The energy required for a given supercurrent

Which, when minimised, has the non-trivial
solution, k = e3. For a Solar Wind speed of 500 km/s,
the optimal supercurrent is ~51,900 amps. With a Je
of 43 GA/m2 and a density of 3,500 kg/m 3 a loop
would mass 26.51 kg/km of loop radius. The
effective area of the optimal current mag-sail is:
( ) = [( 3 )]3 = 27 = 6.87 2 (16)
Assuming a payload of 500 kg the mass and
radius of mag-sail needed to achieve, from a given
launch-radius, the necessary outwards radial
thrust/weight ratio can then be computed for various
mag-sail parameters by solving the following
equation [see Fig 2 for results]:
2(6.872 ) 2
= (17)
+2( )
Where:
= 3 / (18)
stored in a single loop is computed from the self-
inductance, defined in [14] as:
2
= 0 [ln(8/ ) 3/2] + 0 ( ) (19)
where the final correction term, is very small, as
the ratio of the wires cross section (~mm) to the
loop radius (~km) is small, meaning the self-
inductance can be usefully approximated as:
0 [(8/ ) 3/2] (20)
The magnetic energy stored in the loop is thus:
1
= 2
2 (21)
As an illustration, a 71 km radius wire-loop with
a 51.9 kiloamp supercurrent, stores almost 2.43 GJ
of magnetic-energy. This could be supplied by a
high performance one-shot battery bank that would
be ejected at the perihelion launch of the mag-sail
once fully powered.
Past the Heliosphere, at approximately 200 AU,
the mag-sail encounters the LISM, which has a
typical velocity of ~25 km/s, and a density of 105
ions per cubic metre [15].
To compute the Braking distance for a mag-sail
firstly requires the maximum distance, defined by [6]
as:

(10.081)
= (22)
ln2 ()4 2

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 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.

For an optimised mag-sail, with a e3 times the
minimum current, this simplifies to:
= (23)
2.916 2
bled off via a load in the vehicle, then re-energised
over several months via a 100 W supply from the
main vehicle bus.

4. Conclusion
Braking distance (assume ln(k)=3) is thus
(Equation 13, Gros [6]): That Mag-sails, optimised for the near
interstellar medium (<0.01 parsec), can achieve
9 1,000 AU distances in decades rather than
= (1 (ln( )+3)2
) (24) centuries, is the main result of this study. Speeds of
50-60 AU/year are feasible given high critical
To slow from 240 km/s to 30 km/s for an current density superconductors and adequate
optimised mag-sail (ln (k) = 3) thus means: multi-layer insulation to allow operation within 1 AU
of the Sun. Multi-layer insulating foils can perform
additional functions as meteorite bumpers and
= 0.6512
channels for cold gas, if active cooling is required.
While the multi-kilometre size of individual wires
Braking time requires numerical solution of the
seems large for spacecraft, its not unprecedented
following integral:
in terrestrial applications. High resolution MRI
machines have been built with 200 km of wire [16].
3 3
= 0 ( 1( ) (25) The very high critical current density seen in newer
) superconductors means useful kilometre lengths
need only mass kilograms.
As the integral is for the same x/xmax ratio, its Room temperature superconductors, such as
value for each mag-sail in Table 2 can be evaluated metallic hydrogen, doped graphite or polyhydrides,
as: will assist in accessing closer initial orbits to the
Sun. However, if braking against the ISM is

= 1.710439 ( ) (26) required, larger mag-sails are more optimal, so

extreme approaches to the Sun may not be
required. Launch radii between 0.5-1.0 AU can still
result in hyperbolic velocities of +50 AU/year.
This allows the braking distance and total travel
time to 1,000 AU to be computed for the mag-sails
(see Table 3)

ri Ms R t-total
Jc/Je (AU) (kg) M (kg) (km) x (AU) (years)
0.25 1595 2094 60 1253 **
10 0.5 2747 3247 104 654 29
1 4996 5496 188 335 24
0.25 545 1045 41 1336 **
5 0.5 875 1375 66 683 29
1 1484 1984 112 343 25
0.25 163 663 31 1517 **
2 0.5 242 742 46 769 31
1 376 876 71 378 25

Table 3: Braking distances and total travel times to 1,000

AU for the mag-sails from Table 2. ** indicates mission cant be
completed.

During the cruise phase, to avoid prematurely

braking against the ISM, the stored energy can be

Page 6 of 7
 Copyright 2017 Adam Crowl. All rights reserved.
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