"It'd be a fresh start, on a new world."
Over 4 light years from Earth, in the Alpha Centauri star system, was Pandora.
This Earth-like moon of the gas giant Polyphemus was rich with alien flora and fauna,
and the only place known to bear unobtanium.
This room-temperature superconductor had unique properties that allowed it
to spontaneously levitate within magnetic fields.
These properties, and its superconductivity, revolutionised multiple industries on Earth.
It also allowed the creation of much smaller and more efficient interstellar vehicles than
the original four kilometer long craft that travelled to Alpha Centauri.
This fleet of newer ISVs constantly looped between Earth and Pandora
to facilitate the transport of unobtanium.
In order to make this cargo route both economical and rapid enough
for investors to see returns within their lifetimes, a propulsion system
capable of both high thrust and high efficiency was required.
The solution was a two-part system;
the first of which was a 16 kilometer diameter carbon nanotube sail,
pushed by the intense energy of a beamed-power laser at Earth.
The sail and its rigging were coated in a 99.99999% reflective material
to maximise thrust and reduce heating from the laser.
A mirror shield protected the rest of the craft from the intense beam.
The second part of the system was a pair of matter-antimatter engines,
built using unobtanium to generate the tremendous magnetic fields required
to contain and direct the energy from the matter-antimatter annihilation.
This energy was then thrust augmented by injecting hydrogen directly into the nozzle,
creating twin exhaust plumes of superhot plasma that stretched over 30 kilometers in length.
This necessitated angling the engines slightly outward to ensure
they wouldn’t instantly vaporise the mirror shield behind them,
as well as reflective thermal shielding on key parts of the structure.
Directly attached to these two engines were gigantic solid radiators
for dissipating what little heat didn’t go into the exhaust plume.
Large amounts of radiation was also created by the engines,
requiring some form of shielding to protect the crew, passengers and cargo.
Since radiation intensity drops off rapidly with distance,
and because spacecraft need to keep mass as low as possible,
the payload section needed to be placed hundreds of meters away from the engines.
To fit within these constraints, a lightweight tensile structure
towed behind the engines was used,
with the payload section hanging at the end of it.
Placed furthest away from the engines was a pair of crew modules
mounted on long, rotating booms to provide artificial gravity.
When under thrust, the booms folded flat along the truss.
Next up the truss were three habitation modules that contained 200 passengers in cryosleep,
as well as amnio tanks with developing avatars.
"They fully mature on the flight out."
If any passengers cryovault failed in transit, they were euthanised before waking up.
There simply wasn’t enough primary life support capacity
or food supplies for any extra people.
A temporary system provided oxygen and CO2 scrubbing
for periods when passengers were not in cryosleep.
Above that was the docking module for a pair of Valkyrie shuttles
used for transferring crew and cargo between Pandora and the ISV.
Some communications equipment was also mounted here.
Closest to the engines were the cargo containers, stacked in ranks
and arranged around the central truss.
For the journey from Earth to Pandora, the ISV carried:
200 passengers
Universal object-manufacturing plant components.
These giant 3D-printers allowed creation of items on Pandora
that were too large to directly ship, such as;
bucket wheel excavators,
dump trucks
and remotely operated bulldozers.
Also in the cargo was:
Highly complex items that could not be made on site,
like computer processors and other electronics,
as well as aircraft powerplant turbines.
Drugs and medication
Data modules containing designs for equipment to be built
Two Valkyrie shuttles
And amnio tanks with developing avatars.
For the return journey back to Earth, the cargo consisted of:
Mostly refined unobtanium,
taking priority over everything else due to how much it was worth.
"This little grey rock sells for twenty million a kilo."
This was packaged in native Pandoran wood, carefully recovered at Earth and sold on.
More data modules, this time containing the molecular structure
of Pandoran organic compounds for synthesis on Earth
Small, low mass Na’vi artifacts for sale to wealthy collectors
A limited number of passengers.
Since cargo mass was prioritised for unobtanium, only those who had finished their tour of
duty on Pandora were permitted to return to Earth.
Anyone requiring severe medical attention that could not
be solved on Pandora were instead euthanised.
Only the very highest executives were exempted from this policy.
To save mass, the Valkyrie shuttles were left behind,
with older ones being converted to automated gas harvesters for refueling ISVs.
The flight plan for an ISV was as follows, with all times being in Earth years;
First, the laser sail was used to accelerate at 1.5g for 0.46 years,
up to the cruising speed of 210,000 kilometers per second, or 70% of lightspeed.
Once there, the sail was automatically retrieved, folded and stored by service robots.
The entire craft then flipped over, and deployed the mirror shield.
This was made of multiple layers which separated and were moved by small thrusters
thousands of kilometers in front of the ISV to act as debris shields.
These protected the ship from interstellar dust grains
during the 5.83 year long coast phase.
At the end of this phase, the shields rejoined the ship.
The matter-antimatter engines were then ignited,
decelerating the ISV at 1.5g for 0.46 years, into Pandora orbit.
The vessel remained there for 1 year, during which
cargo, propellant and supplies were transferred on board.
For the return to Earth, the same flight plan was reversed;
The matter-antimatter engines burned for 0.46 years, accelerating at 1.5g up to 70% of lightspeed,
where the ISV flipped and the shield was deployed for the 5.83 year long coast.
Then the shield was retrieved and the laser sail deployed
for a 0.46 year long deceleration at 1.5g to Earth orbit.
There were some technical issues with the ISV that marred its otherwise realistic design.
Due to their extreme power, the waste heat from the matter-antimatter engines
may have been too much for the radiators to handle.
The exhaust plumes would’ve been extremely hot,
and though they were angled away from the ship,
the thermal protection that was on board was likely not sufficient.
The laser system would’ve been just as obscenely powerful.
It's likely that it would’ve output several hundred petawatts of beamed power.
For comparison, the total amount of sunlight hitting the entirety of the Earths surface
is only 174 petawatts.
With laser technology this advanced, why not also use it for the Pandora side of the journey?
A relatively minor issue was the debris shield not being available
during the acceleration and deceleration phases.
This left the ISV vulnerable for 13% of its travel time.
Despite that, the design remains one of,
if not THE most realistic fictional spacecraft in popular science fiction.
Representing the pinnacle of human technology,
the ISV Venture Stars incredible acceleration and efficiency
made the interstellar transport of unobtanium economical.
This single minded approach to cargo transport,
while certainly an appropriate optimisation for interstellar craft,
came at a cost for the people it transported.
This attention to detail demonstrates more facets of the overall theme
of colonialism and rampant exploitation present in the film.
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