Project Valkyrie

The Valkyrie is a theoretical spacecraft designed by Charles Pellegrino and Jim Powell (a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory). The Valkyrie is theoretically able to accelerate to 92% the speed of light and decelerate afterward, carrying a small human crew to another star system.
Design
The Valkyrie's high performance is attributable to its innovative design. Instead of a solid spacecraft with a rocket at the back, Valkyrie is built more like a train, with the crew quarters, fuel tanks, radiation shielding, and other vital components being pulled behind the engine on long tethers. This greatly reduces the mass of the ship, because it no longer requires heavy structural members and radiation shielding. Where a comparable conventional design like Project Daedalus would weigh several thousand tons Valkyrie weighs a mere 100 tons without fuel. This is a considerable advantage because in a rocket every extra kilogram of payload (dry mass) will...