Re: starship-design: Vapor Trail Fuel

["bugzapper" <bugzappr@bellsouth.net>]

Ben, "Reply All"; you're sending to me, and not to the list.

From: "Ben Franchuk" <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca>
> > certain engineering advances, notably geodesic structures and
superstrength
> > materials, which enable us to build large lightweight structures of high
> > strength. That makes the innate fragility of airships an obsolete
> > conception, since now we can build airships strong enough to take
powerful
> > engines like airplanes use. Wait till I build them, I'll show you.
>
> Hmm a Buckminster Fuller fan too I bet! His floating cities come to
> mind!
> Something like a Mile diameter buckyball with 1/2 atomspheric pressure.

That's right! One engineering calculation I'd like to make, is how strong a
geodesic/tensegrity structure you'd have to make, in order to have an
airship which uses plain old vacuum as its "lifting gas". Imagine a flying
lightbulb, which could make the transition from air to space and back
routinely. It might have a neutral buoyancy point miles up, so to get down
to the surface its crew would have to compress or even liquify air into
tanks, to serve as ballast. Build it in orbit, wrapped around a shipful of
high-grade vacuum, then just never allow air into the main lifting chamber.

Johnny Thunderbird