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Re: Mirrors (Round 3)





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From: T.L.G.vanderLinden
To: KellySt; kgstar; stevev; jim; zkulpa; hous0042; rddesign; David; 
lparker; bmansur
Subject: Re: Mirrors (Round 3)
Date: Friday, March 08, 1996 4:31PM

To Brain,

>Here is the idea.  Perhaps we could have these 10 km wide mirrors focus 
into
>a mirror aparatus connected to them.  This aparatus could refocus the beam
>and spit it out to the Asimov like a full blown maser.  The mirror complex
>should weigh less than the alternative maser generator hardware (I hope). 
 I
>wonder if  power losses due to reflection would beat out converting maser
>beams to electricity and then back to maser beams.

Please give me a clue about how this aparatus works. You cannot use curved
mirrors alone, since they are a priory not perfectly curved.
And if you have figured out how you can turn a diffusive beam of light into
a parallel beam using mirrors only, I'm very interested since that would be
worth some money.

Brian.
You are right.  We would have to run the beam through a lense that would 
bend the beams to parallel vectors.  Found that out just thirty minutes ago. 
 Not going to be easy to accomplish on a retro mirror if wavelengths tend to 
change through doplar shifts

NOTE TO GROUP:  I have to go now but I wanted to forwarn you about a 
conclusion I had about this whole retro-mirror, light-sail propulsion, 
automotive technology problem.  Its coming tomorrow so get ready for me to 
slam the hammer down.  (hint: I plan on breaking a lot of unneeded 
glass/plastic mirrors, etc. and completely rewriting the mission 
definition).   Got to go to class.  RIGHT NOW!