Re: Orbit B

[T.L.G.vanderLinden@student.utwente.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Kelly,

>> But I planned the retro-mirror would be at about the same size as the
>> earth-array. (Sounds awful doesn't it?)
>
>Doesn't sound possible.  You'ld have to get some divergence.  You'ld need to
>send a beam much larger than the sail/reflector in order to make sure their
>was an acceptable sized hot zone for the ship to manuver slightly in.

So then indeed the retro-mirror should be 10 times bigger than the
Earth-array (and 100 times bigger than the sail). But is that impossible (A
100 kilometre sail radius).

>> No, the back- and forward beam aren't at the same place, 
>> they are at besides each other.
>
>Then the relfector (and ship) would be under lateral thrust that would shove
>it out of the beam, and the reflector work have to aim to hit the ship.
> Since it couldn't know or see the ship to aim, it would presumably miss.

But don't you remember my "2-beams side-to-side" solution (which I reasently
posted again especially for Brian).

>> With the capture and retransmit array (that has to be just 
>> about as large as the beam)
>
>How would that help?  The beam from earth would be fluttery by the time it
>got to the reflector or retransmitter array.  So that would chew up the
>microwave converters of catcher mesh (depending).

Hmm yes, unless you made the collectors and the masers far enough apart
(which is necessary anyway, to overcome that the back- and forward beam
aren't in the same path).

>> >How the hell do you focus a lose flapping mesh sheet, the size of jupiter,
>> >while its taking 100s-1000's-? of G in acceleration?
>
>> I still don't agree with the size of the sail and the beam. The sail should
>> at maximum be 1 kilometre radius and the beam max 100 km radius.
>> And if we can make this thing work, I assume the accuracy could be made
>better too.
>
e18 in a 1Km beam?  Kept that tight over interstellar distences?  Neat trick.

I don't see why you could keep a 100 km beam accurate enough but not a 1 km
beam. Can't we increase this accuracy 100 times? We never did a study of the
accuracy of the beam, we always assumed some fictional number. I tried
figuring it out but so far no luck.
If 1 km is not enough to make course corrections, I wonder if 100 km is?

>> The mirror would not accelerate any faster than the Asimov, since we are
>> smart enough to add some extra weight (if it isn't heavy from itself).
>
>Thats a lot of waste mass, and it wouldn't effect it flaping.

The idea was to use the mass in a contructive way, thus as support.

Tim