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Re: Orbit B
- To: Kevin C Houston <hous0042@maroon.tc.umn.edu>, Timothy van der Linden <T.L.G.vanderLinden@student.utwente.nl>
- Subject: Re: Orbit B
- From: Brian Mansur <bmansur@oc.edu>
- Date: Sat, 09 Mar 96 17:15:00 PST
- Cc: bmansur <bmansur@oc.edu>, David <David@InterWorld.com>, jim <jim@bogie2.bio.purdue.edu>, KellySt <KellySt@aol.com>, kgstar <kgstar@most.magec.com>, lparker <lparker@destin.gulfnet.com>, rddesign <rddesign@wolfenet.com>, stevev <stevev@efn.org>, zkulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>
- Encoding: 68 TEXT
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From: Kevin C Houston
To: Timothy van der Linden
Cc: KellySt; kgstar; stevev; jim; zkulpa; rddesign; David; lparker; bmansur
Subject: Re: Orbit B
Date: Friday, March 08, 1996 5:36PM
> To Kevin,
> Great, now we only need a way to accelerate that asteroid you are talking
about.
> Tim
Okay, I'm going to try to do some ascii art that i hope will make things
clearer. Itried once already, but then lost the connection, and the
stupid university computer didn't save my file. AAARRRGGGHHH!
anyway, here goes:
Sol is on the left, TC is on the right. R is the retro-reflector, A is
the Asimov
Stage one: acceleration of Retro-rflector. (these photons are ~)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~R
the mass of the retro reflector is about 2 E9 Kg (sound familer?)
the beam is 1 E18 watts the reflector gets to .75 C and coasts.
Stage two:
decellerating energy is sent (ahead of the asimov)(these photons are =)
one LY long tail end of accel energy
================> ~~~~R (.75C)
Stage three:
Asimov is accelerated to near light speed (these photons are ~)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A <================R ( approx C)
Stage four: Sol-based Accel beam cuts out at halfwaypoint.
Just as Retro reflected beam catches up to Asimov
Note, the decell beam (==) will be red-shifted, but that's okay, beacuse
when Asimov plows into it, it will blue-shift it :)
~A <====================== R
Stage five: Asimov uses the decell beam to slow down to Target star.
Kevin
Wonderful scheme Kevin. Too bad I've given up hope on a Retro-mirror.
Maybe a miracle will happen though to change my mind. By the way. Using
that relativity equation:
mc^2/(1 - v^2/c^2)^.5 - mc^2
I figured out that for over E19, we could get a 100E6 ton ship up to 1/3c if
the acceleration was applied over 10 or 20 years.