Re: Orbit B

[Brian Mansur <bmansur@oc.edu>]

 ----------
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.