starship-design: Moon/asteroid/frame

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

To Kelly

>>Moons can have a clear view all the time, you are probably thinking in 2
>>dimensions. Think of the polar star, it never goes under the horizon (that
>>is on most places of the Northern half of the World). So while some
>>locations on a moon indeed won't have a clear view all the time, lots of
>>other places on that moon will.
>
>That would of course depend on which star your going to.  Few of interest
>are near the poles.  Also I also mentioned a clear view of the ship and/or
>sun.  Planets and moons rotate, so a solar powered maser array would have a
>problem in local night.

That's why I suggested to put our own moon into orbid, either we pull some
asteroid in a useful orbit (seems like a nice project for starters, which
may even be very useful, since we may want to do that more often in the future)
or we build a frame to which all lasers/masers are attached.
The frame or asteroid can be given any motion around the Sun, the advantage:
A 100% view of both the Sun and the destination system all the time.
(The plane of rotation around the Sun will be perpendicular on the direction
to the destination and the rotation time of the frame around it's own axis
will be the same as its rotation time around the Sun.)

>Photo recoil is a concern given the power levels were talking about, but
>that assumes the transmitters aren't massive.

Indeed, even an asteroid 1000 times heavier than the ship will be pushed too
much, only if we use real moons recoil isn't a problem.

All in all I would think a frame with lasers and photocells (or whatever)
would do the best job, another advantage of frames is that there is hardly a
size limit...


Tim