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Re: starship-design: Moon/asteroid/frame
At 11:58 AM 10/29/96, Timothy van der Linden wrote:
>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
Given Rex was talking about arrarys hudreds of thousands of miles across, I
think a fixed structure is a no-go.
Kelly
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Kelly Starks Phone: (219) 429-7066 Fax: (219) 429-6859
Sr. Systems Engineer Mail Stop: 10-39
Hughes defense Communications
1010 Production Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46808-4106
Email: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com
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