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Re: starship-design: Back from the wed
On Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:35:21 -0700 wharton@physics.ucla.edu (Ken Wharton)
writes:
>
>simplest, but we have to give a lot of photons to each proton to get
>the
>energy/mass ratio to come out right. Each proton will need 230GeV
>imparted to it, and it seems unlikely we can give a proton that much
>energy from a microwave beam without an "active" engine, where the
>energy distribution is manipulated by an accelerating structure. For
>mm-sized microwaves, this is 10^15 photons per proton! Perhaps
>starting
>off with a lower proton energy would be okay; if you transfer all the
>energy, the slower the protons the more you slow down, paradoxically
>enough. The problem with slow protons, though, is that you need a LOT
>
>of them to do the job of a few fast ones. If you shoot off too much
>mass too slow you'll run out of sail material before you can slow down
>
>enough...
>
>Run with this, someone...
>
>Ken Wharton
Okay, I'll run with it. How about using a small supply of antimatter (
not sure yet how much ) and using this to heat the reaction mass to high
enough energies to make this efficient. For that matter, why not use the
tanker ideas to launch reaction mass to a ship, while it only carries the
necessary antimatter.
Jim Clem
>
>
>"No brakes? Well, no point in steering now"
>(Bob MacKenzie, Strange Brew)
>