BOUNCE starship-design: Non-member submission from [Kevin C Houston <hous0042@garnet.tc.umn.edu>]

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@darkwing.uoregon.edu>]

owner-starship-design writes:
>From stevev@darkwing.uoregon.edu  Fri Jul 25 13:44:43 1997
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Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 15:44:36 -0500 (CDT)
From: Kevin C Houston <hous0042@garnet.tc.umn.edu>
To: "'LIT Starship Design Group'" <starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: starship-design: Timothy's beamed power paper
In-Reply-To: <19970723.230425.17582.0.jimaclem@juno.com>
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On Wed, 23 Jul 1997 jimaclem@juno.com wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 23 Jul 1997 18:17:13 -0500 "L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>
> writes:
> >Kelly,
> >
> >Why don't you try spinning the sail into shape? Ever seen a fisherman 
> >cast a throw net? He gives a little flick with his wrist to make it 
> >spin open.
> >
> >Lee
> >
> >
> This would work, but with the sail diameters I've seen, the centripetal
> acceleration required to keep the sail relatively flat (thought it would
> still present a convex face to the transmitter) will tear the sail apart.

Huh?  in zero gravity, even the slightest rotation will open up the sail.
and since the acceleration imposed by the beam will be evenly distributed,
the sail should not have to spin very fast.

Kevin