Re: starship-design: My two cents

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Ken writes:

>Steve and Timothy have had this argument before.  I think the misunderstanding
>is stemming from what they mean by minimizing "Energy".

I guess you are right with your analysis about us. (However, I think Steve
knew what I meant with energy. As far as I know Steve never mentioned
minimizing energy. (I used to call his approach minimizing mass))

>So, as I understand it, right now Timothy is right about there being an
>"optimum" exhaust speed because it's tough to turn mass into energy.  But
>given that antimatter might make this easy in the future, Steve's slant
>could very well be correct by the time we build the spaceship.

Turning mass into energy by using anti-matter is indeed easy. Even if making
anti-matter becomes easy (do you mean efficient?) then you still need the
energy to make it (which still is an awful lot).

Anyhow, if (useful) energy becomes "free", then no one needs to bother about
an efficient design. Just use the design that is easiest.

Timothy