Re: starship-design: Collision sails and various things

[kyle <stk@sunherald.infi.net>]

Steve VanDevender wrote:
> 
> kyle writes:
>  > Greetings:
>  >
>  > I know I'll be ridiculed but:
>  >
>  > We need some serious thought into alternative propulsion ideas. These
>  > designs are great, but require so much fuel/energy to run, that they
>  > defeat the purpose. I have some ideas created by myself and NASA below:
>  >
>  > 1. collision sails: To ride QZPF/such as a sail would ride a laser beam
> 
> Huh?

QZPF: Quantum Zero Point Fluctuations

> 
>  > 2. transmission sails: To absorb, concentrate, and reemit QZPF/such
> 
> Huh?
> 
>  > 3. Field drives: To alter space in a way providing propulsive force
>  > (falling into your gravity well, etc.)
> 
> Huh?

Like rolling a barrel down a valley, but continually creating the valley
in front of your ship. Doesn't need negative matter! (a good thing)

> 
>  > 4. EM drives: distort gravity via electromagnetism. (ZPF is an
>  > electromagnetic phenomena).
> 
> Gravity is not an electromagneetic phenomenon, so far as anyone
> understands it currently.

Not Gravity, ZPF. ZPF is affected by electromagnetism, and gravity in
turn by ZPF. Gravity can't be directly altered by magnetism. (at least
we don't think it can).

> 
>  > 5. ????ideas anyone????
> 
> I'm willing to consider new ideas, but let's not rehash all these
> speculative ideas that we seem to agree are just too new and unproven to
> be useful in an engineering context.

But we can at least consider them, and create basic ideas of them. If we
don't, we'll probably stay stuck on matter/energy problems forever.
Besides, if we don't work on such ideas, they will never come to pass. 
> 
>  > These were not forbidden by the charter. Look at how far we've come
>  > since 1947! If anyone misunderstands, that date is only provided as a 50
>  > year ago reference, not the roswell incident time.
>  >
>  > We need to do some work on these. If NASA did, we might as well.
> 
> All the NASA work I've seen on these basically says that none of them
> are useful for spacecraft engineering at this time, even the ones that
> aren't in violent contradiction with known physics.

I generally agree, but still say we should work on them.

> 
>  > Kyle Mcallister
>  >
>  > "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
>  >                                              - Robert Millikan,
>  >                                   Nobel Prize in Physics (1923)