Re: starship-design: Deceleration scheme

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/30/97 7:47:03 PM, TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van
der Linden) wrote:

>Jim wrote
>
>>Sigh, I'm beginning not to like the sail concept as much.  It is simple
>>and elegant, but between the deceleration problems, plus the difficulties
>>of such mega-structure operation, and the power beam generation problems,
>>I think the use of matter-antimatter and/or fusion ideas may be the
>>ultimate best way to go.
>
>Glad you realize that. (Actually that was my motivation for making that
>summary about beaming ;)
>
>However as long as anti-matter can't be made much more efficient than
>transmission & transform efficiencies for beaming then it isn't likely to be
>used.
>
>Timothy

Anti-mater offers lots of power, but is virtually unusable due to its
incredable cost and difficulty in storing large quantities (thousands of
tons, at least!) for years to decades, and the difficulty inrefuling the ship
for the return flight.

A pure fusion ship is still to heavy (a 160,000 to one fuel ration for a explo
rer class) unless you use some tricks (like Explorers laser fuel launchers,
or fuel/Sail) to offset the boost fuel problem.

Until some new physics tric is found, thats about all we have.  Do-able, but
groesly inefficent and costly.

Kelly