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Re: starship-design: Tugs



Kelly wrote:

>>>>>That would only work if the sail is anchored to something by cables.
>>>>> Otherwise its effectivly a sheet of paper blown in the wind (or a domed
>>>>>shaped peice of paper if you prefer.).
>>>>
>>>>I figured the sail always had to be anchored by cables...
>>>
>>>Anchored to what?  Unless the anchor weighs enough it can't 'anchor' the
>>>sail.  In the case of fuel/sail, the sail is 400 times heavier.
>>
>>Anchored to the ship. The ship doesn't need to be heavier, it just should
>>want to accelerate less than the sail, which it does as soon as you cut the
>>cables.
>
>But the ship is (in my Fuel/Sail idea) 1/400th the weight of the sail.  So
>the ship's weight is probably not enough to stablize the sail.

The weight difference only modifies the speed at which changes can be made.
Indeed of the imbalances in the sail occur faster than then they can be
corrected, then we are in trouble.
But thinking about this, why did you want to make the sail so heavy? Why not
just put all that fuel in tank sattached to the ship and make the sail as
light as possible?

Timothy