starship-design: Black holes and the rocket equation

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

L. Parker writes:
 > Let's nip this one in the bud early on, do you guys want to make a stab at 
 > guessing the MASS of a black hole? Tell me how you are going to get enough 
 > thrust out of the black hole to MOVE it....

Who needs to guess?  Black holes can be any size you want.  Unless a
successful quantum gravity theory puts a minimum limit on black hole
size based on the size of a quantum of space, there's no size minimum
and hence no mass minimum,

If I remember correctly, R = G * M/(2 * c^2): R = Schwarzchild radius, M
= mass, G = gravitational constant, c = speed of light.

Small black holes also make better thrusters; they evaporate much, much
faster.  Any stellar-sized black hole doesn't evaporate quickly enough
to be useful for that purpose.