starship-design: Beamed Power (was: Perihelion Maneuver)

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

On Monday, December 01, 1997 2:03 AM, KellySt@aol.com 
[SMTP:KellySt@aol.com] wrote:
>
> True, but since they can stay at home where normal ships can get at them
> and
> refuel them thats not as big a concern.  Also the power sats don't have 
to
> be
> light and easy to move.

Umm, not only do you have to fuel the power sats but you have to fuel the 
transports too...

> The emiters don't really bother me.  They are basically just big O'Neil
> style
> power sats, and their thrust might be easy to ofset by the solar sail
> effect
> from their solar collectors.  Keeping the beam cleanly focused into a
> beam
> that the sail can get into and get balenced thrust from over widly varing
> distences without refocusing is a bigger challege, and we'll probably 
need
> to
> waste the vast bulk of the power outside of the central sweet spot the
> sail
> needs to stay in (and that sweet spot will need to be far larger then the
> sail) so its efficency will be terrible.  But unless we come up with some
> much better physics trics it seem about as good as we'll be able to
> manage.

BTW, it is totally unnecessary for the sats to be in phase if you are using 
a laser sail concept. You are simply delivering a concentrated replacement 
for sunlight, it doesn't even have to be monochromatic. I'm not familiar 
enough with your microwave concept to know if you NEED coherent microwave 
energy at the the receiving end.

> At least the fuel/sail system itself seems prety solid and relyable.  No
> cryo
> tanks or unstable fuels.  Pretty simple brute force tech.


Lee
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