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Re: Re: RE: RE: starship-design: Re: Perihelion Maneuver



KellySt@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 12/1/97 7:50:01 AM, kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu wrote:

>>You can say Forwards pure sail system is also "simple brute force tech".
>>Actually, it requires much less technology than this "fuel/sail" idea.
>>It doesn't require exotic fusion technology.

>However the drop sial/reflector had serious problems and would probably not
>be able to function, much less acuratly target and decelerate the ship.
> Which is why we droped it from consideration a couple years ago.

The technical problems with Forward's pure sail system are dwarfed by
the technical challenge of building the astronomical beam emitter
system in the first place.

Consider that even his proposed 1000km lens for the smallest of his
Starwisp proposals is already ludicrously beyond anything we can
seriously think of building in the foreseeable future.

>>However, the sheer size of that "brute force" is inconceivably massive.

>So was the Sat-V concept at the time.  But I agree the scale and its implied
>cost are critical problems.

No it wasn't.  It's only a couple orders of magnitude larger than its
predecessors.

The manned sail system is more like a dozen orders of magnitude beyond
what we've ever done in critical areas.

>>Especially when you consider that a modified design would only require
>>a fraction of a percent of the effort.

>But as I listed before, and went over with numbers, your modified design
>wouldn't save a dramatic amount of power (possibly none), but would add a
>serious intercept problem (scatering your hundreds of fuel packages over
>about a light year and a half).

You did not.  You didn't even read my modified design (much less
understood it).

As I stated it, the power requirement was reduced by two orders of
magnitude.  If you want to dispute it, then at least read the
details to my modified design.
-- 
    _____     Isaac Kuo kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu http://www.csc.lsu.edu/~kuo
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