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starship-design: Re: Perihelion Maneuver
L. Parker wrote:
>On Saturday, December 06, 1997 10:31 AM, Isaac Kuo
>[SMTP:kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu] wrote:
>> My personal favorite is a modified MagOrion, where a track of nuclear
>> bombs are used to accelerate a large superconducting magsail. The
>> bombs are detonated far from the magsail so that the exposure to
>> hard radiation is minimized and the push from the fraction of ions
>> which "hit" the sail is spread out.
>You really ought to check out Penn State's page on ICAN and the antimatter
>catalyzed fission/fusion rocket. It is basically a modified Orion concept
>that is much more refined than the original. Besides the fact that the
>hardware is already being tested, it offers a lot more in near term
>improvement potential.
While very promising, I don't like to trust the results of any one
research group no matter how prestigious.
>I haven't even used any hardware here that isn't already in existence or
>made any assumptions that are really weird.
I personally expect positive results, but would not count on any
projected numbers until a full scale thruster was built and tested.
--
_____ Isaac Kuo kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu http://www.csc.lsu.edu/~kuo
__|_)o(_|__
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