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starship-design: Quiet starship-design List



Hi Andrew,

>I've not seen anything about collisions - the journey would last at least 5
>or 6 years, and in that time a ship might hit an interstellar micro
>meteorite or something...  You would need some impressive equiptment to see
>(& avoid or destroy) objects a millimeter across, and if that were to hit
>you, it'd just go straight through if you were travelling at 0.9c...

Solutions that have been given:

1. Create a dust/plasma cloud in front of the ship and push it forward (and
replenish it when it dilutes. Assuming it is a plasma cloud, you may be
able to contain it a bit by using magnetic fields.
The idea is that the plasma cloud will act like Earth's atmosphere and
diffuse any incoming particles or dust.

2. Use powerful lasers that ionize/evaporate anything in their beam. Then
use lasers and/or magnetic fields to push the ions aside.

3. Just make a thick solid shield and hope that it can withstand the impacts.


>Oh, and http://huizen.dds.nl/~shealiak/sd/calc/calc.html is not working
>anymore - I was just understanding it too :) Has it moved somewhere, or is
>it permamently down?

It is permanently down at "dds.nl" but can now and hopefully long hereafter
be found at:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~shealiak/sd/calc/calc.html

(And the rest of my site at http://www.xs4all.nl/~shealiak)

Timothy