starship-design: Re: Starship Design

[Kelly St <KellySt@aol.com>]

In a message dated 3/10/98 7:35:31 PM, you wrote:

>A few questions regarding your several ship designs:
>(BTW, I found the site to be very slow in loading and light on
>information. Is it still being maintained?)

I'm not sure its being maintained.  What you see is a draft of what I did
about 2 years ago, and I haven't done anymore work on it.


>How would the energy be provided from Earth? Satellites, I assume, since
>the water vapor in the atmosphere would effectively scatter any
>microwave beams, making them unfocusable.

Not from Earth.  From power sats in solar orbit.  LOTS! of power sats.

>Then the question becomes how to get the vast amounts of energy from
>Earth to the satellites. Laser? Has anyone done any efficiency tests on
>a way to do this?
>
>Why can't a traditional design be accomplished? Can't you build a ship
>that is assembled part by part, launched into orbit by rocket and
>assembled in orbit? ----

Esentially thats what were doing, give or take a lot more assembly in orbit.
Thou I supose a lot of the structure would be easier to make in space with
local materials.

>---Use a nuclear fusion pulse engine system. I read
>this would be accomplished by creating a string of mini nuclear
>expolsions microseconds apart from each other. Dosen't this give you
>near-relativistic speeds?

It can't get you near light speed, they take to much fuel.  Actually the
voltage compresion fusion engines I used are similar to the pulse fusion
systems your talking about.   

>I guess you would still have to steer the craft with chemical thrusters,
>but since you basically are going one direction for most of the trip to
>another solar system, this amount of  chemical fuel could be light.

Its more efficent to use fusion systms.  Besides you don't need to turn on
route.

>Crafts would be unmanned, of course, but with artificial intelligence
>going the way it is, by 2050 you should have quite a robust machine
>"intelligence". Just pop the same sensors as the Cassini probe on this
>craft, program it to drop several probes onto planets it encounters in
>the target solar system and radio back results. I guess everything would
>have to be massively redundant.
>
>Would something like this be feasible or not? More expensive or not? I
>guess my question is: why fiddle with emerging technologies when you can
>accomplish the same thing with proven tech. ?

Because we can't accomplish the same thing.  Cassini like probes can't tell
you much about other starsystems, and they certainly can't give them new
commands if they find something.  Most people don't recognise that for every
space probe or astrounaut their are hundreds back on the ground lending a
helping hand.  But they can't communicate across interstellar distences.  So
you have to bring them, and all their equipment along.  Which needs a big
ship, which needs a far bigger power source to drive it.


>--
>Greg Leber
>lebermac@ix.netcom.com


Kelly Starks