Re: RE: starship-design: scoops and sails and something to push against.

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/5/98 7:44:51 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:

>Jeez Adam,
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>Excuse me while I re-plate the contacts on my modem card...it got kind of
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>hot <G>.
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>Several months ago I began a project which I posted a preview link to on my
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>website, outlining a timeline for the next 50 to 100 years. I got some
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>really good suggestions and some replies that it looked more like fiction
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>than a serious discussion relevant to this list.
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>It had a purpose however, and your diatribe hits precisely home. My point
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>then was (and still is) that we are attempting to define technologies and
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>design a ship without considering the infrastructure required to make ANY of
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>this possible. As you and Steve both intimate, there is more to building a
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>starship than throwing a bunch of hardware together and aiming it at the
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>nearest star.
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>I am still working on this timeline and I have spent a great deal of time
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>studying what not only NASA, but various private organizations and
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>individuals have put forward regarding known technologies and expected
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>advancements. Facts like the expected flight test of a VASIMR engine in
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>2005, successful laboratory testing of hybrid antimatter/fusion drives, etc.
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>The biggest thing we have to deal with though is NOT technology, its
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>infrastructure. Without the space based mining, manufacturing and production
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>infrastructure with years of experience in building functional, reliable,
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>dependable spacecraft - well we aren't going. I think that 2050 is maybe a
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>little soon for that kind of infrastructure. maybe I'm wrong, the American
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>frontier was certainly settled sooner, but I don't think so.
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>The major road block today is our various government's involvement in space
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>exploration. Unless we can get the private sector heavily involved in the
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>development of space, it will be two or three hundred years until we get to
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>a point where we can send out an interstellar probe.
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>In one thing at least you are right, when we do go, it will be in fleets.
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>Not necessarily all to one star system, but there will be hundreds and even
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>thousands of ships going out, to every star within reach, all looking for
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>one thing - a new chance on a new world.
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>Lee

I was with you Lee until the last paragraph.  Why would we start by launching
fleets of hundreds of ships?  We can't even figure out a compeling reason to
launch one.  Certainly "a new chance on a new world" seems off.  The one place
we couldn't settle would be the planets, and if were staying in space
platforms ther is no reason to leave this star system.

What angle are you figuring on here?

Kelly