Re: starship-design: Engine Parameters

["N. Lindberg" <nlindber@u.washington.edu>]

Kyle, 
	I read an article on this in Physics Today recently.  For _one_
human, you would need a magnet as large as your living room, and the
person couldn't move around much. A religious leader wanted one to
levitate him in front of his audience, bad luck.  As for the health
effects of magnetic fields, volunteers have spent time in fields up to 7
(I think) gauss with no measureable ill effects. Also, being levitated
doesn't seem to bother the frogs much.
Best Regards,
Nels Lindberg


On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Kyle R. Mcallister wrote:

> N. Lindberg wrote:
> > 
> > Lee,
> >         here are some comments on your low/medium/high categories.
> > An acceleration of 90 m/ss for your high engine performance is
> > impractical.  This is for the simple reason that this equals about nine
> > gee's.  Even if an engine could be made to do this, no human frame can
> > take that much acceleration for more than a few minutes (here I assume we
> > continue with the idea of manned missions, even an unmanned vessel's
> > electronics would have to be special built to take the strain).
> > Military pilots wearing g-suits are limited to 9.5 gees for a few
> > seconds.
> 
> I've been thinking about this, and the diamagnetic leviation experiments
> (the floating frog). I wonder, might it be possible to apply this to a
> starship to lessen the acceleration stresses on a human body? Then
> again, the high magnetic fields would probably be dangerous...any
> thoughts on this one?
> 
> Kyle R. Mcallister
>