RE: starship-design: Interstellar mission within fifty years

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

Zenon,

> Thank you, it means it is still only on paper, as I claimed.

Huh?

> Again, exactly my point.
> So I do not understand why we seem to quarrel on these issues?  ;-)

I give up, its not worth the effort...

> > Are we both talking about Penning traps?

> It seems so...

No it doesn't, which is why I asked.

> You are right, of course, with flash powder.
> But consider the question of scale -
> the difference between flash burn and blowing the hand off
> is very tiny as compared with the difference
> between blowing the hand off and propelling a starship...

No its not, you missed the point.

> Sorry, I stated it probably in too shortened a form.
> I meant "not real working space drive".
> For me, it can be called "real working space drive"
> only after being tested in space.
>
> > I never claimed VASIMR was interstellar capable, quite the opposite, I
> > specifically stated that it wasn't.
> >
> I admit that. But then it is not good as an example of technology
> ready to be used for starships - and my discussion from the very
> beginning was specifically about starhip technology.

It is in fact  good example. Nobody on this list thinks that there is a
workable stardrive already built and tested in space today and that was
neither the original question nor the point of this discussion. The question
was what is likely to be available in fifty years? ACMF, AIMSTAR and VASIMR
all show orders of magnitude improvement over what was state of the art only
a few years ago. As such they are perfect examples of what MAY be possible,
which is where we started.

> Possibly they do.
> But an attempt to do a more precise comparison
> would be useful anyway. I think it can be done more
> precisely than our gueses and speculations here.

Its been done.

Lee