Re: starship-design: Mini-Magnetosphere and Star-Travel

[Ben Franchuk <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca>]

Steve VanDevender wrote:
> 
> Ben Franchuk writes:
>  > So what happened to the tacking into the wind, for the return trip home.
>  > A insystem ram scoop is a good idea --
> 
> Tacking works in water sailing because a boat is resistant to
> moving sideways through the water.  When you tack the wind on the
> sail produces a sideways thrust component that is strongly
> resisted by the boat's orientation in the water and a forward
> component that isn't, so the boat makes net forward motion
> (especially if you zig-zag).  Unfortunately that isn't a property
> of spaceships, so they can't tack.  There's a certain amount you
> can do if the spaceship is already in orbit around the star; you
> can arbitrarily raise or lower the spaceship's orbit using a sail
> to produce thrust components with or against the ship's orbital
> motion.  But you can't accelerate a ship towards the star with
> the sail any better than just furling the sail and letting the
> star's gravity pull you in.

The whole topic of the disscussion started because of tapping into the solar
wind.
1)  Solar wind
2)  Magnetic sail 

    ]---------------------------------------------------
    ]------------------------#-------------------------- wind
sun ]-----------------------#---------------------------
    ]----------------------#--sail#1--------------------
    ]----------------------#########---sail#2-----------

So you add a second sail to provide your sideways resistance.
Problem solved I think.
what about the ship designs that use a wind driven upright turbine
that turns the propeller of the ship? can that be adapted here?

-- 
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
 	Albert Einstein