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

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/1/99 1:18:46 PM, bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca writes:

>Adam Crowl wrote:
>> 
>> Hi SD
>> 
>> The system seems to have a lot of potential within this system but as
>an
>> interstellar drive it's pretty pitiful except for missions to the solar
>> focus at 550 AU or so. It's maximum velocity is limited to the speed
>of the
>> solar wind which is only 500-1000 km/s, so it'd be a long time between
>stars
>> unless you had a secondary drive or a working ramscoop. A better system
>> would be a magneto-sail pushed up to interstellar speeds by a massive
>> particle beam. Powered by fusion it'd push the costs of probe launches
>way
>> down since it'd only take a few hours at a time to accelerate probes
>up to ~
>> 0.3c or so. I think all this has been discussed before and the basic
>design
>> settled on involves a lithium-fusor launched via a beam/laser to 0.3c
>[?],
>> boosted to 0.4c by fusors and deccelerated by a mag-sail.
>> 
>
>So what happened to the tacking into the wind, for the return trip home.

Doesn't work.  Only works in system because your 'tacking' is really altering 
your orbit traj around the sun.


>A insystem ram scoop is a good idea -- 



Kelly