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




In a message dated 9/1/99 12:16:24 PM, adam@crowl.webcentral.com.au writes:

>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.
>
>
>
>Still the mini-magnetosphere will make possible some cheap and fast
>
>non-nuclear OutPlanet missions, so more power to them!!!
>
>
>
>Adam

My thought was that the interstelar dust and debries might make a damn good 
ion flow and act like a solar wind while at speed .4c.  If you could cut down 
a good fraction of that speed before you have to hit the decel boost, you 
could save a ton of fuel.  I hadn't thought of using it as a sail for 
boosting out.  Interesting idea though.

Kelly