starship-design: Casimir-Foreward balloon

[Timothy van der Linden <Shealiak@XS4ALL.nl>]

Hi Connor,

Being comitted to things that are at times beyond my control, I had a bit
less time to answer your latest reply.

>alright, man, I'll do my best. I'm not sure what you mean by beam.
>If you are talking about a microwave beam sent from earth or another
>part of the balloon, there is none.
> ...
>I'm not trying to short change you, I honestly don't understand what
>you are asking. I'm not good with words, so if you could draw me some
>kind of illustration I could probably be of more help.

I wasn't assuming that you did not want to understand me. I was merely
trying to figure out why you reasoned or felt that this design could work. 

I was so inquisitive because your design seemed a lot like "something for
nothing", which rarely if ever happens. Futhermore it seemed that you
created order from randomness, which is difficult to do also. (Ie.
accelerating a starship in one direction from randomly directed microwaves.)

Your design is too complex to explain for me. (I've tried obvious and less
obvious simplifications, but they never become easier to explain.)

I also could not find a translation to Steve's design. (Which is relative
easy to explain why it works.)

Now, rather than to simplify your design, I conclude that there are no
inconsistensies in the physics: More photons do leave via the exit than
enter via the exit. (As you said all along.)

Then by use of the conservation of momentum, I can only conclude that the
balloon must get the momentum in the opposite direction of the photons
which leave via the exit.

I must say that rather than finding no inconsistensies, I would rather have
found the exact reason of why your design works. Yet, I think it is just
too complex to analyse with ease.
This disconfort will likely generate more trouble when you "explain" it to
others.

I overestimated the ease of proving this design to be false or true. I'm
sorry about that.

Timothy