Re: starship-design: Re: FTL travel

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Ben Franchuk writes:
 > Finding the equation just recently  Power (in watts) = ISP ( impulse )
 > * 9.8 ( g ) * N ( newtons of thrust ) / 2. Any propulsion system
 > would require MAMMOTH amounts of power. Heat dissipation is the limiting
 > factor here.

As has been pointed out before, fuel is the real limiting factor.
Fusion power is barely capable of driving a ship to relativistic speeds
with large, but not completely untenable, fuel-to-payload ratios.
Talking about building an interstellar spacecraft that uses fission
power is just plain ludicrous.  There isn't enough fissible material in
the solar system to power a spacecraft at 1 g acceleration for a whole
year.