Re: starship-design: LINAC efficiency

["bugzapper" <bugzappr@bellsouth.net>]

Working on it, Steve. Learning all I never wanted to know about plasma
dynamics. Thinking about pushing a cone spiral of eroding (maybe sodium)
bullets, with lasers, ahead of the ship, ahead of rings and all. Would love
to induce vorticity in the medium, by this ionization on the boundaries of
bullet wake shockwaves. With sodium vapor curtains in front of you, the coup
de grace excitation to give ionization might come in the radio frequencies.
Shock ionization in the wake of a near-relativistic bullet.

Those bullets are part of our ship's eyes, also. We're kind of near-sighted
in front, the way that's dazzling bright blue. If there's anything waiting
for us forward, the bullet shock wave in the interstellar medium will glow
when it hits that speck, so we can shoot charge on the speck to repel it. If
it's bigger, we can divert a trailing bullet to meet it, and push on that
bullet hard. Bullet shock waves provide ionization, as I said, to help the
magnets push the wind our way.

The inflated magnet rings are pushed on with beams, so we can control their
charge. Making them mutually repulsive helps keep them balanced in their
conical stack. Making them positive gains us electrons, which the growbots
fire back to us in beams. Musings while I'm reading.

Johnny Thunderbird