Re: starship-design: Solar Windsurfing: The Fastest-Ever Propulsion (So Far)

[Kevin Houston <kevin@urly-bird.com>]

What if the magnaetic bubble was also spinning (or varying it's field 
orientation in a cirular manner) like a magnuson effect wind-sail,
or a spinning baseball?  (let's ignore surface irregularity arguments 
for the moment.)

Would this allow one to "Tack" a spherical object against the wind.

I realize those are pressure effects, and that the solar wind may not 
be dense enough to provide much of a differential, but we might be
able to over come that by increasing the rotation speed.  (especially
if we are talking rotating energy, and not rotating mass.)

ok, it is early, and we all know that my physics is not the greatest,
but imagine a magnetic field spinning at a very high rate, with speed
control provided by the fastest dedicated CPU we can muster.

Now imagine a solar wind particle entering the sphere from one side,
it is moving at a pretty good clip.  Upon interacting with our mag-
field, the particle will be deflected 90 degrees (depending upon the
speed of the rotation) and the momentum vector will not point directly 
away from the sun, but off to one side or the other.

This will allow you to add to your orbital speed, thereby slowing
down, while moving to a larger orbit, or subtract from your orbital 
speed, thus moving into a tighter orbit, and speeding up.


Kevin Houston

"L. Parker" wrote:
> 
> Ben Franchuk wrote:
> 
> > Can this be used for local transport like from the Terra to Luna?
> > At the moment it looks to be one way only. How do you TACK against
> > the solar wind.
> 
> Unfortunately, I see no way to "tack" this craft. It is not a sail, in that
> it doesn't deflect anything. As far as being one way, well I suppose that is
> more a matter of charge than anything else. It should be possible to use
> this for braking a ship coming into a solar system as well. Weren't we
> looking at a system that would accelerate a craft out but couldn't slow it
> down? Here are the brakes....
> 
> Lee