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

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

> From: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
> [mailto:owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu]On Behalf Of Steve
> VanDevender
> Kevin Houston writes:
>  > 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.
>
> It's been a while since my college physics course and its coverage of
> electromagnetism, but I think making the magnetic field spin
> is probably
> not going to be that effective.  I do remember fairly clearly that
> charged particles spiral around magnetic field lines, since I had a
> physics lab that demonstrated this experimentally;
> continuously changing
> the orientation of the magnetic field will probably not do what you're
> hoping it would do.
>
> I suspect simply orienting the magnetic field in a particular way
> without continuously varying the orientation would deflect the charged
> particles in the solar wind to produce some ability to steer
> the thrust
> so it wouldn't have to be exactly parallel to the solar wind's flow.

Actually, I think it would be simplest to just vary the potential of the
magnetic field on one side to create an imbalanced thrust....

Lee