5 ms·
Well that's silly. How do they plan to decelerate?
by colanderman 10y ago
Well that's silly. How do they plan to decelerate?
- valarauca1 10y agoIf you project a large magnetic field the extra-solar ionized gas (intergalatic, between stars) can exert a fair amount of drag. A lot of people talk about bussard collector (magnetic scope for hydrogen/helium) to power fusion. But instead of collecting gas use it as a drag chute.
- evgen 10y agoYou have two sails in concentric rings that are connected, with your craft attached to the outer ring. When you want to decelerate you disconnect the two rings and and tweak the reflection of the inner ring to be somewhat outward focused and give the inner ring a little push. As it moves forward the energy bouncing off the inner ring is directed backwards to the outer ring, which slows. As long as the inner ring reflect more energy backwards (and to the outer ring) than the outer ring is getting from your source the outer ring slows down. Really hard to describe, but easy to draw. First proposed by Robert L. Forward.
- Darthy 10y agoImages here: http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf (pages 5, 7 and 8).
- yazaddaruvala 10y agoWhy do you think its "man"ed? It could be an intra(inter)-galactic ballistic missile (i.e. no deceleration);