3 ms·

I like this idea. I was wondering if it would be possible to collect and focus solar wind close to the sun and use it as a high concentration beam. Was also wo

• ouid 8y ago
  I believe plasma physics is hard
• sandworm101 8y ago
  No. Any structure that could do that would itself be pushed by the wind. The energy/fuel needed for station keeping the focus unit would be better spent on the actual spacecraft ... unless you want some megastructure (ring) that wouldnt need fuel for station keeping.
  • samsari 8y ago
    Shouldn't there be some sort of "lagrange-like" point where the sun's gravitational pull balances out the push of the solar wind?
    • robkop 8y ago
      Not sure if such a balance exists for external bodies but there does exist a limit very similar that constrains the maximum size of a star [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_luminosity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_luminosity
    • stult 8y ago
      No, or at least not any stable such point, because the solar wind is not constant. Plus it is orders of magnitude less powerful than the sun's gravity. It's only usable (in theory) for navigation because any ship is already in orbit around the sun and doesn't need to "cancel out" gravity in the sense that wings provide lift to an airplane or a rocket achieves orbit from the ground, but rather it needs to be able to gently and continuously nudge itself into higher or lower orbits.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• sballin 8y ago
  The fast ion loss probe used in fusion energy research is relevant to your last point. See figure 1 of [1], or if you have access see [2] for a good explanation. [1] https://w3.pppl.gov/~szweben/Papers/coauthorpapers/DarrowRSI92.pdf https://w3.pppl.gov/~szweben/Papers/coauthorpapers/DarrowRSI... [2] https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.5039311 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.5039311