4 ms·

We can make few circles around Sun, to gain speed. Take into account much much harder radiation in interstellar space, which will require much heavier radiatio

We can make few circles around Sun, to gain speed. Take into account much much harder radiation in interstellar space, which will require much heavier radiation shield. We can make as many circles around Sun as we need, like a commet.

trhway 2y ago
>like a comet say at the Mercury orbit we unfurled the large sail and got strong boost, and we'll come back for the next round in like 100 years. It is something we'd have to do if there weren't better alternatives. Nuclear or solar panels + ion thruster inside the Mars orbit, nuclear + ion thruster outside Mars seems to beat pure solar. Interstellar - nuclear + ion or my favorite Orion project seems to be again better than pure solar. It is like sailboats vs powerboats - while we love sailboats, the powerboats are really more practical in all the cases except for the lazy relaxed cruising. >Take into account much much harder radiation in interstellar space, which will require much heavier radiation shield. Until we have a way of getting like 0.1c, any interstellar takes hundreds of years and will be done either by pure robots or cyborgs and beside some shielding the main way of dealing with radiation damage is to catch/repair ECC memory style. For 0.1c we have either project Orion - though nobody seems to be willing to go that way (we'll see how it goes once we have operations established on the Moon and Mars, may be somebody will turn to it as 1. they would have a business case for it and 2. it isn't really possible to do such experiments and development on Earth anymore) - or today it looks more like the fusion-exploding small pellets like NIF at Livermore does is the way to go. We can reasonably expect continuing improvement in the gain in those experiment, and while Earth based energy generation requires higher gain and efficient conversion of that small explosion into electric energy which is still a problem to be solved, the space drive application requires exactly such a small explosion, and thus i think such fusion drive will come much sooner than an Earth based fusion power station.

trhway 2y ago

>like a comet say at the Mercury orbit we unfurled the large sail and got strong boost, and we'll come back for the next round in like 100 years. It is something we'd have to do if there weren't better alternatives. Nuclear or solar panels + ion thruster inside the Mars orbit, nuclear + ion thruster outside Mars seems to beat pure solar. Interstellar - nuclear + ion or my favorite Orion project seems to be again better than pure solar. It is like sailboats vs powerboats - while we love sailboats, the powerboats are really more practical in all the cases except for the lazy relaxed cruising. >Take into account much much harder radiation in interstellar space, which will require much heavier radiation shield. Until we have a way of getting like 0.1c, any interstellar takes hundreds of years and will be done either by pure robots or cyborgs and beside some shielding the main way of dealing with radiation damage is to catch/repair ECC memory style. For 0.1c we have either project Orion - though nobody seems to be willing to go that way (we'll see how it goes once we have operations established on the Moon and Mars, may be somebody will turn to it as 1. they would have a business case for it and 2. it isn't really possible to do such experiments and development on Earth anymore) - or today it looks more like the fusion-exploding small pellets like NIF at Livermore does is the way to go. We can reasonably expect continuing improvement in the gain in those experiment, and while Earth based energy generation requires higher gain and efficient conversion of that small explosion into electric energy which is still a problem to be solved, the space drive application requires exactly such a small explosion, and thus i think such fusion drive will come much sooner than an Earth based fusion power station.