5 ms·
You use a magnetic scoop ramjet, great. Now you have cyclotron radiation. Congratulations, now you're even more detectable! And even at 0.1c, you encounter a g
by TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
You use a magnetic scoop ramjet, great. Now you have cyclotron radiation. Congratulations, now you're even more detectable!
And even at 0.1c, you encounter a grain of sand, that's, what, ~23MJ of energy released.
- deeviant 12y agoYou got me there, good comments. Thanks.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoOh yeah, and two other things. Your 1000 tons at 0.1c is going to have a whole lot more cross-sectional area than, say, 4 tons at 0.9c. At least the cube root of 250 times, or ~6.3x. You'll also have, what, 11x more time to react to it at a given distance. Neither of these compensate entirely, but both of these are compensatory effects.
- deeviant 12y agoMore cross-sectional area because of lorentz contraction or just looking at the mass-surface area / kinetic energy ratio?
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoWhoops, I messed up. Try 250^(2/3) times, instead. (I was intending to assume constant density and shape, but forgot to turn that into cross-sectional area as opposed to radius.)