April 14, 2016 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Tonight’s podcast is embedded below the fold. Lots of ULA discussion, as well as Russian court battles.
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Tonight’s podcast is embedded below the fold. Lots of ULA discussion, as well as Russian court battles.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The interstellar ship sounds interesting but look at the paper upon which it is based.
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-Roadmap-to-Interstellar-Flight-15-h.pdf
The gram level spacecraft (2.4 grams for the spacecraft) they propose to send to .25 the speed of light in ten minutes (what are the g forces?… 20,000 g’s!) and take 15 years to get to the nearest star must be powered by a 50-70 gigawatt laser array… which is a laser array that is 10 km by 10 km big! Not sure how many millions of lasers are needed to fill 100 square kilometers but their basic building block is 10 m by 10 m so it is at least 1 million more units than that! Even with Moore’s Law, this is expensive.
I think there must be a better way.
Hi Fincannon, I think the use of the two principles 1. high power beamer at ground (better as in orbit)+ reflecting propulsion unit (sail, mesh) 2. extreme miniaturization is the only practical way to send something to next stars in a scientist life-time. However, the use of a microwave system instead of laser may be better, because it is order of magnitudes cheaper. There are proposals of this kind around. A large rotating mesh of wires (sensors are at the knots) can be used instead of light reflecting surface for propulsion. A correct sizes mesh is sufficient to reflect the microwaves back. 10,000 g are not a problem for specific designed electronics.
Hi Fincannon, here is a link, which refers to my comment made above: http://interstellar-flight.ru/design/base_e/starwisp.pdf
I’m glad to see that someone has considered a much more reasonable acceleration rate (115G, although by my calculation he only needs 11G to reach 0.2C in a week) than reaching relativistic speed in less than an hour (2,000G) or in 10 minutes (10,000G).
Unfortunately, the author, F. L. Forward, assumed that the temperature of the sail would be close to the 2.7K of deep space, during acceleration, when in fact the sail would be bathed in sunlight and would have a higher temperature than deep-space background temperature. Some amount of absorption of the microwave energy must be expected, which would further warm the structure.
A basic problem with any solar sail is creating a structure that, under an accelerating force, does not fold up like an umbrella in a strong wind from the wrong direction. One proposal was to spin the sail, so that centrifugal forces keep it stretched out, relatively flat, while a modest accelerating force is applied (e.g. sunlight). For stronger accelerating forces, a strongback structure would be required, and the stronger the acceleration, the more massive the strongback.