MagnaCool--Habitable Exoplanet!

[Jon Miller]

Cost

Independent craft, you lose everything at once, if you have 3, then if one goes you lose 1/3 at once

with a modular, you lose only a small portion... so you can continue on.. just not as efficiently/effectively

Jon Miller

[Geronimo]

If something hits the sail at top cruising speed is it impossible for it to simply pass through the sail (putting a hole in it obviously) rather than causing an immense explosion?

If objects could pass through the sail making holes not much larger than the object itself maybe the optimal design would be a very thin needle shaped cargo module and an ultra immense sail. The sail will turn into swiss cheese but will not be destroyed and the odds of a direct penetrating impact on the hull of the crew/cargo module would be (hopefully) negligable.

So, at 10% c when the interstellar golf ball plows into the thin sail what will happen? a neat golf ball sized hole in the sail or what?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Cost

Independent craft, you lose everything at once, if you have 3, then if one goes you lose 1/3 at once

with a modular, you lose only a small portion... so you can continue on.. just not as efficiently/effectively

Jon Miller

If the craft are the size of a module, what's the difference.

[Jon Miller]

Err, you know what light sails are, right? If not, I provided a link earlier.

Jon Miller

[Geronimo]

was my question about the kind of damage a sail would receive a stupid question?

[Jon Miller]

I think it would be possible that the damage could be localized for collisions with a light sail.

Jon Miller

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I think it would be possible that the damage could be localized for collisions with a light sail.

Jon Miller

thanks! If so then light sail really does seem to be the best option. Anything that lets you avoid having to drag your fuel with you has to be a good idea if it's not increasing your odds of catastrophic impacts.

[Lancer]

Hundred year trip...

that's alot of diapers.

We need to send frozen eggs, sperm and test tubes for mixing. Then, programed nanny robots, educational robots, etc. Only if they find the planet truly habitable do they create people.

[Ned]

100 years?

With a sail?

Just wild guess, but wouldn't the top speed be in the low millions of miles per hour. If so, it would take 10,000 years or so to get there.

[Ecthy]

As a matter of fact, it would be extremelys stupid to send out a team of umans into space for many years without any close date when to arrive. Imagine some people traveling through space within empty space without any know what they're oing there and that for more time than human history so far.

[Dauphin]

Just send dem convicts.

[Ecthy]

That might sound a lot of fun to people like you but what about their children?

Human beings in empty space? what a horror satire

[Seeker]

another thought:

The front of our spacecraft is covered in a network of sophisticated optical sensors which focus in on only one place -- the area directly in front of the ship.

If they detect KH's 'pingpong ball' we fire a powerful laser and disintegrate the particle before impact.

Basically we have a jumped-up 'bug zapper' to get rid of space-nickles.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Seeker
another thought:

The front of our spacecraft is covered in a network of sophisticated optical sensors which focus in on only one place -- the area directly in front of the ship.

If they detect KH's 'pingpong ball' we fire a powerful laser and disintegrate the particle before impact.

Basically we have a jumped-up 'bug zapper' to get rid of space-nickles.

I imagine the problem is how high are the energy requirements to actively scan for those objects every moment of the entire trip? At those speed in order for the laser to have time to lock on and vaporise anything it would probably be necessary to illuminate a vast volume ahead of the ship to spot the objects. Surely passive detection won't be of much use in the cold dark of interstellar space.

[Seeker]

I'm thinking of a sporadic 'pulse' at intervals.

If we have a wave of some EM band crap pulsing out at some interval we don't need to continuously light things up.

The pulse is our active system; these pulses travel ahead of the ship. Our passive system detects the interaction of our wave with any particles and calculates the trajectory of that particle (i am assuming that massive particles are a) very rare in the IM b) contain a high proportion of metallic elements like iron that will give off sexy amounts of photons when our wave 'excites' them (why is EVERYTHING about sex??)

This system will be a lot better than 'hitting a bullet with a bullet' like Star Wars/Bush Wars or even the AEGIS system it has no atmosphere to worry about and can correct its aim in a fraction of a second.

Given the hefty amount of computing power we can have available I really don't see it as an insurmountable engineering difficulty to track and fire on something, say tracking it from 1 KM, firing at a few meters.