🚀 go-pugleaf

In <C1AC9L.Dp@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:

> 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes:
> 
> >Josh Hopkins: >
> 
> >Has anyone given any thought to sailing on something besides optical/IR
> >waves?  How about a giant radio antenna?  X-ray reflectors?
> 
> The Starwisp uses microwaves if I recall correctly.  Make an impossibly huge
> mesh that's impossibly light and send impossible amounts of radio energy at it
> (say a good sized SPS worth) and you've got a starwisp.  I think Bob Forward's
> proposal used 10 GW to boost at 115 gravities for a few days.  It would then
> coast at .2 C for twenty years before zipping through Alpha Centauri. 

There was another proposal as well. A small space probe suspended behind a
giant solar sail (2km across, total mass of one hundred kg(?)) would reach
Alpha Centauri in 250 years if we make a close flyby of the Sun - one solar
radius from the surface (0.7 million km). Is there a way to manufacture an
ultra-light sail able to withstand the temperature (4000-5000K at least)?
---
The we come up with the materials and nanotechnology to do it, it might be an
attractive alternative. 3-10 centuries is a long time, but the probe could 
double as a deep space survey probe while moving outwards and building a 
craft having a lifetime of a couple of hundred years will be possible in a 
near future.
 
> -- 
> Josh Hopkins                                          jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
> 
> Q:  How do you tell a novice from an expert.
> A:  A novice hesitates before doing something stupid.


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