🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <25145@cup.portal.com> hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson):
>process metals in space.  I would be interested if Steve has any new 
>ideas on how to get heat to the metal *without* curding up the mirrors
>with various rock and metal vapors.

Hey, what's a major engineering hurdle or two when you're talking about
launching a ten year mission complete with at least several megatons
of nuclear demolition charges?   :-)

I hadn't looked at that too closely, but:  The energy density on
the primaries is low, staying close to that at the earth, so crud
reduces your collection efficiency but won't destroy the reflectors.
Any secondaries will be close enough to clean.

Any escaping crud is potentially valuable reaction mass, it may
pay to collect it all carefully and feed it to the thrusters,
which of course aren't pointed at the mirrors.  Some of the crud
will be oxygen, which you may as well process and tank -- it will
be darned near as valuable as the steel.

One could design the primaries with several layers of removable
transparent film over them, to be peeled off as required (and
fed to the thrusters, wouldn't want to litter :-)

Good question though, thank you!

Another good question:  How to stop when you get there.  It would
not be a real popular move to use another nuke so close to the
nest, and I bet a lot of people would be real nervous about
an aerobraking manoeuver (gotta learn to spell) ...  I guess I'll
just have to keep a certain amount of slag and ease into the
parking spot real gentle-like.

Or have an outgoing mission bring a jumper cable and trade
a bunch of momentum.  Can't plan on that though.
-- 
Steve Nuchia	      South Coast Computing Services      (713) 964-2462
"If the conjecture `You would rather I had not disturbed you
 by sending you this.' is correct, you may add it to the list of
 uncomfortable truths."   - Edsgar Dijkstra