Hi! Thanks! Didn't expect a response from you here! :)
I didn't think about the red shift problem. I suppose a tunable laser (would a free electron laser work in space?) could solve the problem of material becoming less reflective at different frequencies, but not the problem of the energy transfer itself.
So either we have a laser that steadily increases in power, or a spaceship that steadily decreases in acceleration. (What is the derivative of acceleration anyway?) That'll be fun to compute. I couldn't even do the first part, so I'm not even going to try here :)
Or s ship that carries its own reaction mass with it. 530 times could conceivably be doable. If I recall correctly, most of the mass of the space shuttle is fuel, though probably not 99.8% of it. (That would be a hell of a lot of anti-matter to make, though, compared to the thousands of atoms that CERN has made to date. :)
Of course, I'm not sure how they'd slow down using this method, either, unless they sent robots ahead to build another giant perfectly collimated and aimed laser there.
Anyway, thanks for the posts. I look forward to reading the book.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: A few calculations
Date: 2010-10-08 06:36 pm (UTC)I didn't think about the red shift problem. I suppose a tunable laser (would a free electron laser work in space?) could solve the problem of material becoming less reflective at different frequencies, but not the problem of the energy transfer itself.
So either we have a laser that steadily increases in power, or a spaceship that steadily decreases in acceleration. (What is the derivative of acceleration anyway?) That'll be fun to compute. I couldn't even do the first part, so I'm not even going to try here :)
Or s ship that carries its own reaction mass with it. 530 times could conceivably be doable. If I recall correctly, most of the mass of the space shuttle is fuel, though probably not 99.8% of it. (That would be a hell of a lot of anti-matter to make, though, compared to the thousands of atoms that CERN has made to date. :)
Of course, I'm not sure how they'd slow down using this method, either, unless they sent robots ahead to build another giant perfectly collimated and aimed laser there.
Anyway, thanks for the posts. I look forward to reading the book.