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Why ride fire or ions when you can ride photons?

BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
in Zocalo v2.0
If this turns out to be reproducible and efficiently scalable, it could be quite amazing.

[url]http://dialog.newsedge.com/newsedge.asp?site=2006121916143901110346&block=folderstory&briefs=off&action=XMLStoryResult&smd=true&storyid=p0906509.2rw&rtcrdata=off[/url]

Comments

  • Space GhostSpace Ghost Elite Ranger
    Cool.

    Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't traveling that fast be hazardous without some Trek-like "inertial dampener"?
  • MessiahMessiah Failed Experiment
    "Theres too many stray photons!" :p
  • CurZCurZ Resident Hippy
    What about light pollution?
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    [QUOTE=Space Ghost;165004]Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't traveling that fast be hazardous without some Trek-like "inertial dampener"?[/QUOTE]

    Velocity isn't the problem; acceleration is (well, within certain constraints, I'm sure RC, our resident physicist, will have a field day here). As long as you accelerate to 100km/s at a reasonable rate, you'll be fine. For example, accelerating at 9.81m/s2, the acceleration of standard gravity, would require about 3 hours to accelerate to 100km/s.
  • FreejackFreejack Jake the Not-so-Wise
    Sounds cool. If understand photon propolsion, there is no material expelled for the reaction mass. This has a great advantage on long distance journey, since you only need fuel for energy generation, not thrust.

    Ideally, if one had access to a sufficient energy supply, you could place the vehicle under acceraltion for the entire journey (1/2 speeding up, 1/2 slowing down) which means you also solve some of the problems with being in weightlessness for so long.

    Jake
  • ShadowDancerShadowDancer When I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie." London, UK
    If this does work, and I'm saying if as I dont want to get my hopes up, might this be the missing propulsion method to open up the solar system?
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    Provided we can convince those environmentalists opposed to the idea of nuclear reactors anywhere to let us take them into space. I suspect that the energy required to propel a human-inhabited spaceship to a decent speed will be quite enormous.
  • ChaosedChaosed Ranger
    What is he doing to get the photons in the 1st place?
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    Using a laser.
  • ShadowDancerShadowDancer When I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie." London, UK
    "Mini-Me! Stop humping the fricking laser!"

    Sorry, that was the first thing that came to mind there! :D
  • ChaosedChaosed Ranger
    To be more precise, what is the energy source for the laser?
  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    Whatever you want it to be. As mentioned above, a nuclear fission or decay reactor would be a perfect source but I'm sure others could be found that would serve the purpose decently well.
  • PJHPJH The Lovely Thing
    When they get that fusion reactor to work we don't have to worry about energy anymore and the possibilities will be enormous. That might still take some time though, so in the mean time I guess nuclear reactor is probably the best choice.

    Also waiting for the anti-matter reactors to become reality. ;)

    - PJH
  • David of MacDavid of Mac Elite Ranger Ca
    The problem with Anti-Matter is that it's not already there, we have to make it. So it's less like oil or nuclear power where we dig up whatever energy-rich materials nature was kind enough to form over the last several billion years, and more like a great battery, where we store energy collected from somewhere else for later use. It'd be wasteful to use fossil or nuclear fuels to make the antimatter (since some energy would be lost in the process, so we'd end up with less energy than we started with). The "Star Trek" model is pretty good, where antimatter is made at production plants near stars that collect all of the solar radiation to power the conversion process. Any other source of a great deal natural but impractically usable energy would also work
  • PJHPJH The Lovely Thing
    If we could get that fusion reactor to work it would be a good energy source for anti-matter production in the future. But antimatter production is so difficult, that it's gonna take quite a while to become realistically possible to produce any usable amounts of it.

    Lets hope the smart guys will invent some new stuff to make it possible soon enough. ;)

    - PJH
  • croxiscroxis I am the walrus
    What do you mean? there is an entire universe of it! ;)
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