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A bit out of range of the nearest star when you hit a dark matter sandbar ? no worries: reform the solar sail into a parabolic shape, fire up the gigawatt nuclear reactor and suspend a heating element at the focal point. Black-body radiation now powers your craft.
Photon Drive
http://spectech.bra..._PHOTON%20DRIVE.htm
[MisterQED, Mar 23 2011]
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Imagine a boat with a sail and a jar of compressed air
mounted and pointing at the sail. That's what you
have here. Turn it around so your air is venting
backwards and you're much more efficient. |
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Well, yes but in this case the solar sail is the jar. You just want a smaller jar (parabola). |
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"Attention...the solar sail is a jar. Attention...the solar sail
is a jar. Attention..." |
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// Turn it around so your air is venting backwards // |
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He's already venting hot gases rearwards, but then he always
talks that way ... |
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The solar sail turns the isotropic radiation from the heater into quasi-unidirectional radiation. Don't think it even begins to resemble an orion drive, but the concept is valid. |
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Slow Burn Orion Drive = Photon Drive |
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Sorry, already thought of 76 years ago (link) |
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I think this qualifies as a seperate idea from the photon drive. The one in the link is powered by antimatter, and the reaction would take place inside a giant, magical x-ray reflecting engine bell. |
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A mylar sail being accelerated by radiation from a nuclear reactor over thousands of years is a bit differnt. |
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Although personally I would rather ride on the antimatter ship. |
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mmmmmm, slow-burnt onions... |
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mmmmm [hippo] I read the same thing....and smelled them, too!! |
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I have been reading about the Pioneer anomaly. I
understand it turned out the probe was pushed slower by
its own heat. So this scheme proposed by FT would work.
I do not understand why this is not a " reactionless drive" -
we are not spurting propellant behind the craft. |
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Yes you are. Photons have momentum. |
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Things like this reveal to me the yawning abysses of ingnorance that exist in my head. A few clicks later and I realized that I must read on "relativistic mass" to understand how a particle without Newtonian mass can have momentum. |
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