Anyone know anyhing about

Solar winds?

Wild stab in the dark, I know....

Could you move a space craft from Earth to say Mars using them?
What about an ion drive?
Other non-nuclear methods of propulsion.

How would tight beam communication work?
If I had a body (say a space craft going at suffient velocity, say an accelaration on 1g would I have any need of a spinning crew torus that uses centrifugal force to replicate gravity?). Could I hyper thetically use the solar wind to do this? Prrobably not because I would be relying on continouos acceleration?

Just some thoughts popping into my head aujord hui.

Originally Posted by Kinvig

Solar winds?

.

no


next

Can I have a go in your space ship mister? Can I? Can I?

Nope, whilst I'll blag my way through most subjects, rocket science and brain surgery are not specialist areas of expertise

Hmm, just thought though - in order to replicate gravity just by using forward acceleration you'd need constant acceleration, not just constant velocity.

So, if gravity is 9.something metres per second per second, what distance would you cover before you hit a velocity greater than the speed of light? Apparently bad things happen if you do that, including all the milk in your fridge going off.

EDIT: Almost answered my own question - taking very rounded values for easy maths, speed of light is 300 million metres per second, gravity is 10 metres per second per second, therefore you've got 30 million seconds flight time before you break the speed of light and the universe implodes - that works out at 347 days. Can't quite figure out the distance that'd be covered in that time but to be honest I really should be doing some work

Ive read and re-read a brief history of time by stephen hawkings about 3 or 4 times in the hope that some of will stick to the inside of me head, sadly most just too much for your average trucker BUT Im sure it was covered in that particular book, and if you really want to fry your brain try reading 'Paralell worlds' by Michio kaku that really is out there, quantam mechanics, 11 dimensions et al

[johnnyrod]

Solar "wind" is a stream of subatomic particles so no, you'd be a better man than Newton to harness it.

What the hell is an ion drive? Is it short for onion?

You can't prevent a beam of waves from diffusing, best you can do is focus as tight as possible like aheadlight. Next thing would be a laser which is narrow, but you'd need a good aim to hit a small receiver. That said for any sort of non-wide are broadcast

Ionised particle propulsion would work, yes. But as a rather intelligent lad once told me, its pathetic and weedy.

You'd need alot of ionised gas to provide enough force to get even a small spaceship moving, and that would be snails pace at best...

Matt

Originally Posted by Kinvig

Solar winds?

Wild stab in the dark, I know....

Could you move a space craft from Earth to say Mars using them?
What about an ion drive?
Other non-nuclear methods of propulsion.

How would tight beam communication work?
If I had a body (say a space craft going at suffient velocity, say an accelaration on 1g would I have any need of a spinning crew torus that uses centrifugal force to replicate gravity?). Could I hyper thetically use the solar wind to do this? Prrobably not because I would be relying on continouos acceleration?

Just some thoughts popping into my head aujord hui.

Yes, its been considered but shelved because the sail material is very hard to make and then deploy.
Ion drives have already been tested for real and work.
Nuclear power has been been used many times in deep space probes, by using radio active material that produces heat.
Er, point and shoot.
Torus shaped craft work but have tidal effects, eg, the apparent gravity is stronger at the edge then the centre.
You could use solar sails to get you spinning, but once you had achieved the desired RPM you wouldn't need thenm any more.

Didn't TIE fighters have ion engines. In fact I'm sure TIE means Twin Ion Engine........who knows!?