Post by Attero Dominatus on Jun 14, 2010 0:44:02 GMT -5
They called it the 'Jellyfish'. Sure, it Phoenix may not look pretty, but test miniatures the bulbous structure showed it to outperform even the best of the visible light sails.
I looked through the heavy lead crystal laminate at the huge assembly, at the other end of a ten kilometer tensile truss made of boron nanotubes. From here in lunar orbit, trickery of the sunlight made it appear like the bottom of a ten kilometer wide hemisphere of solid iridium, but twelve thousand 'domes' of nanometer thick iridium was expensive enough. I had to sell off a great deal of my assets just to cover the cost, but no one said that you made fortunes without taking risks. If it survives the trip to Epsilon Eridani and the robots do their research and send data home, the victory will attract investors to Daedalus Aerospace like bees to honey, and make possible that colonization project I have been dreaming of.
Why build so many domes? Simple. To reflect x-rays. You cannot reflect x-rays with a normal mirror because they have too much energy to bounce. When x-rays photons meet metals at grazing angles, they will ricochet just like bullets.
Why use x-rays? Because they carry thousands of times more energy than visible light photons. With so much more energy in the propulsion source, a sail can be thousands of times smaller while still offering the same acceleration. Since radiation pressure is the energy of the photons divided by their speed, and we are capturing fifteen terawatts on sixteen thousand square kilometers, that equates to a thrust of 800,553,828 newtons. For one thousand total tons of structure and payload, that equates to 81 gees of acceleration! That is way too much for normal humans, so the ship is crewed by the most advanced artificial neural networks we could develop. They are not true AIs, but they can learn and adapt and make their own decisions within the mission perameters.
But won't the 'crew' module get irradiated? No, because conical shells of iridium reflect x-rays away from this part of the ship and force them to hit the sail.
An alarm sounded, startling me. "T-minus ten," a woman's voice announced, sending a wave of both terror and excitement through my body.
"Nine..." I thought about the generations of my family before me, all pioneers with a direct lineage to the American revolution.
"Eight..." I thought about the increasing power of the global government filled the vacuum left after the Great Global Collapse that saw many sovereign countries topple into insolvency, chaos and ultimately, warfare. There are so few innovators left who have not either whored themselves to the UN or closed down due to cost.
"Seven..." I thought about the things that could go wrong, like a malfunction in the ionization lasers and magnetic fields that deflect interstellar dust particles away from the ship. Some of my crew even called the radar transceiver used for detecting the dust particles the 'deflector dish' after a similar device in the ancient show Star Trek.
"Six..." I focused on what was riding on this mission. Not only more money for me, but a chance to start over in another solar system. Especially for my family.
"Five..." a heavy lead shield closed over the windows; I would never be seeing the Pheonix with my own eyes again. I looked over at a monitor.
"Four...three...two...one...ignition."
The ship took off for the stars, and hopefully, for freedom's rebirth.
I looked through the heavy lead crystal laminate at the huge assembly, at the other end of a ten kilometer tensile truss made of boron nanotubes. From here in lunar orbit, trickery of the sunlight made it appear like the bottom of a ten kilometer wide hemisphere of solid iridium, but twelve thousand 'domes' of nanometer thick iridium was expensive enough. I had to sell off a great deal of my assets just to cover the cost, but no one said that you made fortunes without taking risks. If it survives the trip to Epsilon Eridani and the robots do their research and send data home, the victory will attract investors to Daedalus Aerospace like bees to honey, and make possible that colonization project I have been dreaming of.
Why build so many domes? Simple. To reflect x-rays. You cannot reflect x-rays with a normal mirror because they have too much energy to bounce. When x-rays photons meet metals at grazing angles, they will ricochet just like bullets.
Why use x-rays? Because they carry thousands of times more energy than visible light photons. With so much more energy in the propulsion source, a sail can be thousands of times smaller while still offering the same acceleration. Since radiation pressure is the energy of the photons divided by their speed, and we are capturing fifteen terawatts on sixteen thousand square kilometers, that equates to a thrust of 800,553,828 newtons. For one thousand total tons of structure and payload, that equates to 81 gees of acceleration! That is way too much for normal humans, so the ship is crewed by the most advanced artificial neural networks we could develop. They are not true AIs, but they can learn and adapt and make their own decisions within the mission perameters.
But won't the 'crew' module get irradiated? No, because conical shells of iridium reflect x-rays away from this part of the ship and force them to hit the sail.
An alarm sounded, startling me. "T-minus ten," a woman's voice announced, sending a wave of both terror and excitement through my body.
"Nine..." I thought about the generations of my family before me, all pioneers with a direct lineage to the American revolution.
"Eight..." I thought about the increasing power of the global government filled the vacuum left after the Great Global Collapse that saw many sovereign countries topple into insolvency, chaos and ultimately, warfare. There are so few innovators left who have not either whored themselves to the UN or closed down due to cost.
"Seven..." I thought about the things that could go wrong, like a malfunction in the ionization lasers and magnetic fields that deflect interstellar dust particles away from the ship. Some of my crew even called the radar transceiver used for detecting the dust particles the 'deflector dish' after a similar device in the ancient show Star Trek.
"Six..." I focused on what was riding on this mission. Not only more money for me, but a chance to start over in another solar system. Especially for my family.
"Five..." a heavy lead shield closed over the windows; I would never be seeing the Pheonix with my own eyes again. I looked over at a monitor.
"Four...three...two...one...ignition."
The ship took off for the stars, and hopefully, for freedom's rebirth.
