Nathair

The scoop is actually a magnetic field which, as has been pointed out, generates drag. This necessitates running the engine as long as the field is operating to provide enough thrust to (at least) compensate for the drag. So we end up with an extremely powerful and sophisticated field generator and an engine both operating constantly for forty years. That is a high energy maintenance nightmare. A slab of plates flying along in front of the ship like a shield seems like a dependable (lower maintenance) option. Obviously this is a very dangerous aspect of the trip and there is just no way around that.

"but when passing through a star system, the spacecraft may encounter particles the size of a grain of sand. These will strike with the energy of a ton of TNT. " So there ya go, my math said it would hit with the energy of about two tons of TNT. (Yay, I'm not utterly innumerate!)

I think if you do the math it turns out that that "modest fraction of C" is pretty darn large for "nuclear bombs" to happen. Grain of sand (which is actually pretty big) weighs, say, 50 micrograms. At .2c and applying 1/2mv^2 we get (assuming my math isn't completely wrong) a "nuclear bomb" of 0.002kT. It's a boom and you definitely want to have some plan for dealing with it but it's not a "nuclear bombs" boom. But check my math, seriously.

That's OK though because every bit of effort and energy that can be imparted by something other than your ship is a good thing. Doesn't matter if your launchers have to jump through hoops or expend energy, they're right at home where they can be tended to, maintained and refueled or replaced easily. Your ship, meanwhile, doesn't have to haul the fuel to accelerate the fuel used to accelerate the fuel used to haul the fuel used to accelerate the ship.

0.2c is not "high enough energy" for that.

Sounds like a job for more traditional shielding.

I'm sorry, why are we burning the whole time? Once you hit that .12c why wouldn't you just turn it off and coast? Economically viable is not the only metric to apply.

It's like the Aldrin Cycler. The ship itself carries all the massive engines, shielding, etc. Just add a few passengers and consumables on each cycle, much easier to accelerate to board and then the accelerate again at the other end.

Try Googling "RAIR rocket".

Is 40 years a generation ship? If we could achieve, say, .2c then we'd have Lalande 21185 within reach in about that time.

I'm with you that far but (sadly) I don't think 1g all the way to the core is going to happen.

IRL ramjets (and RAIR systems) have a whole raft of issues to overcome but ignoring them... 0.12c is almost respectable. That's Alpha Centauri in under forty years... In the book they thrust laterally in order to spend most of the trip well above the galactic plane to minimize density then when they actually got close to the core other things became more significant.

Bussard Ramjet. Obligatory SF reference: A World Out of Time featuring a 1g acceleration trip all the way to the galactic core.

Stress? To put it in familiar terms Dawn went from 0-60 in four days. That kind of acceleration "stress" would be almost imperceptible.

Which brings us back to Haldeman's Acceleration Tanks/Shells. A combination of liquid breathing (oxygenated PFC) and full body immersion with compression... Of course the whole point of that was to deal with relatively short periods of very high acceleration.

I think that depends on the mods. I see no problem at all with installing, say, Scatterer or Chatterer or even PreciseNode or KAC. Personally, I'd recommend KER as well to a new player although I can see why some purists might feel otherwise.

Er, not exactly. As Man tells them "I make no distinction between heterosexual play and homosexual." Then you should read yourself some Samuel R. Delaney. I don't really think that most of the "wacky ideas", like Haldeman's, are predictions or expectations. They're often more like extended metaphors. The Forever War, for example, is about a war that seems to go on forever while meanwhile, back at home, society changes out of all recognition. Not terribly surprising themes from Haldeman, a Vietnam vet who had trouble reintegrating into civilian life...

I agree with all the critiques offered, but I upvoted you one for the effort and intention.

The what now?

Good to know, thanks.

In fiction it's often about having a crew living in 1g for extended periods... comfort.

My mod matches to your setup are: AmpYear, Asteroid Day, Chatterer, Final Frontier, KAS, KIS, KER, PreciseNode, RCSBuildAid, RealChute, RemoteTech, SCANSat and TransferWindowPlanner. If nothing else, that should help the process of elimination should I come up with some way to get it to predictably happen. Thanks. Hmm, then perhaps the engine shroud issue and the tank shroud issue are two separate issue...

This is a rather vague issue. I've noticed lately that sometimes some of my shrouds become displaced. It appears to happen when I jump back to a ship already in flight. Sometimes it's the flat top-of-the-tank shrouds that are now floating beside their parent tank (displaced laterally to the outside of the tank) and sometimes it's engine shrouds no longer coaxial to the engine (as below.) It doesn't actually seem to affect anything, it just looks weird. I do suspect that Modular Fuel Tanks might be involved but that's more of a hunch than anything else. Any ideas? Anyone else seeing this happen?

That's a Kerbal Klever approach.

Clearer. I just don't see ever doing something like that. The whole point of the exercise is to set up comm links such that you're not sending probes off into the black with no way to control 'em. Sending your commands to your probes by physically sending other probes out to them with individual commands on board is more than a bit on the bizarre side.