Rakaydos

An earthcrossing asteroid is unlikely to be near absolute zero. As the asteroid spins, it spends half of it's "day" bathed in unfiltered sunlight, quite often within the sun's Goldilox zone. At "night" it will radiate some of that away, but the night would have to be exceptionally long- Even the moon, with a 2 week long "night" only gets down to -173c. And that's ignorig thermal conduction of the rock, from day to core to night, something that may still matter on an object a few KM across.

Given the difference in surface area/mass ratio between one big rock and a bunch of smaller rocks, that would actually be a good thing if you did it early enough.

So you're saying that an Electrodynamic tether has the efficency of a photon drive? I was under the impression it was more powerful than that.

But the airforce colonel can be all like "So, all the wreckage would have stayed on private property if they'd done that on land? No danger to civilians even on a pretty much worst case failure? I've seen worse airplane landings. Sure, premission to build a landing pad granted."

They got approval? sweet! Actually, I think spaceX's last "failure" was a better demonstration than a success would be- as it demonstrated a failure mode that could be lived with even on land.

Which is why newer generation fission generators dont use fuel rods- pebbelbed reactors, molten salt reactors, and the like.

You're promotig microwave beamed pwer ahead of it's time. Fist we need some kind of deep space infrastructure that makes going beyond geosynch a sound investment. once you have a need (like a moon or mars base) investment in more advanced launching tech will follow.

What if this was the first timeline they found where something like the Cuba Missile Crisis (or timeline equivilant) didnt end human advancement? (either by wipeout or by producing a fear of technoligy) So when they found a viable future, they threw up their hands and said "screw it, good enough, we done. Save and QUIT."

It seems K2 is hung up on the established thought that there is no way to push off the quantum foam itself- you would need to create matter out of raw energy to push off of. This is reasonable, but nowhere near the efficiency claimed. And if you take that statement of non-interaction as axiomatic, hes right, this drive cant work. Which implies that if this drive DOES work, that axiom is false. That under certian engineered circomstances unlikely to be replicated in nature (like the "impossible" physical properties of metamaterials such as negative indexes of refraction) it is possible to interact with the quantum foam directly.

Hmm. this is a reaction drive that creates matter to push against(that has 0 net energy, but it spends energy to propel both the particles and antiparticles separately out the back- and unless antiparticles have negative mass- (woohoo warp drive!) the net mass of the quantum foam being "realized" is positive. Because the reaction mass has 0 net energy to start with, it can be created for efficent amounts of energy, then interacted with to confer momentum. it is no longer quantum foam, it's just a matter-antimatter stream who's net energy is entirely goverened by the momentum transfered to the craft Theorycheck K2? Is a energy->matter converter hooked up to an antimatter drive more paltable than a -direct- energy->momentum drive?

Aldrin Cycler is a specific mars cycler orbit that DOES use gravity assists, in order to change it's orbit to intercept both earth and mars at every conjunction. The most basic, no-slingshot cycler only intercepts the conjunction every 7 conjunctions, because the other 6 happen elsewhere in solar orbit.

That pretty much elimiates everything.

Am I correct in recalling tat Vrtual particles are more likely to spawn in areasof higher energy density? My speculation is that by having an energy density gradent inside the tapered resonance chamber, virtual particles appear more often at one end, expand to equilibrium (pushing on the front more than the back) and cancel out.

Reverse the current? I read it as they turned the engine around to rule out some kind of directional enviromental intrraction. What would revercing the current even do, fill it with negative microwaves? Im pretty sure the magnatron uses AC anyway, given that its described in hz. Ac reverse s the current constantly- there wouldnt be any difference.

I rather suspect the energy density being higher at one end of an open container might be it. If virtual particle pairs are more likely to spawn in the narrow enf of the cone, simple brownian motion means theres going to be more interactions with the front of the cone than with the back of the cone- this virtual pressure differental is what pushes it foreward.

Given the realities of transfer orbits, I doubt there will be many successful "pirates", as they would need to match inclination and phase with randomly sited resource operations in order to do more than blow it to Kessel.

need to fix their Remotetech II settings.

This is called the oberth effect. Move along.

How much radiation shielding do "light modern materials" provide? Considering this station is going to be all on it's own in the worst of solar storms, I would think an ion or solar sail gravity tractor to move an asteroids would be more effective, than a lifter that makes the SLS cry.

Microwave thermal launchers are one of the next steps for launchers, but first we need the next step in "reasons to go to space", to drive launch infrastructure development. A lunar elevator will do it, as will asteroid mining. Once there's profit to be made going to space cheaply on your own dime, well, "if you build it they will come."

the stable lunar lagrages (l4/l5) arnt exactly "near" the moon. they're as far from the moon as the moon is from us. The L1 and L2 can have elevators, though, dealing with the instability by drilling into the lunar surface. L3 is pretty much useless. Moving earth-crossing asteroids is a good prior step to cyclers, though. Why send the mass of a cycler into LEO, when you can redirect an asteroid into a cycler orbit, and build the cycler into it, using it for raw materials and heavy radiation shielding.

Depends on how long you intend to use it for. (the marginal cost of development gets relatively smaller the more times you use it) It also matters if you're actually trying to make it easy to refurbish, which the shuttle was... not. A flyback booster doesnt need to replace hundreds of tiny foamed-glass tiles every launch, for one, and designing an engine for reuse is another.

Personally, I think orbital costs and orbital infrastructure are going to inchworm foreward over time. The Moon required the Saturn 5 Saturn 5 got us Skylab Skylab maintinance got us the Shuttle Shuttle built the ISS. ISS is driving Commercial spaceflight From here, there's a couple places we can go infrasructure wise- Graveyard Kessler Cleanup, asteroid capture&exploitation, moon-lagrange Kevlar Elevator. these require more expensive, continuing missions bout have strong potential payouts, and will drive launch infrastructure investment- stuff like Airship To Orbit and Microwave Thermal Rockets.

The earth ceres Syndic period is 1.278 years. A first order approximation (with a lot of corrective burns each orbit) would suggest that you could get away with 4 outbound and 4 inbound cyclers, and need to adjust their orbits by .028x360 degrees per year (about 10 degrees, by my math) For a more efficent cycler system, you need orbits tha are 100 degrees appart each year. Counting on my metaphorical fingers, here... 0 degrees 100 degrees 200 degrees 300 degrees 40 degrees 140 240 340 80 180 280 20 120 220 320 60 160 260 -back to start at 360- 18 cyclers with only .08 degrees of course correction per year.

Now we're getting somewhere. Which classes/models of ship? Ship names? when playing to skeptics, you need to provide verifiable information. (I suspect, when we track it down, it's all going to come to a mundane generator that uses superconductors, but relies on a different fuel source.)