Dear Yousuf Khan:

On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 1:10:20 AM UTC-7, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 3/16/2017 10:25 AM, dlzc wrote:
On Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at 8:41:45 PM UTC-7, Yousuf Khan wrote:

The article you linked to is from 2011, and
it's about a totally different issue. It's about an
early warning system for solar winds, so putting a
satellite at the L1 would encounter the solar wind
43 minutes before Mars itself does. But due to the
higher speed of light, which gets to Mars in 3.5
seconds, you have 43 minutes - 3.5 seconds of early
warning about it.

The issue here is not about early warning, but about
redirecting the solar winds completely from Mars. So
early warning really has no bearing on anything
here, except that if the parameters of the magnetic
shield need to be adjusted, you have about 7 seconds
of turn around time to react from Mars.

The solar wind takes 43 minutes to reach the orbit
of Mars. So a "shadow" in solar wind created by an
object at the L1 point, crosses Mars orbit 61,920 km
BEHIND Mars. Mars is only 7000 km in diameter.

I don't get what you're saying here!

Sure you do.

Presumably, they can angle the magnetic field far
enough in advance to aim the solar wind "shadow",
right as Mars is passing through it.

Only with "new physics". Either they make a symmetric field 20 times the diameter of what is required (because we only know how to make symmetric fields), or they add a small amount of energy to keep the source that far ahead of Mars.

David A. Smith