Accelerator on a Chip

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 11:19:09 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

Mookie, chopping out all the context isn't 'clever', as you've already
agreed.


--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil."
-- Socrates


The efficiency of modern meta materials.

The point is, holographic optics made with metamaterials are machines. The only moving parts are electrons and photons. And a sheet one millimeter thick with the same transparency of present day optical fibres, (0.2 db per km dissapation loss), 99.99995% of the energy is processed by the optical device, and 0.00005% is dissapated as heat.

Keeping cool on the solar surface.

At the solar surface, solar intensity exceeds 62 megawatts per square meter.. Dissapation is 31 watts across 2 square meters (front and back). That's 15.5 watts per square meter. Radiating at this level into the vacuum obtains a temperature for the optical device of 128.6 Kelvin. That's -228.2 F or -144.5 C.

More power, higher temperature.

To heat a sheet of material like this up to 300 K (26.9 C or 80.3 F) means it must dissapate 918.5 Watts across 2 square meters (front and back) which means that it can handle 1.84 gigawatts/square meter of optical energy!

What you can do with lots of power.

What can optical lenses, optical machinery, of this type achieve?

Well, reflecting this energy efficiently to produce thrust yields 1.249 kgf per square meter.

A millimeter thick sheet of silica masses 2.645 kg per square meter so, this is 0.472 gees!

A sheet half a millimeter thick handles 18% more power and weighs half as much yielding 1.122 gees of thrust! 2.967 kgf per square meter, lifting 322 grams per square meter of payload at one gee!

Building a starship railroad.

So a 322 ton payload requires a square kilometer sheet. 1128.4 meters diameter disk massing 1223 tonnes carrying 322 tonne payload - processing 1.84 quadrilion watts of power. This is extracted from a disk 3,073.5 km in diameter from near the solar surface!

The main line link.

A power satellite of this size orbiting the sun in an orbital plane normal to the line connecting the center of the destination star (alpha centauri) and the sun's center keeps the ship in constant sight as it moves along this line.

The launch link.

A similar power satellite orbiting in an orbit whose plane was perpendicular to a line between Earth and the center of the sun launches the satellite! It moves it from Earth orbit to the line between Sol and the destination within a distance of 34.5 AU of Sol. At that distance (about the distance of Pluto from the Sun) a 12,100 km diameter sheet of material is placed to refocus the laser light - allowing it to remain sharp out to a distance of 2.15 light years.

The trip to alpha centauri.

Accelerating at one gee for 2.15 light years - over a 2.965 year period Earth time - 1.780 year ship time - allows the 322 ton payload and ship - to achieve a speed of 95.05% light speed! At that distance, a similar setup in the Centauri system springs int life and slows the ship for the remaining 2.15 light years distance to the star. Power aboard ship is provided by laser light beamed from the surface of each of the stars. The timing and focus of the power is predetermined by exchanging radio messages at the outset so that the ship is constantly boosted and powered.

Expanding the system - commerce between stars!

Since the 12,100 km diameter refocusing sheet is 15.5 million times larger than the laser - a total of 15.5 million satellites can be served by the refocusing sheet without heating it above 300 K.

Orbiting 51,983 satellites in a ring mean each 3 km diameter satellite is separated by 84 kilometers center to center. This allows on 322 tonne ship to leave Sol every hour and one 322 tonne ship to arrive at Sol every hour. The paths of the ships are slightly staggered and the light is slightly deflected, into a pattern that allows all the ships to be illuminated without shadowing one another.

2.82 million tonnes of materiel and personnel are shipped between stars each way!

Maturing the system -

Increasing the size of the satellites from 3 km to 84 km diameter, and using the same refocusing lens, doesn't overheat the refocusing lens, but increases the mass flow between stars by a factor of 784 times or to 2.21 billion tonnes of material per year! (each way simultaneously). A substantial amount of commerce.

Interstellar network

Take some oranges and stack them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere...CP_Oranges.jpg

This is an exercise in sphere packing! By connecting the center of each star in the heavens with a line to the center of the twelve nearest stars - we implement a network that connects all stars in a vast web. For the system just described we have a dozen orbits around the sun that are perpendicular to these dozen lines and each orbit is filled with 51,983 satellites. If each of these satellites are 84 km in diameter, they can propel a 252,448 ton payload to light speed - with a new ship leaving every hour - AND a new ship arriving every hour! Allowing the solar system to dispatch 26.52 billion metric tons per year and to receive the same amount, from the Sun's nearest neighbours!

At 20 tonnes per passenger, 12,622 people including passengers and crew, are dispatched on each ship. 1.33 billion per year travel between the stars! With a 1.125% growth per year and 7.44 billion people, this represents the population growth of humanity if there are 118.2 billion persons alive in the solar system. This population is achieved in 247 years - 2263 AD.

Of course these neighbours, each have a dozen stars they connect to. The radio traffic between stars synchronizes the operation of the network, and allows messages to be transmitted over the interstellar internet.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...llar-internet/

No. Name................. Type Distance

1 Proxima Centauri M5.5Ve 4.242
Alpha Centauri A G2V..... 4.365
Alpha Centauri B K1V...... 4.365
2 Barnard’s Star.... M4.0Ve. 5.963
3 Luhman 16A....... L8........ 6.597
Luhman 16B....... T1......... 6.597
4 WISE 0855-0714 Y........... 7.261
5 Wolf 359............. M6.0V.... 7.783
6 Leland 21185...... M2.0V.... 8.291
7 Sirius A............... A1V........ 8.583
Sirius B............... DA2....... 8.583
8 Luyten 726-8 A.. M5.5Ve.. 8.728
Luyten 726-8 B.. M6.0Ve.. 8.728
9 Ross 154............ M3.5Ve.. 9.681
10 Ross 248............ M5.5Ve.. 10.322
11 Epsilon Eridani.... K2V 10.522
12 Lacaille 9352...... M0.5V 10.742

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/ed...hrdiagram.html

More engineering details

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=29341

http://ykbcorp.com/tech_precFormation.html

http://ykbcorp.com/downloads/Bae_pho...ulation..pd f

William Mook wrote:

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 11:19:09 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

Mookie, chopping out all the context isn't 'clever', as you've already
agreed.


The efficiency of modern meta materials.

The point is, holographic optics made with metamaterials are machines. The only moving parts are electrons and photons. And a sheet one millimeter thick with the same transparency of present day optical fibres, (0.2 db per km dissapation loss), 99.99995% of the energy is processed by the optical device, and 0.00005% is dissapated as heat.


The point is that they don't meet the definition of 'machine' that you
yourself provided.


Keeping cool on the solar surface.

At the solar surface, solar intensity exceeds 62 megawatts per square meter. Dissapation is 31 watts across 2 square meters (front and back). That's 15.5 watts per square meter. Radiating at this level into the vacuum obtains a temperature for the optical device of 128.6 Kelvin. That's -228.2 F or -144.5 C.


So your claim is that you put something on the Sun and it stays cold
enough to form ice? Ridiculous!

Oh, and your waste heat numbers are crap unless you can somehow make
the Sun radiate only monochromatic light.

snip ****e


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine