Can cosmic rays be used for interstellar propulsion?

In article ,
Jan Panteltje writes:
I have read in wikipedia that cosmic rays are 90% protons,
so positive charged, with appreciable mass.
These could be deflected by a magnetic field, in a specific direction.
This would ... provide a force without needing a reaction mass.
As these protons seem to randomly come from all directions,
one could then use the magnetic field to steer in any direction.
Seems much easier than solar sail, as that has a preferred direction.
Has this been investigated?

This is the first time I've seen such an idea, but I suspect it's a
non-starter.

Assume you could get hardware to work as described. Given the known
cosmic ray flux, how much propulsion would it provide? Is that a
useful amount?

I am also pretty sure that doing the deflection with static fields
violates thermodynamics. The outgoing proton stream has lower
entropy than the incoming flux, but static magnetic fields don't
change entropy. That doesn't rule out doing the job with changing
fields (and possibly electric fields as well), but those require an
energy source in the spacecraft.

The Bussard ramjet is a completely different idea. It has practical
difficulties (on several fronts, not least making controlled fusion
work at all) but should work in principle so far as I know.

On another question raised in this thread, I don't believe anything
in the Outer Space Treaty prevents using nuclear reactors in space.
RTGs and radioisotope heaters are, of course, used routinely.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Dear Steve Willner:

On Dec 5, 2:01*pm, (Steve Willner) wrote:
....
On another question raised in this thread, I don't
believe anything in the Outer Space Treaty prevents
using nuclear reactors in space. RTGs and
radioisotope heaters are, of course, used routinely.

The Orion drive used nuclear detonations, which arise from the use of
nuclear weapons in space.

That would be a violation, and possibly one all signatory countries
would have to sign on to should we have to do any serious diversions
of solid NEOs.

David A. Smith

Dear Jan Panteltje:

On Dec 5, 1:11*pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Mon, 5 Dec 2011 06:24:35 -0800 (PST)) it happeneddlzc
wrote in
:
On Dec 4, 2:47*pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
....
For the same money they could have build a nice inter
planetary spacecraft in orbit that could be flown to mars,
drop a lander, return if needed, without the danger of
things having to burn up in the atmosphere.

Still would, just might drop some of it on the Moon, Mars,
or planets further in.

No, I mean the whole spacecraft, it could be left in mars
or earth orbit, more useful there as in-between station.
The [a] sample return package could be parachuted down
to earth as has been done in some other project.

The key is it will be coming down unless it is parked in a trojan
orbit. Unless we stop defunding space programs, they will run out of
"orbit correction fuel", and of course entropy hits them too.

They could have brought the nuclear reactor piece by
piece to it with each shuttle launch.

It is against international treaty to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_S...aty#Key_points
... since one man's nuclear weapon for propulsion, is
another man's nuclear weapon for a power grab.

I think in an *international* cooperation this should have
been, or be, possible, as everybody would be there to
check on each other.

The ISS ostensibly was, since many countries contributed modules. Not
sure how many of the contributing countries are in the red with the
Euro Zone...

It is in my view silly to forbid all nuclear devices, that
is a stop on science. And of course I am sure there
are already plenty up there, secretly.

Well, Steve Willner pointed out there are nuclear-decay-powered
devices on "every" current satellite / probe, and has been since we've
gone to deep space.

Project Orion is a bit too much in my view, but
there is also this other thing in the making with
ionised gas, cannot remember what it was called.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
... maybe.

Yes, I mean that thing .. Ah, Vasimir, see link at
bottom of that page. IIRC NASA was going to test it.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR
Seems indeed they will in 2014?

So far the design produces anemic thrust, and is less reliable than
chemical rockets, if you can believe that.

My whole interest in the cosmic rays comes from
some measurements and experiments I am doing
with gamma detectors I am building.

You'll find more "gamma" in river deltas (heavy metals in the soil),
and high altitudes. Most commonly, granite is a strong radiation
source.

I did put some stuff on the web, it is with a lot of
other stuff, but scroll to the bottom of the page,
as it is sorted on time, last on the bottom:
*http://panteltje.com/pub/
These are fun:
*http://panteltje.com/pub/geiger_vers...s_mvi_3119.avi
*http://panteltje.com/pub/cosmic_rays...to_darlington_....
*http://panteltje.com/pub/crystal_rel...d_img_3123.jpg
*http://panteltje.com/pub/PMT_FEU35_i...e_mvi_3210.avi
It is actually all about electronics, that site...
I have taken some nice spectra, and these rays are
so powerful that they saturate the detector even if it
is set to low sensitivity.
I had to add a provision in the software to ignore them...
so it does not mess up auto scaling.
It is a nice learning experience, but also I like to think
of practical ways to use what I find.

This is an objection I have to that Buzzard?

.... close, Bussard ...

ramjet that uses fusion. We should use things we
CAN make now.

Those keep our butts on the planet.

Not that we cannot make fusion, (look up fusor),
but not in the form he envisions. [If] you think that
way nothing gets ever done. Anyways, going to the
starts seems just an engineering problem, the
political will is not there either, except perhaps in
China.

I hope they make it.

I hope their astronauts make it back.

David A. Smith

On 04/12/2011 4:52 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:34:33 -0500) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote :
You'd need to already be pretty high up the speed-of-light scale to have
any effective propulsion from a magnetic field deflecting off of cosmic
rays. The problem is getting up to those speeds in the first place.

Yousuf Khan

What do you base that assumption on?
Makes no sense to me.
Have you ever played with ions and magnetic and electric fields?
Have you ever build a cosmic ray detector?

High-speed cosmic ray particles are already travelling pretty close to
the speed of light. Any magnetic field that would want a chance to
deflect such a particle would have to be either very strong if you're
travelling at slow speeds, or not so strong but travelling along close
to the speed of those particles too.

Yousuf Khan

On 06/12/2011 10:04 AM, dlzc wrote:
Dear Steve Willner:

On Dec 5, 2:01 pm, (Steve Willner) wrote:
...
On another question raised in this thread, I don't
believe anything in the Outer Space Treaty prevents
using nuclear reactors in space. RTGs and
radioisotope heaters are, of course, used routinely.

The Orion drive used nuclear detonations, which arise from the use of
nuclear weapons in space.

That would be a violation, and possibly one all signatory countries
would have to sign on to should we have to do any serious diversions
of solid NEOs.

David A. Smith

Perhaps they could clarify the treaty by requiring that nuclear
detonations must not happen within 1 million kilometers of Earth, or
something like that? So an Orion drive ship would have to get out to
that distance with standard chemical propulsion and at that point it
could switch to nuclear.

Yousuf Khan

On a sunny day (Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:12:40 -0500) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote in :

On 04/12/2011 4:52 PM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:34:33 -0500) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote :
You'd need to already be pretty high up the speed-of-light scale to have
any effective propulsion from a magnetic field deflecting off of cosmic
rays. The problem is getting up to those speeds in the first place.

Yousuf Khan

What do you base that assumption on?
Makes no sense to me.
Have you ever played with ions and magnetic and electric fields?

------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^

Have you ever build a cosmic ray detector?

High-speed cosmic ray particles are already travelling pretty close to
the speed of light. Any magnetic field that would want a chance to
deflect such a particle would have to be either very strong if you're
travelling at slow speeds, or not so strong but travelling along close
to the speed of those particles too.

Yousuf Khan

http://www.exo.net/~pauld/activities...television.htm

Magnetic deflection works very well in all cases.