The Ion Interstellar Spaceship, from Hell to Sirius

On Feb 24, 9:04 pm, (oldcoot) wrote:
A fast moving craft at 0.1'c' is going to require such a bow

shockwave...

A vessel moving at subluminal speed is incapable of generating a bow
wave in the "vacuum" of space. It'll still be totally vulnerable to
collision with debris in its flightpath.

Space isn't a vacuum, it's absolutely chuck full of photons, dark
matter, dark energy and solar winds coming from nearly every
direction, especially as coming off the Sirius star/solar system.


Only in the hyperdrive regime can a bow shock be
generated (along with the incidental, trailing gravitational-wave
'wake'). As mentioned before, this is exactly analogous to the sonic
boom wake trailed by a supersonic jet plane in the atmosphere. No 'boom'
is generated when the plane is subsonic.

If doing better than 'c' is what it takes, then so be it. However,
what about putting on the brakes? and what about keeping in radio
contact with our mission that's exiting away from us at better than
'c' might require a trail of microwave/laser transponders (at least
one transponder for each 0.1'c').

Remember, once getting past the interstellar L1, it's a gravity pull
that'll help get our craft or whatever probe(s) as going faster and
faster until we see that we're zipping entirely past Sirius.

If it's merely a rad-hard robotic probe; what's the big ass hurry?

Seems using those Rn222 ions for obtaining a 0.1'c' velocity should be
more than good enough for our thorium javelin probes. At least one
out of ten should manage to get through.
.. - Brad Guth