Ion Drives and Radiation Shields

[CraigD]

Craig, what makes you think energy supplys will open up so vastly on a kilogram per kilovolt basis?

In a word, antimatter.

 

I essentially agree with the late Robert Forward’s views on the subject of manufacturing and using antimatter as an engineering fuel. Although current techniques and facilities are capable of producing only minute quantities (to date, only a few hundred thousand anti atoms of hydrogen have been manufactured and stored) at great expense (Forward estimated the cost of antimatter using 1990s technology at roughly US $ 1 trillion / gram), I believe that improvements in this technology, especially involving automated, near-solar orbiting plants, have the potential to dramatically reduce this cost, making antimatter a viable fuel.

 

Forward describes this at length in his 1995 book ”Indistinguishable from Magic”. I wrote a much more brief, similar bit of speculation in ”Relevance of space elevators in a 1,000,000 times more energy rich civilization” in the 5550 thread.

 

By no means do I consider this technological direction certain or inevitable, but I do consider it possible, and desirable.

[Aireal]

CraigD,

I have regreted glossing over parts of my post to keep down the length. The ship is turned into a large dipole. A dipole will generate a magnetic field only when the potential is changing, and stops producing one when at a steady state. The various ship systems interact to cause a constant flux in the dipole potential when in use so that it will generate a magnitic field.

 

My original design used an induction coil in the hull section to generate the magnitic field. When I realized that the dipole would also produce a magnitic field when in use, I removed the coil from the hull, saveing mass and costruction cost as well as reducing complexity.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Again with this huge problem that the solar wind is mostly protons. And you have a hull with 2 million volt negative potential.

 

You are ATTRACTING all of those free protons. It's less like a shield and more like a giant target, I'd say.

 

TFS

[Aireal]

TheFaithfulStone,

You are exactly right, I have made a target, you almost got it, so let me explain.

 

Cosmic Radiation is mainly composed of all those protons you mentioned. If nothing is done about them, they will be ripping through the ship, crew, and equipment causing damage. Methods proposed to stop this are off the charts in their requirments to do so. Stand alone magnetic sheilds act like a big bat, knocking those protons back into space with nearly the same energy they had before, where they will be a danger to space travel for the rest of time. Stand alone material shielding acts like a giant catchers mit, and single charge electrostatic fields, which cause as many problems as they solve, as you pointed out. Instead of useing such brute force methods, I am leading these charged particles into a trap, using far less energy.

 

My weaker magnitic field only deflects them away from the center of the ship, where the crew is, and toward the charged poles of the ship. Columb attraction from the charged poles aids in this and becomes stronger as the distance is decreased. Thus these charged particles end up impacting the poles at the ends of the ship, instead of the center where the crew and equipment are. As most of these charged particles are protons, they will be impacting the negative pole of the ship, reducing the negative potential of the ship. Hope that helps.