Timeline for What is the most effective way to brake from interstellar speeds?
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| Jun 16, 2020 at 11:03 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Oct 2, 2017 at 6:58 | comment | added | Anton Tykhyy | Braking with a solar sail can only work if you have a laser battery at the destination similar to the one you used for launching. Braking on the primary star will not work due to material constraints, see my answer below. | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:58 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Mar 10, 2017 at 9:42 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jan 19, 2017 at 1:09 | comment | added | geometrian | @Peter Roughly speaking, momentum is what causes penetration, kinetic energy is what causes damage. There's not great data about hypervelocity impacts, certainly none about relativistic impacts, but the general expectation is that (since momentum is linear and KE is quadratic) hypervelocity impacts look less like penetrators and more like point-source explosions.¶ If you somehow survive the dust specks, maybe try the proton flux? At 0.6c, it's about 42.25 petaelectronvolts per square centimeter per second. | |
| Jan 17, 2017 at 22:32 | comment | added | Profane tmesis | @imallett Wouldn't the dust just punch through the sail, leaving a very small hole? I think a solar sail with a tiny hole in it is still a solar sail. And interstellar dust is supposed to be relatively rare. | |
| Jul 30, 2016 at 12:58 | comment | added | Annonymus | Unfortunately, solar sails aren't light-weight beacause they can be, but because they have to be. To change the momentum of a ship massive enough to hold troops, shuttles etc. using solar winds you'd need sails of dyson-sphere magnitude, which is not very practical. | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 14:11 | comment | added | Joe Bloggs | @codemonkey Could work, though the important thing about the interstellar dust is that it's a fairly constant medium. The ship is going to be experiencing that kind of energetic impact through the entire journey without the 'discrete' change into atmosphere, so you'd have to fold up the dusk-break into the ship while also making sure it's got enough material to ablate and enough surface area to slow the vessel down when unfolded.. would be one funky looking ship! | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 13:59 | comment | added | codeMonkey | @JoeBloggs think of areo-breaking with the Apollo missions: the areo-break (heat shield) absorbed a bunch of energy, and then they deployed the parachute. Similarly, here I would deploy a "dusk-break" to reduce speed through friction with the interstellar medium, followed by a light-sail to slow to orbital speed. the more I think about this, the more reasonable it sounds... (for values of reasonable that include interstellar transit) | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 12:49 | comment | added | Joe Bloggs | @codemonkey if you had a thicker sheet and the dust specks could be relied upon to impact your shield you could even reduce the size of the sail due to the plasma bursts granting additional backwards momentum. Sadly that's somewhat similar to saying that a soldier could gain additional momentum from hollow point rounds being fired at his parachute if it was thick enough. | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 16:20 | comment | added | codeMonkey | @imallett makes me think of a kind of interstellar parachute.... could you use a thicker, ablative material and a large change in surface area to slow down? | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 14:10 | comment | added | geometrian | Absolutely. But most ships have it easier since the way they try to slow down isn't using a mylar bag turned broadside to relativistic bombardment. | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 14:02 | comment | added | HDE 226868♦ | @imallett Wouldn't that be a problem for pretty much any ship? | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 14:00 | comment | added | geometrian | Great, except . . . every 4-microgram interstellar dust speck will impact your flimsy sail with kinetic energy equivalent to 14.3 kg of TNT at 0.6c relative. Yes. Every dust speck will do the damage of three anti-tank mines. Sorry. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 20:34 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 30, 2015 at 15:52 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 30, 2015 at 13:56 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 30, 2015 at 13:49 | history | answered | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |