Quick question about a STL trip - and another...

In message <dbfdda79-0083-4bbb-8545-51a9085964dc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, IsaacKuo <mechdan@xxxxxxxxx> writes
My prefered braking drive is a kinetic impact powered rocket. The main starship is a large magloop with perhaps a dozen payload modules strung along it like necklace beads. This can use magsail braking to reduce its speed. Behind the main starship is an auxiliary ship containing a payload of zillions of tiny little robot chips, as well as a nuclear powered laser to provide power to the chips. Before arriving at the destination system, the auxiliary ship releases the chips, and they fly themselves into a linear formation along the laser.

Since the main starship has used magsail braking, the chip formation catches up. The starship maneuvers to line itself up with the laser, so the chips pass through the loop-shaped starship. It puffs propellant gas in front of it. Relativistic kinetic impacts with the robot chips cause explosions of plasma far more energetic than nuclear reactions or even antimatter reactions. The resulting relativistic charged particles get deflected by the starship's magnetic field, producing backwards braking thrust.

This sort of braking drive may be very effective and cost only a modest amount of propellant. We can assume the following proposed drive systems are used only for the acceleration portion (up to 25%c).

Probably a dumb question, but this impacts on something I'm just starting to work on right now...

In a generation ship what kind of changes would the passengers and crew feel/hear/sense on board ship between a) normal drive, b) deceleration and c) we've arrived?

I appreciate there'd be masses of shielding between drives and the human payload and I reckon people would treat base line background noise as silence and only notice when it changed.

What about crew? How close would they have to get to the drives/working parts for maintenance? (I'm talking about shipboard not external.)

What would be the range of a ship outward bound from Earth for eighteen generations (a generation is flexible, say 20 - 30 years per generation or even longer if life expectancy has increased) - anything from 350 to up to 500 - 600 years in transit?

There's a fleet of 50+ generation ships, I guess there's been some natural wastage - would 10% losses be unreasonable? Some in disasters, some cannibalised to repair failing ships with their passengers and crew redistributed, to other ships causing brief overcrowding until the population evened itself out in a generation or two.

Is there an optimum size for a generation ship (despite the fleet, if necessary each one has to be self-sufficient)?

Once a fleet is launched it has to be self-sufficient but presumably they'll keep in contact with Earth for as long as possible. How long will that be?

And after 500 years of subjective shipboard time at those speeds, how much time will have passed on Earth?

Sorry - a lot of vary basic questions for many of you but complete stumpers for me and I'd really appreciate some idea, even if it's only a broad range of either/or answers. The story is obviously NOT about the technical aspects of the voyage, but I'd like to get the background as close to un-ludicrous as possible.

Thanks

Jacey


--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
posting via usenet and not googlegroups, ourdebate
or any other forum that reprints usenet posts as
though they were the forum's own

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