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

On Aug 22, 5:38 pm, IsaacKuo <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The chip impactors would plausibly be more like very small extremely
thin flakes of foil. With an area of perhaps .1mm by .1mm and a
thickness of 1 micron, the mass of a chip may be on the order of
0.01 micrograms.

These chips are supposed to be robot controlled? Isn't that a little
small
for robot controlled? I wonder if you could arrange the laser in some
way
so that the chips automatically move towards the centre line.
(perhaps,
designed to move towards the most intense part of the beam.)

Also, for it to work, the 'puff' (gas right?) has to be hit by the
impactor.

More likely the chip will power through the gas and might only
interact with
a small percentage of the it. That gas would be blown forward
relative
to the rest of the gas but won't be slowed down much, so not much of
the KE of the incoming gas is absorbed. Also, the stationary gas that
remains is just wasted and doesn't provide thrust.

I wonder would a solid disc be better for the target. Its thickness
could
be set so that the chip can make a hole, blasting that portion of the
disc
forward. It might take a while before the disc was consumed.

When it is, say, 10% consumed, it could be taken back into the ship
and replaced
with another one and then recycled.

I wonder if the disc would melt, if the chip is moving fast enough,
perhaps,
there wouldn't be enough time for conduction of heat, it would just
blast
a cylinder/cone of material directly into plasma.
.

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