Macrolasers for millennium, interplanetary mining and interstellar flight Conventional cost yardsticks meantime, derived from solid optics on the ground, become totally irrelevant. For example such "macro-optics" in prospect rapidly become self-supporting, then supply a vast and exponentially increasing surplus quantity of (valuable, marketable, "free") energy, as desired, to specified locations on Earth or in space for the indefinite future. Available energy and raw material resources of the sun and planets are effectively limitless for purposes of this technology. Herein-proposed systems could result in a new, high-economic-growth "millennium". Similarly, interplanetary shuttle service could be provided by such technology at a comfortable one-gravity acceleration/deceleration, resulting in an average of two-week round trip travel times to Mars and Venus. Finally round trip interstellar flight employing first the energy of our own sun, then that of the approached star, becomes first feasible then exponentially faster and easier as permanent, exponentially self-grown "stellar energy handling satellites" (SEHS or MACROLASERS-Figure 28, 29) are emplaced respectively in orbit both of our own sun and of the target star. Relativistic interstellar-spaceship effects become marked as SEHS size (therefore energy beam "tightness" (range) and output) exponentially is increased. Thus round trip interstellar trips [19, 20, 22] will become increasingly faster (closer to light speed) for the travelers, but of course will concomitantly result in differential (greater) aging of relatives/friends at home on Earth (as predicted by Special Relativity). Limitations of conventional rocketry Today's conventional rocketry, in which the entire amount of both energy and mass needed for propulsion are carried offers little hope for comfortable, relativistic, round trip interstellar flight for humans. For practical (single-stage) manned interstellar operation, rocket exhaust velocity must slightly exceed desired rocket terminal velocity. The latter is arbitrarily selected here as one quarter of the speed of light. But the resulting 7,500,000+ sec specific impulse cannot [23] be attained by any conceivable rocket motor short of one employing the absolute destruction of matter (still inadequate for interstellar manned - humane - travel as Purcell [24] has shown, since with even matter/antimatter rockets, no provision is possible for the return voyage). New interstellar rocket motor: the particle accelerator Present proposal however puts the matter in a wholly new light (no pun intended!). The rocket motor proposed here is simply the well-known, laboratory particle accelerator, but one pared down for interstellar space travel in a fashion comparable to its earth-orbital application in particle-beam weaponry. Here, the "linear accelerator" [25, 26] may be best choice among such devices, because the distant beam power SEHS apparatus can supply ample power to run it. For rocket motors, there need be no scientific
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