====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f X-Sender: kgstar@pophost.fw.hac.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 08:54:00 -0500 To: starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu From: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39) Subject: starship-design: Web update. Sender: owner-starship-design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39) I uploaded the latest drafts of LIT web stuf. Mainly some error corrections, and I added a newsletter section (including subscription instructions). I have high confidence in the completness of the newsletters going back about 3 months, and I have loaded all the back letters and clipping I have. This gives fairly good coverage back to February 96 (the old site crashed last October). If anyone else has better coverage you can talk to me or Dave about it. M.A.R.S and Argosy folks. If you have more worked up, or need help I'm here. Given that the new semester is starting, and I'ld like to have the new LIT up and runing pretty soon for the collage crowd, so unless I find something broken, someone has a complaint, (or Argosey or M.A.R.s need help) I'm not intending to do any more updates for a few months. Dave, I will under no cercomstance upload anything more without checking with you in advance. I don't want to over write something your working on. Kelly ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- Kelly Starks Phone: (219) 429-7066 Fax: (219) 429-6859 Sr. Systems Engineer Mail Stop: 10-39 Hughes defense Communications 1010 Production Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46808-4106 Email: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f X-Sender: kgstar@pophost.fw.hac.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:35:04 -0500 To: starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu From: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39) Subject: starship-design: Fuel costs Sender: owner-starship-design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39) Hi all, I was runing through some numbers, and it looks like if you have matter conversion the "fuel mass" needed to get to half of lightspeed is .42 (42%) of the the ships unfueled mass. (That doesn't include the deceleration fuel!). Then I started to run some cost numbers. A kilogram of mass converts to 25 E9 kilowatt hours worth of power. e=mc^2 e (in joules) = M(in kilos) C^2 = 9e16 joules per kg. 1 joule = 10^-6 Mw-sec = 3,600,000 kilowatt hours Electricity costs about 4-10 cents per kilowatt hour. If you could convert the energy directly into antimatter. Antimater would (at $0.05 a KwHour) cost $1.25 E9 per kilogram. Thats one and a quarter billion dollars a kilo! Given that an Explorer class ship has a mass of 500,000 tons. That comes to a fuel mass of 210,000 tons. Half of which is anti-matter. Thats 105,000,000 kg of anti-matter for a cost of roughly $130 E15 or about 130 thousand trillion dollars, or a bit under 100,000 times the federal budget. 8( For comparison a Li-6 fueled fusion craft would take 4,570 times its dry weight in fuel to get to half light speed. For an Explorer class thats 2.23 E9 tons of lithium-6. (Which is about 8% of the mass of a given mass of mined Lithium. Maybe we can seel back the other isotopes of lithium after we remove the isotope we want?) At current comercial rates ( priced at about $300/lb. Or $660/Kg) for Lithium (ignoring procesing fees) that tonage would cost about $1,470 Trillion dollars, or 1 thousand times the federal budget. Nearly a hundred fold improvement. 8( To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. Kelly ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- Kelly Starks Phone: (219) 429-7066 Fax: (219) 429-6859 Sr. Systems Engineer Mail Stop: 10-39 Hughes defense Communications 1010 Production Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46808-4106 Email: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ====================================================== Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 19:01:08 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender: pbakelaar@hiway1.exit109.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39), starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu From: Philip Bakelaar Subject: Re: starship- design: Fuel costs At 04:35 PM 8/26/96 -0500, Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote: >To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >Kelly My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? (I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, answer my question theoretically! :D) Ben ====================================================== Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:32:46 -0700 (PDT) From: John Holmstrom To: Philip Bakelaar Cc: Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 , starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Mime-Version: 1.0 >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, >answer my question theoretically! :D) Well, any speed will slow down aging, it just isn't worth calculating 'til probably .1c or so. If you move at 5m/s, you will age somewhat, according to {delta}t={delta}t{sub 0}*{gamma} when {gamma}=1/{sq-root}[1- (v^2/c^2)] ------------------------------------------------------------------ - ¦ johnh@gladstone.uoregon.edu ¦All science is either physics¦ ¦------- ----------------------------¦or stamp collecting ¦ ¦http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~johnh¦ -Ernest Rutherford ¦ ------------------------------------------------------------------ - ====================================================== Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:32:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Steve VanDevender To: Philip Bakelaar Cc: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39), starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Philip Bakelaar writes: >At 04:35 PM 8/26/96 -0500, Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote: >>To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >>Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >>Kelly >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, >answer my question theoretically! :D) >Ben It's not theoretical, and it doesn't magically appear above some certain speed; the effect is present, but difficult to measure, at low speeds. If an object is moving relative to you with a speed v (as a fraction of c, the speed of light), then a clock attached to it runs at the rate sqrt(1 - v^2) relative to your clock. This effect is quite small for speeds in our normal experience -- moving at 60 mph, your clock runs 1 part in 2.5e14 slower than a clock at rest on the road. At about 1/7 c, your clock will run about 1% slower than a clock on Earth. This effect has been observed experimentally many times, such as in slower decay half-lives for rapidly moving subatomic particles and in atomic clocks flown around in airplanes (at around 300 mph, the clocks slow by one part in 1e13 due to the aircraft's velocity). ====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:32:46 -0700 (PDT) From: John Holmstrom To: Philip Bakelaar Cc: Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 , starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-starship-design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: John Holmstrom >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, >answer my question theoretically! :D) Well, any speed will slow down aging, it just isn't worth calculating 'til probably .1c or so. If you move at 5m/s, you will age somewhat, according to {delta}t={delta}t{sub 0}*{gamma} when {gamma}=1/{sq-root}[1- (v^2/c^2)] ------------------------------------------------------------------ - ¦ johnh@gladstone.uoregon.edu ¦All science is either physics¦ ¦------- ----------------------------¦or stamp collecting ¦ ¦http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~johnh¦ -Ernest Rutherford ¦ ------------------------------------------------------------------ - ====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:32:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Steve VanDevender To: Philip Bakelaar Cc: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39), starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Sender: owner-starship- design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Steve VanDevender Philip Bakelaar writes: >At 04:35 PM 8/26/96 -0500, Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote: >>To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >>Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >>Kelly >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, >answer my question theoretically! :D) >Ben It's not theoretical, and it doesn't magically appear above some certain speed; the effect is present, but difficult to measure, at low speeds. If an object is moving relative to you with a speed v (as a fraction of c, the speed of light), then a clock attached to it runs at the rate sqrt(1 - v^2) relative to your clock. This effect is quite small for speeds in our normal experience -- moving at 60 mph, your clock runs 1 part in 2.5e14 slower than a clock at rest on the road. At about 1/7 c, your clock will run about 1% slower than a clock on Earth. This effect has been observed experimentally many times, such as in slower decay half-lives for rapidly moving subatomic particles and in atomic clocks flown around in airplanes (at around 300 mph, the clocks slow by one part in 1e13 due to the aircraft's velocity). ====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 21:00:53 -0500 From: "Kevin \"Tex\" Houston" Organization: sadly lacking Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Starship design group Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Sender: owner-starship- design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: "Kevin \"Tex\" Houston" Philip Bakelaar wrote: >At 04:35 PM 8/26/96 -0500, Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote: >>To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >>Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >>Kelly >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, >answer my question theoretically! :D) >Ben Ben, Your aging *Never* slows down, no matter how fast you travel. You will always experience one day at a time, and will never have more days than you are allotted. While this might not be exactly the question you were asking, it is nonetheless one way to interpret your question. Your question seemed to imply that while your "mind" might experience a month, your "body" might only experience one day. This, of course, never happens. That is to say, your clock will never slow down. it is all the other clocks in the universe that speed up. If you ask nicely, I'm sure Steve will be happy to pose some relativity puzzles for you. }8^)> Here's one to get you started... It's quite old, and I'm sure many of our members will recognize it. I trust they will keep to themselves until those younger members of this list have had a chance to ponder the possiblities. Assume for the moment, that this "clock-slowing" process is real. (I can assure you that it is, but even if that isn't enough for you, just accept it for the moment as a hypothetical) and that as you approach the speed of light, your local time slows down. (relative to the rest of the universe of course) Now consider the plight of two twins: Twin A (whom I'll call Kelly ;) stays at home (due to a severe lack of antimatter) Twin B (named Kevin) Sails away on a maser-powered sail-ship. The flight distance is 11.9 light-years, and Kevin accelerates the whole way until turn-around, and then deccelerates at the same rate into the target system. After some amount of time (let's say ten years), Kevin gets back into his maser-sail driven ship, and heads back. Accelerating at a constant rate until turn around whereupon he deccelerates again until coming to a rest in our own solar system. How long does the flight take? Consider that Kevin left on the twin's 40th birthday. According to Kevin's clock, the trip takes about 20 years (5 years there, 5 years back, and ten years in the system), But according to Kelly's clock, the trip takes something closer to 45 years. 13 years there, 13 years back, and ten years in the system. Now this seems normal, considering that as you move closer to the speed of light your time slows down. But just who is doing the moving here? According to Einstein, there is no privileged point of reference, it is just as accurate to say that Kelly (and the rest of the universe) moved while Kevin and his magical sail-ship stayed at rest. So why is Kelly the doddering old fool in the nursing home, (at 85 yrs) while Kevin, (at 60) isn't even ready to collect social security? Big hint: the problem is not with Einstein, nor with the ages of the men as I've stated them. Kevin (snickering silently to himself) ====================================================== Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 00:04:31 -0400 From: KellySt@aol.com To: pbakelaar@exit109.com, kgstar@most.fw.hac.com, starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs >>To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >>Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >>Kelly >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, answer my question theoretically! :D) >Ben Good news. Its not a theory, it has been tested and shown to work. Bad news. You don't really see much effect untill over 90% of light speed or so. The exact numbers are at the end of my Explorer overview page. Kelly ====================================================== X-Authentication-Warning: darkwing.uoregon.edu: majordom set sender to owner-starship-design using -f From: KellySt@aol.com Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 00:04:31 -0400 To: pbakelaar@exit109.com, kgstar@most.fw.hac.com, starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: Re: starship-design: Fuel costs Sender: owner-starship- design@darkwing.uoregon.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: KellySt@aol.com >>To get to 1/3rd C thou an Explorer Class only needs 25,000,000 tons or about 16.5 trillion dollars worth. A meer dozen federal budget years! ~~~~8( >>Then again, we should be able to get a substantial bulk discount. >>Kelly >My question is: at what % of the speed of light does aging slow down? >(I believe this slowing of aging is still theoretical, so if it is, answer my question theoretically! :D) >Ben Good news. Its not a theory, it has been tested and shown to work. Bad news. You don't really see much effect untill over 90% of light speed or so. The exact numbers are at the end of my Explorer overview page. Kelly ====================================================== From: David Levine To: "'kgstar@most.fw.hac.com'" Subject: RE: How do we update the newsletters? Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 09:51:30 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Still thinking about this one.... >---------- >From: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com[SMTP:kgstar@most.fw.hac.com] Sent: Monday, August 26, 1996 10:38 AM >To: David Levine >Subject: How do we update the newsletters? >I can collect and upload weekly collections of the newsletters and update the newsletter list page. But how do we get it into the production site (when its loaded)? Would my updating the newsletters subdirectory disrupt anything your doing? >Kelly >------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- Kelly Starks Phone: (219) 429-7066 Fax: (219) 429-6859 >Sr. Systems Engineer Mail Stop: 10-39 >Hughes defense Communications >1010 Production Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46808-4106 Email: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com >------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ====================================================== X-Sender: kgstar@pophost.fw.hac.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 08:59:13 -0500 To: David Levine From: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com (Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39) Subject: RE: How do we update the newsletters? Cc: "'kgstar@most.fw.hac.com'" At 9:51 AM 8/27/96, David Levine wrote: Well I collected the last week in another text file. I'll upload that later today. Longer term, we can see what we think of. Later. Kelly >Still thinking about this one.... >>---------- >>From: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com[SMTP:kgstar@most.fw.hac.com] Sent: Monday, August 26, 1996 10:38 AM >>To: David Levine >>Subject: How do we update the newsletters? >>I can collect and upload weekly collections of the newsletters and update the newsletter list page. But how do we get it into the production site (when its loaded)? Would my updating the newsletters subdirectory disrupt anything your doing? >>Kelly >>----------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Kelly Starks Phone: (219) 429-7066 Fax: (219) 429-6859 >>Sr. Systems Engineer Mail Stop: 10-39 >>Hughes defense Communications >>1010 Production Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46808-4106 Email: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com >>----------------------------------------------------------------- -----