Reply To: Fusion Oil

[vansig]

these are great ideas. structural forms for the ship should be multi-purpose. the skin can double as a whipple shield and radiator, if the vascular structure for the refrigerant has lots of redundancy and failsafe valves. we should note that micro-meteors at .084 c will conceivably do a tremendous amount of damage; and everything has to operate for 50 – 100 years.

now, is there any way to make thrust scale better than linearly with mass?

in terms of scaling, 7500 five MW electrodes, that have to be replaced every 90 days, is about the same as 2500 fifteen MW electrodes, that have to be replaced every month, unless worn parts can be repaired/refurbished aboard ship.