Re: starship-design: Re: Perihelion Maneuver

[kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu (Isaac Kuo)]

KellySt@aol.com wrote:
>>With a wavelength of 1mm, that requires
>>an aperture around 30,000km wide.  Don't tell me you're going to
>>make a microwave laser that big.

>As I mentioned a phased array maser cluseer of 2 AU recently (for fuel sail),
>and we have done extensive conversations of it a year ago, I'ld think we'ld
>already covered that to death?  Hell they're even talking optical telescope
>clusters on that scale.

But it doesn't work.  You can get better resolution using a telescope
with VLBI, but you can _not_ use phased array to acheive better power
concentration.

As you should know, VLBI increases resolution, but not sensitivity
(compared to a single telescope of the same total aperture area).

Think about what that means in reverse.  That means that a VLBI array
of emitters will decrease illuminated spot size, but not illuminated
spot brightness (compared to a single emitter of the same total aperture
area).

Alternatively, and more convincingly, do some math using the formulas
for EM radiation.  Since they're linear, all you have to do is add.
-- 
    _____     Isaac Kuo kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu http://www.csc.lsu.edu/~kuo
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