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Old 10-06-2019, 01:24 PM   #7
DataPacRat
 
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Niagara, Canada
Default Re: [Spaceships] How should a large station... duck?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
It needs to change its' movement in an unpredicatable fashion with a frequency that is shorter than the amount of time impactors have to adjsut their courses.

So if that relativistic doomsday machine has to commit to one particular course a month befre impact change your orbit more often than that.
Fair enough. Anyone up to sketching out one or two sample attacks, so I can get a better idea of the range of what to watch out for? :)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Can you give it a heavy counterweight that it releases? Or have it break into two or more pieces? That should give it a quick jump out of the way, but it's one-use only, and it would take some time and effort to reset.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
That was my thought. Use a spin tether and have the station either be in two halves or have a large counterweight. If it needs to move quickly you simply disconnect the tether and the two halves go flying off in opposite directions at high velocity.
Mm. Tricky. My initial vision for this station is a can of pop, the size of Egypt if you rolled up that country into a tube. Sure, with advanced tech you could build in a line to split the thing in half when you wanted - but you'd lose all the important stuff inside if you did.

I'm already positing fairly strong nano-stringies just to keep a moderate level of gravity with the diameter in question. To convert the thing into a pair of sub-habitats, then the outer edge of their rotation would be the same as the outer circumference of the original cylinder, implying a much smaller overall hab.

Still, having a rock ready to release is basically the same as having a mass-driver engine installed; maybe I should take another look at having some emergency one-shot propulsion that uses up fuel. I suspect high-thrust is more important than overall delta-v, if the goal is just to jog the place out of the way of a large rock before it hits... but I'll have to dig through the SS books and run some numbers to be sure. :)
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