Currently I am working on a paper & presentation for the 100 YSS Symposium in Houston, to be presented by an Icarus colleague. I am examining the effectiveness of using a magnetic-sail to brake to low-speeds in the target system, but part of that is a comparison with a pure fusion rocket. As it is
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The preprint I mentioned is available online (thanks to Brian Wang’s “Next Big Future” post) and it’s here: Affordable, rapid bootstrapping of space industry and solar system civilization More discussion is coming. One preliminary idea is that 100,000 teleoperated robots on the Moon could have a volunteer Army controlling them to help build the Solar
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The ISV “Venturestar” is an example of “poly-propulsion”, using a Forward laser-sail to boost to 0.7c, and brake to a halt, in Sol-space, then using matter-antimatter, Powell/Pellegrino “Valkyrie” style, to brake at Alpha Centauri, then boost for the trip home.
No. Not the mountain in the Himalayas. Kardashev II Civilization status – a civilization using the energy output of its star. Earth intercepts just 2.2 billionths of the Sun’s energy and presently we use ~1/10,000th of what Earth receives. Thus the plateau of K-II seems a long way off. However we could boot-strap our way
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