The white paper says the payload release doesn't have to be precisely timed, if TARS is on a circular orbit, and I do not understand why. Sure, the plane in which the payload shoots off, is defined by the orbital position of TARS. But there are 360 degrees of freedom within that plane. If we aim at e.g. a specific star, how is release timing not a critical factor? And if it is, what timer would survive the solar radiation and extreme spinning, remaining reliably operational and microsecond accurate?
The timer would not need to be onboard the spinning flywheel, it could be on an observing quasite orbiting higher. When it's time to launch it could shine a control laser at the flywheel, which is used to time the triggering of a cutting laser at the right position to slice the payload off at the correct angle.
One timer could be used to launch multiple flywheel payloads over time
I think the idea is very interesting, but please correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t the payload experiencing a sustained acceleration of hundreds of thousands of Gs, if not millions?
I am not sure that anything useful could survive that kind of sustained crushing acceleration. By comparison a rifle bullet being shot is around 100k Gs for millisecond , this would go on for weeks or months.
I don’t have much to offer the conversation other than a linguistic alternative.
TAURUS: Torqued Accelerator Using Radiation Unleashed from the Sun.
Grammatically correct and it doesn’t drop a word just to mimic a sci-fi robot’s name in an incredibly awkward and stilted way. I like Interstellar as much as the next person, but that acronym felt like a stretch, and it leaves out (literally) useful information.
In 1887 Boys published this very entertaining article on how he produced long fine wires of quartz, by heating a small thread of glass (and other materials) with a blowpipe, such that it beads, the rod of glass was attached to a tiny dart on a crossbow beforehand, with a foot pedal to release the dart. When he released the dart right when the molten ball formed, the dart would shoot all through the hallway and 2 rooms before meeting a wall. The dart would stick in the wall and a continuous thread was formed between the crossbow and the dart on the end wall (about 90 feet or 30 meters away). When he switched to quartz he immediately observed that quartz took a much larger force, and hence decelerated the dart, so it wouldn't reach the other wall.
I wonder if quartz could be used for matching up Delta v for intercept missions.
Either way the first such probe should be called spiderman...
I cannot do justice for the style and presentation of this article, so you should read it for yourself:
6 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDM1COWJ2Hc
One timer could be used to launch multiple flywheel payloads over time
I am not sure that anything useful could survive that kind of sustained crushing acceleration. By comparison a rifle bullet being shot is around 100k Gs for millisecond , this would go on for weeks or months.
TAURUS: Torqued Accelerator Using Radiation Unleashed from the Sun.
Grammatically correct and it doesn’t drop a word just to mimic a sci-fi robot’s name in an incredibly awkward and stilted way. I like Interstellar as much as the next person, but that acronym felt like a stretch, and it leaves out (literally) useful information.
In 1887 Boys published this very entertaining article on how he produced long fine wires of quartz, by heating a small thread of glass (and other materials) with a blowpipe, such that it beads, the rod of glass was attached to a tiny dart on a crossbow beforehand, with a foot pedal to release the dart. When he released the dart right when the molten ball formed, the dart would shoot all through the hallway and 2 rooms before meeting a wall. The dart would stick in the wall and a continuous thread was formed between the crossbow and the dart on the end wall (about 90 feet or 30 meters away). When he switched to quartz he immediately observed that quartz took a much larger force, and hence decelerated the dart, so it wouldn't reach the other wall.
I wonder if quartz could be used for matching up Delta v for intercept missions.
Either way the first such probe should be called spiderman...
I cannot do justice for the style and presentation of this article, so you should read it for yourself:
https://zenodo.org/records/1431517/files/article.pdf