From: Billy Brown (bbrown@transcient.com)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2000 - 14:43:49 MST
Spike Jones wrote:
> I worked on the orbit mechanics and found that if the material were in
> the same orbital plane as the planet, then all you need to do is figure
> out how to stop the rotation of the planet, or rather, tide lock it with
> the sun. The material could be rotating in the opposite direction as
> the planet. The hole would be drilled on the equator from the dawn
> side to the dusk side.
An alternate design:
Build the system as a rapidly rotating disk, with a moderately high
operating temperature. You have lots and lots of holes in the disk
(slanted, obviously), each with an associated ring of coolant material. The
heat exchange tunnels will be very hot (a few thousand degrees), while the
coolant will be very cool (use a big orbit so it has time to cool off).
Also, you should imbed something ferrous in the particles so that you can
manipulate the stream magnetically. That way a mass driver system
integrated with each tunnel can adjust the coolant vectors to correct for
the inevitable orbital instabilities (assuming they aren't too big).
> The problem then is that any individual particle
> would not be in the tunnel very long, so it would not pick up much
> heat.
I would assume an SI can easily solve any engineering problem that does not
violate the laws of physics. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that
it can find some clever means of quickly dumping heat from the tunnel to the
coolant stream. (Mind you, I'd still like to think of a good solution to
the problem - I just think we shouldn't expect it to b a show-stopper if we
don't come up with one.)
Billy Brown
bbrown@transcient.com
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