JPM@MIT-AI@sri-unix (08/09/82)
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) <JPM at MIT-AI> <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE> There's a novel (Rails Accross the Galaxy) being serialized in ANALOG magazine that discusses a means of interstellar transportation I have never heard of before. It violates no known laws of physics, although it does require fantastic engineering developments. Say you are a million year civilization that wants to trade with its interstellar neighbors. The costs of using convention spaceships are too large to substain the volume of traffic you want (either you have to spend a fantastic amount of energy getting up to lightspeed or you wait forever). So what do you do? You build a railroad! Lasers apparently can be made self focusing if the power densities are sufficiently high. "Sufficiently high" means the power output of a star. Given that, you simply project a set of beams accross space. These are your "rails." They "terminate" at black holes, which can bend them sufficiently so that each rail actually forms a closed loop. Now your ship simply draws power from the rails by interacting with the raditaion of the rails. Do it right, and balance the traffic, and you can do the skyhook trick - ships take power out of the rails when they accelerate, then give it back while decelerating. Your energy loses are the only cost you have to pay, and its a lot cheaper than using a reaction drive! Of course, the capital costs are high (you have to convert whole stars into energy to set up the rails), but you can depreciate over a million years and a thousand stars. Any studies done of this interesting concept? Jim -------