Bill Clawson wrote: >If I were a full-time science fiction writer, I would really enjoy Dr. >Myrabo's lightcraft, but the truth is I am not much of a science fiction >writer, so I'm not that enamored. His stuff seems to require a lot of >unobtanium to work. > Usually. There is a reasonable paper on the web which I read a while back:
http://lightcraft.meche.rpi.edu/Research/publications/AIAA97-0795.pdf which he cowrote for NASA, where he actually investigated the hypersonic behaviour in a windtunnel from mach 10-15. No obvious unobtainium involved in this case (which makes a nice change). >-----Original Message----- >From: Henry Spencer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 3:10 PM >To: ERPS >Subject: Re: [ERPS] Pointy Protruberances > >... If you want a *really* high-tech solution, Leik Myrabo has shown that >you >can get much of the effect of a physical spike by using focused laser or >microwave energy to create a spark ahead of the nose. Now *that* you >could reasonably move in and out to match velocity, and in fact you could >probably move it laterally for aerodynamic steering. But this is right up >at the level of "barely proven to work at all", far beyond the region of >confident engineering design... > >_______________________________________________ >ERPS-list mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list > _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
