I really like this site. This is the place that had the informative article on space elevators a few weeks (months?) ago. Today /., linked to this great one on using magnetic bubbles for traveling in space."Last week's test was a success. We were able to completely fill the vacuum chamber with a magnetic bubble. The only thing that stopped the expansion was the presence of the chamber walls. In space this same experiment might create a mini-magnetosphere 15 km across.
Maintaining such a bubble in space would require about 1 kW of power and less than 1 kg per day of helium propellant for the plasma source. In return, the bubble would intercept about 600 kW of solar wind power." I love the artists conception of what such a spacecraft would look like. I wonder if it has anything to do with a scientists conception of how it would look.
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- jim 10-05-2000 10:02 pm