(urth) Travelling North aka miscellaneous thoughts on Wolfe

[brunians at brunians.org]

All you need are two streams, in one or two media, which flow at different
speeds.

The lengthy masts might be to catch different currents in the flow.

I have designed a wind powered airship: it is the same principle.

.


>
> From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com>
>> On 6/9/2010 10:38 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
>>> Secondly, the 'tacking' method of travelling faster than the wind works
>>> for sailboats. But the analogy between wind and light radiation doesn't
>>> hold up because light does not exert pressure in directions orthogonal
>>> to its direction of travel, as moving air does.
>>
>> That's not entirely correct; if the light is reflected at an angle, it
>> imparts momentum at an angle normal to the reflecting surface. For
>> example
>> if light traveling due north strikes a mirror facing SW and is reflected
>> to the west, the mirror is pushed NE. This sort of thing really happens,
>> and produces a measureable effect on natural and artificial satellites
>> _over_a_period_of_years_.
>
> Yes, but this is different from the 'airfoil' mechanism that can propel a
> boat faster than the wind, and which is not available in the case of
> light.
> That said, I think I was wrong to place so much store in this, as light
> also
> has comensating advantages - unlike air, it will not necessarily resist
> objects that are already in motion relative to it
>
> There still is the issue of accelerating *past* the speed of light,
> however,
> which applies to all similar FTL mechanisms.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
> .
>
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