DHF said:
Agreed on that last part, most of the numbers and finer details that we discuss here won't be laid out in the story, I will focus on the characters and story. Most of this is for my benefit, I want to have a full understanding of how my ship works, if I understand how all the parts fit together then I can write more effectively.
As to the Ram Scoop, but I abandoned it early on as I feel there are far too many hurtles to overcome, the least of which is the fact that it relies on P+P+P+P fusion which I really don't think humans will master for many centuries to come, there is a good chance we never may. My story is set a couple hundred years forward so I am trying to stick to tech that we have on the drawing board now. like D-T fusion and a star Tram like launch system to get things in orbit.
Have you considered the RAIR (ram-augmented interstellar rocket)?
The idea is to use the interstellar material as reaction mass rather than propellant. This requires a significant amount of anti-matter, but the reaction process is not only more efficient, it happens at a lower temperatures.
The main problems are securing enough antimatter and to a lessor degree, a mechanism to boost the space vehicle (SV) to a velocity where the ram scoop provides reaction mass. However, if you resolve the antimatter problems, you probably won't be too stuck with a mechanism to get the SV moving fast enough for the ram scoop to become operational.
Lastly, if the ram scoop drive is not your thing, maybe the scoop is all you need to resolve your shielding needs. A laser could be used to create an ionization field in front of the SV and the scoop is used to create a powerful EM field. You would essentially have a magnetic bottle at its throat, but periodic pulsing the field at the throat could release the material to pass through the central core of the SV.
You need large amounts of energy to work the laser and its EM field, but you are already at that technological point if you have some form of drive that can reach .15C.
I'll also reiterate what I said earlier. Alastair Reynolds created a star drive using Chebesa physics. What's Chebesa physics? He made it up and never explained a word of how it works. I get the feeling that if you could see his detailed notes on the subject it would probably be no more than a paragraph long and he never addressed the issue of how to avoid interstellar matter, either.
But if you want to create a hypothetical system I think the EM scoop might be a good way to start. You could always write that the Bussard Ram Scoop was a failed idea, but it did lead to the development of something called the
EM Scoop (EM = Electro-Magnetic), which opened the door to the first interstellar spacecraft s by providing a protective shield... bla, bla, bla.
Just thinking out of the box a little.
