I have criticized the physics community recently for being so focused now (at least as it relates to total science spending, either by community, or not) on directed action upon a system as an investigation tool, as opposed to the more traditional careful, unobtrusive observation that science at least tried to start on. The bottom line point in that argument being that perhaps there is a point of "going too far" when one impinges on a system with larger mass and energy relationships than whatever particle of the full electromagnetic spectrum one might want to use (whereas using lasers, radar. x-rays, or electron microscopes, even to the point of destruction, is one thing, but blasting protons into nuclei, and at increasing levels of energy, is another).
There was also the suggestion that, purely on a philosophical level, that maybe the "banging away at" approach, even though it may well be giving us useful data, is just wrong headed to begin with. That, if you wanted to truly live a life that emphasized a balanced approach to thoughtful loving structure, the more overly intrusive you are into what you are trying to understand, the more difficulty you are going to have in achieving it. At least in my opinion of course.
In any case, though, I mention that criticism because space holds the key to doing observational science like it's never ever been done before, even as the labors instituted to begin this expression also work to give us a better meaning for what work is. And this is so because setting up the kind of automation infrastructure in space that I want to set up will give eventually give us constructive capability that you won't need to go to a movie to see, or, more importantly, be a part of now. And in my dream of space exploration one of the first thing's we might want to think about doing is building another kind of mass driver.
Normally, when you think of mass drivers you think of a rail of some length, a lot of magnets, and a lot of power. And I certainly want to make use of that type of driver, but I also want to create one that changes the idea of using circular accelerators only for accelerating subatomic particles.
There may well be some debate develop here on what is the most efficient approach to using mass driver technology; especially as it relates to the dichotomy of whether one chooses to simply build either immensely long, linear accelerators, or circular accelerators of immense diameter. And this will likely be a lively debate as there pluses and minuses for both approaches. I like the circular approach for too many reasons to waste time going into here in any detail. I guess it just boils down to the mix of tradeoffs there just feels better, but more importantly, I just love the idea of being able to continue using accelerators, but in a way that supports, and reaffirms the commitment to, careful, in depth observation; and all the while keeping a healthy dash of humility for just how complex it all is.
Be that as it may, the thing with circular accelerators is that you can change velocity over selectable amounts of time without having having to physically be slapping more chunks of accelerator rail at the exit point before the launch capsule gets there. No, here you only keep it circling around longer. Which unfortunately, and quickly, brings up a big part of why circular accelerators offer lots of extra engineering problems.
Even if your launch object was only a few tons at the beginning of acceleration, it wouldn't take long at all for it to have bestowed upon it a great deal of new relativistic mass; mass that does not want to do anything but go straight ahead. Trying to change that vector, even if it's quite tiny at any given moment, becomes ever more resisted. Which translates, of course, to force against the very acceleration rail doing the, ostensibly, linear acceleration.
The thing is here, I think we are going to find a way to make a new molecular stack of materials that will allow for a kind of electromagnetically reinforced cable. I don't know exactly what that stack would consist of (I am a systems guy, I can't allow myself to get too buried into the details), but I do know that a clever way to arrange things as ever more interlocking electro magnets, perhaps augmented in some way, by the very tensional strain of the load, via piezoelectric effects, ought to exist. Like I said, I don't know what the exact mix will be, but I do feel certain it is there. We haven't found it yet because no one has had a meaningful enough incentive in place to spur this particular line of inquiry yet in materials science (at least with the, admittedly limited, tabs that I keep on that sector).
This would be a cable that would give us a tremendous new load bearing capability, expressed almost exclusively in relation to how much power we can put through the cable. More power, more strength (with the heat dissipation probably being the biggest headache to deal with). And again, it is my belief that such cabling will allow us to have circular accelerators; even at the early stages of cable development, that will allow us to accelerate probes to far greater velocities than any chemical, or electrified particle as reaction mass, will ever be able to do.
However we do the acceleration, though, here's the important thing to remember in what we want to set up to accomplish. And that is this: we need to create the most effort effective probe launch grid, which you can think of as an array of vector spokes going out, in all directions, from the perceptive bowel that is our solar system, that we can. The more of these vectors, of course, to a certain extent at least, the better, but practicality will certainly have to weigh in at some point.
The idea would be to then have one, or more, of these truly immense rings (and I would think on the order of at least tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter) set up so that each could accelerate two probes simultaneously, only circulating in opposite directions to each other. You then just sit back, as your robot assemblers continue adding solar collectors, to the huge surface area, of the sunward side of the rings, and wait till you get yourself up to whatever the engineering limit of the structure would allow. As the power generation increases, the exit speeds from our system would increase. And I think that will ultimately be significant fractions of the speed of light, but that really, isn't the most important part of this at all; even if it is helpful.
The important part is what it could mean to our understanding of the cosmos around us if we could have an ongoing, ever more far reaching, set fabric of new lines of perception; perceptive vectors that not only tell us things along that specific vector, but also tell us things by the triangulation of intersecting, instrument scan lines, because we would then have long sequences of probes, along each vector, looking in each direction around them, and having their scan cross items of interest, but from continuously different vantage points over time, across widening distances between the launch vectors as they continue out into the rest of our galaxy. And of course it also doesn't hurt that each subsequent probe could be a telemetry relay point for whatever number of probes preceded it.
And by starting there, as well as observing our sun much more comprehensively, we will find all of the naturally occurring, energetic particle accelerators we are likely to need for a considerable time to come. And from those we can see what happens, at the smallest scales clever engineering can devise, when these occur without the onus of our direct initiation. A very small thing as a distinction I know, but still. Would it hurt the advance of physics that much to err on the side of caution here?
I am also wondering here if maybe such circular accelerators might also give us an instrument with which to investigate relativistic mass itself. Assuming, of course, that our electromagnetic cable might be as upwardly scalable as I hope it is, and we can get start getting very large equivalent masses accumulated from these rings, might we then begin to experiment with gravitational lensing (just as one example)? Even if it were on a very low gravitational scale? And again, my gut has been telling me that we will, and some amazing things will be discovered. But then, of course, I am a dreamer, and you must take everything I say with that firmly in your mind.
Such are dreams. Lots of potential. Not a lot of focus on the risks, so a lot of the potential becomes automatic black boxes of bad. But still we have them. Still we need them. As risks go with good and bad levels, though, this one isn't so bad.
What do you think?
