quote:
Originally posted by apache:
the solar sail is actually less ridiculous than a quantum reactor or 'collapsing' a black hole, so it should stay in the game. However, it should definitely not be allowed to work in nebula and black hole sectors.
but working on magnetic pricipals as you say, or working on other field / wave related principals it could function without a star. granted, it might have a hard time in deep space, but if nebulae are cool enough to disable shields or sensors then they certainly have enough background radiation puttering about to power a sail. we have definitly observed black holes cranking out all kinds of radio / microwave / high frequency wave output, so they should not have any problem powering a sail either.
as someone else pointed out, the simple answer is to look at it a little more abstractly, and maybe change the description from 'bounces photons at 90 degrees to generate force' to something more like 'manipulates naturally occuring fields and background radiation to indirectly propell a ship.'
Re: Solar Sail???????
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