More Fun with Numbers

I've been kicking this idea around for a while, and I should probably put some numbers to it and see if it's even feasible.

The basic idea is to use a linear accelerator to launch a stream of iron particles at very high velocities, like half the speed of light, and use that to generate thrust to propel a spaceship. A little fooling with the rocket equation shows that with an exhaust velocity that high you should easily be able to reach the speed of light. The rocket equation doesn't take relativity into account, but the Newtonian math at least  sounds promising.

If you were to accelerate at one gravity for one year you would reach the speed of light, at least in Newtons universe. So boost for one year, coast for two or three, turn around and use your particle beam thruster to slow down till you reach Alpha Centauri. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

There are all kinds of problems with this idea, but the first one that came to me is the reaction mass. How many tons of iron particles would you need? I dunno, how about a million? Suppose you got your reaction mass in BBs, how many BBs would you need? And how fast would you need to feed them into your particle accelerator?

To the Bat-sheet, Robin. I took the idea I used last time and expanded it to use named variables. It makes it a little cumbersome to display in Bloggers narrow format, but we'll give it a try.

Link to Spreadsheet

As you can see, that stream of BBs would need to be flying into order to shoot the entire one million tons worth in one year. Even if we were to draw it out to ten years, it would still be traveling at rifle bullet speeds. Perhaps we should look at using cannonballs instead of BBs.

Naming all the constants was a little annoying, but I think it makes it easier to understand and verify.

P.S. I need to start putting disclaimers on the draft versions of my posts. You start embedding things and Blogger's preview function doesn't always cooperate, so in order to see what it's going to look like, you have to publish it. We'll see if I remember next time.