space colonies around the gas giants

On 10/4/14 5:29 AM, sailorbarsoom@... [spacesettlers] wrote:

> Habitats and bases on planets and moons can of course pile on cheap dirt
> shielding, but I think deep space ships are going to have to find
> another way. Electromagnetic shielding perhaps?

Yes, that's a good point. EM shielding isn't a very mature technology
yet, but it probably will be one day. And it doesn't kick you around
with the rocket equation the way piling on mass does.

> Deep space ships don't have to accelerate at 3 Gs, or even 1 G. So they
> get to use highly efficient low-thrust stuff like ion engines or light
> sails. Any heavy shielding still complicates stuff, but there are
> advantages too.

Yeah, I recently looked into what it would take to make a ship
accelerate at 1G halfway to Mars (and then decelerate the same way
back). It was pretty bleak, even assuming fusion-rocket-level ISPs.
We'll probably have to content ourselves with much lower acceleration
for the next few centuries at least.

Best,
- Joe