Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Hi Leon,

I have enjoyed reading your postings. I can tell
however that your education was not in Astronautics.

I have a very similar frustration to those you
mentioned. I am only slightly younger than you, and
see my chances of exploring distant star systems
rapidly fading. There is the possibility of "cryonic"
preservation should I die in just the right
circumstances, but there is no guarantee that I would
ever re-animate.

Anyway I just wanted to offer my encouragement and to
say that if you should perchance happen into some
major financial resource, I have a lot of good
technical ideas that may shorten the time frame to our
journey to the stars at a velocity of 0.6c. If we
start pretty soon, I think we can still get there.

Now as for the money, I've been thinking this out too.
The very first thing is to put together a business
plan to interest even one other person who has the
money and sees the opportunity, to get started. To
get to the stars, we first have to get to space, and
like you I think it should start with Space Solar
Power Satellites (SSPSs). I see the most critical
part of the puzzle the ability to launch material to
orbit cheaply, presumably using Electromagnetic Launch
Systems (EMLSs). But to do so cheaply, we need to do
a lot of launches. I am attaching a pair of abstracts
for papers that I am writing. These might be of some
interest to you.

Anyway keep up the good work.

Dave Handwerk