February 24, 2013 –A starship without an engine: It may seem a fantastical notion, but hardly more so than the idea of building a starship of any kind. The space program needs a dream. If there are no dreamers, we’ll never get anywhere. However, this dream may be closer to reality than many people think.
First, find an asteroid in an elliptical orbit that passes close to the Sun. Second, put a starship in orbit around the asteroid. If the asteroid could be captured into a new orbit that clings close to the Sun, the starship would be flung on an interstellar trajectory, perhaps up to a tenth of the speed of light. The chaotic dynamics of those two allow all the energy of one to be transferred to the other. It’s a unique type of gravity assist.
Still, the sheer distances are daunting. The…
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James' World 2 
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