I really want to answer that one, but I'm kinda blocked on how to give it a better answer than some of the ones already there... feel kind of out of it today for some reason
I had a conversation with my brother yesterday about whether or not you could get a potato out of the moon's gravity well with a laser (We eventually decided yes, if you pricked it properly), but it got me thinking: Could you launch and circularise the orbit of a small, unpowered satellite using nothing but laser ground stations??
@JoeBloggs If it had an appropriate supply of remass to be ablated by the laser, then yes, you could. Graphite works best for that, with a specific impulse of about 4,000 seconds.
@JoeBloggs No clue what the specific impulse would be for potato, but it'd definitely be worse than graphite. Could still be workable, though, if for some reason potato is all you have.
@JoeBloggs For potato, you'd want to find some way to compress it to a uniform composition, so that you get uniform thrust. Otherwise, you'll spin out of control pretty quickly. You probably wouldn't be able to get it perfect, so you'd want some attitude thrusters of some kind, which doesn't make it a perfectly unpowered satellite, unfortunately.
Quick example here, though it might change as it is not "too late" for this question.
Two days ago, at the time of writing, I posted a somewhat confuse question that was ill-phrased and therefore to broad, in addition of not following the rules of WB-SE.
Some helpful users pointed out the probl...
Should we have a swarm-robotics tag?
What weapons would nanomachines use?
I mean, it largely differs from robotics (especially thanks to its unique challenges), then I realized we don't even have a robotics tag.
Quick example here, though it might change as it is not "too late" for this question.
Two days ago, at the time of writing, I posted a somewhat confuse question that was ill-phrased and therefore to broad, in addition of not following the rules of WB-SE.
Some helpful users pointed out the probl...
Should we have a swarm-robotics tag?
What weapons would nanomachines use?
I mean, it largely differs from robotics (especially thanks to its unique challenges), then I realized we don't even have a robotics tag.
The Factory Floor
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