James Essig

Cosmic Horizons James Essig

Cosmic Horizons provides a fascinating tour of extreme relativistic rocket concepts. The book provides a delightfully whimsical presentation of interesting methods for enabling interstellar and intergalactic travel. For future space travelers, relativistic rockets can enable effective spacecraft travel at extraordinarily large multiples of the speed of light and commensurately deep future time travel. Cosmic Horizons presents a moderately advanced mathematical treatment of numerous scenarios for attaining velocities almost equal to the speed of light. In theory, relativistic rocket flight can be accomplished within the framework of well-established principles of physics. Included within this book are fascinating applications of Special Relativity for rocket propulsion methods. Classical electromagnetic theory is applied in the context of Special Relativity to explore future possibilities of unbounded space travel. The presentation also includes some interesting applications of basic principles of sub-atomic physics. Numerous computed examples of spacecraft velocity and time dilation are presented. Included are detailed step-wise descriptions of computations involving mathematical formulations followed by tabulated and graphed data sets for mass-ratio, gamma, and spacecraft velocity. A treatment of life-support and maintenance is also provided which includes a summary of space medicine issues and possible remedies for medical problems that can result from zero gravity. A description of closed system maintenance is provided including content on agriculture, waste management, and air re-oxygenation. Also covered are scenarios for artificial gravity generation. Also included is a description of possible shielding methods such as would be required for extremely relativistic spacecraft. We hope you'll enjoy the read!