In article <39f597ca@news.povray.org>, "Bob H." 
<per### [at] aolcom?subject=PoV-News:%20&body=Relating%20to%20POV-Ra
y:> wrote:

> Very cold kind.  Not a gas anymore, but hey, normally it would be gaseous 
>  :-)

That close to the sun, the normal state for *anything* is a gas. :-)
Actually, an ablative solid starting at the same temperature should be 
able to dispose of more heat energy than liquid hydrogen or nitrogen, be 
a lot less bulky, and a lot easier to handle...


> Seen that, and I could ask what a refrigerator laser is.  Must be a 
> ionization neutralizing beam.

I don't know what you mean by an "ionization neutralization beam".
The basic idea is to pump the heat that leaks into the ship/probe in a 
small area to make it temporarily hotter than the plasma surrounding the 
ship, and use a high power laser to dispose of it...in David Brin's 
book, a powerful X-ray laser was used on the Sundiver, and a 
communications laser on the earlier Project Icarus unmanned probes. As 
long as there was power(and there's plenty of that in the chromosphere), 
the probe could just float around, using the laser as propulsion and 
cooling.

I don't know the details, but I remember hearing about similar research 
with lasers, and since David Brin has a doctorate in astrophysics and 
has been a NASA consultant and physics professor, he has probably knows 
what he is talking about. :-)

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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