The Monolithic Christmas Tree Light-Sail. Volume 6.

About the Book

This book covers topics mostly on novel types of multimode light-sails for space travel.

Light-sails are somewhere in the exotic between ordinary chemical rocket propulsion and extreme general relativistic concepts such as warp-drives and wormhole travel.

Light-sails can play rather unique roles in our future as we seek to develop spacecraft that outperform chemical rockets.

Light-sails do not rely on carrying a large quantity of potentially volatile fuels nor do they require manipulation of space-time which can have locally dangerous effects if done improperly.

In this book we consider prospects for which the Lorentz factors and effective propulsion power along with light-sail accelerations can runaway to ever-greater infinite values. So, we consider light-sails having already reached precisely light-speed in a least infinite Lorentz factor going on to experience runaway increases to ever greater infinite Lorentz factors.

As for how I became interested in relativistic spaceflight, here are the reasons in a nut-shell.

Back in the days while I was a teenager, I attended a private school. The school psychologist was a consecrated Catholic religious brother with dark hair and a dark beard who used to let me ride in his fancy Ford Thunderbird. The car had a black exterior and interior.

Well, at about the same time, the sitcom, “The Jeffersons” was popular and the show theme song had a refrain that went like “Well we're movin' on up. (Movin' on up). To the east side.”.

Even back then I was interested in interstellar travel concepts.

To make a long story short, I associated the school psychologist and rides in his Thunderbird with my internalized mantra of Movin’ on up, to the future, at near light-speed. Thus, I became more hooked on special relativistic space travel and time dilation. The fire of my imagination for near light-speed travel was lit just as assuredly as the black Ford Thunderbird resembled the eternal black cosmic void. I knew then the ramifications of infinite time dilation, infinite forward time travel, and infinite travel distances through space made mathematically plausible for light-speed impulse travel.

So, if you have the courage to delve into this book, or even only study select portions thereof and wade through the math, you will likely if not already also become intrigued with Movin’ on up into the future with Special Relativity. As we now have a space travel industry, we have set before us the seas of infinity. Sailing these seas is what this book is all about.

About the Author

I have been a science author and interstellar propulsion researcher for about 8 years now. I became really hooked on the interstellar travel theme after responding to a thread on a popular website about interstellar travel about 14 years ago and received a very warm welcome from the site administrator . At that time, I knew I was destined to become seriously involved in this exciting field of research.

My love of interstellar travel had its genesis in my childhood. Through most of my elementary school age years, I was a shy kid but one who was far from the stereotypical reserved nerdy geek. My grade school report cards where generally good but where far from the straight A cards that the academically focused students would receive. I had a very personal dream, however, that motivated me to get through the often boring school days. This dream is that for an unbounded future of human interstellar space-flight.

My infatuation with manned space exploration began early in grade school, fueled by the Apollo Space Program and lunar landings and the promise of manned missions to distant planets in the not-so-distant future. It seemed as though by the 1980s, we would definitely be sending humans on Martian exploratory missions. My interest in manned space travel waned a bit during the late 1970s through the mid-1990s, but picked up again after I had read a book on real world potential interstellar travel methods based mainly on known and well established physics.