i thought about this for a minute and landed on no counting for lorentz factor. Things hitting on the side have about the same relative velocity as things hitting from the front . Because they’re hitting the side they could either bounce off or dump all their tangent kinetic energy into each other. like because all the relative velocity is tangent, they could in principle interact without exchanging significant energy. But probably the side impacts are just as dangerous. Which might make them more dangerous because you have less armor on the side
I think there’s probably a variety of more complicated factors involved that we haven’t considered. Doesn’t really matter for the story, it’s sufficient to leave stuff unsaid as long as the currently understood boundaries of the possible are respected.
Would the probe emit an ‘ablative antimatter particle shield’ which coasted alongside the probe and eliminated dust particles approaching from the sides?
Launching a probe with a laser probably involves an umbrella shaped probe with the umbrella shaft being the ‘true’ probe, and the umbrella canopy being a ‘first stage acceleration’ disposable parabolic mirror made of something like mylar and carbon fiber. The mirror gets jettisoned at some point. Fun to speculate about, but not really critical to planning the next few decades. A far smarter mind than mine will have time to work out these details before they’re needed.
i thought about this for a minute and landed on no counting for lorentz factor. Things hitting on the side have about the same relative velocity as things hitting from the front . Because they’re hitting the side they could either bounce off or dump all their tangent kinetic energy into each other. like because all the relative velocity is tangent, they could in principle interact without exchanging significant energy. But probably the side impacts are just as dangerous. Which might make them more dangerous because you have less armor on the side
I think there’s probably a variety of more complicated factors involved that we haven’t considered. Doesn’t really matter for the story, it’s sufficient to leave stuff unsaid as long as the currently understood boundaries of the possible are respected.
Would the probe emit an ‘ablative antimatter particle shield’ which coasted alongside the probe and eliminated dust particles approaching from the sides?
Launching a probe with a laser probably involves an umbrella shaped probe with the umbrella shaft being the ‘true’ probe, and the umbrella canopy being a ‘first stage acceleration’ disposable parabolic mirror made of something like mylar and carbon fiber. The mirror gets jettisoned at some point. Fun to speculate about, but not really critical to planning the next few decades. A far smarter mind than mine will have time to work out these details before they’re needed.