Re: (2033) Happy New Year!

 In message 2033, [email removed] (Robert S. Dean) writes:
 >
 >Item  1:  MESON COMMUNICATORS  I have been asked why I never  put
 >these things on nay of my starship designs.  Well, there are  two
 >reasons.  They serve no purpose, and they're expensive.  Serve no
 >purpose, you say?  Exactly.  The only advantage of a meson commu-
 >nicator  versus any of the other tight beam comm systems is  that
 >it can transmit through solid objects.  However, assuming that it
 >works  more or less like a meson gun, you need to know the  exact
 >range before using it.  Thus, unless you can already see and talk
 >to the other ship, you can't use your meson communicator.  I also
 >have a feeling that I wouldn't want to be aboard a ship receiving
 >a slightly misaligned meson communication--even though the 20  or
 >30  megawatts of a communication beam aren't anything next  to  a
 >spinal  mount's  output, I'd hate to be on the bridge  when  that
 >message decays ten feet from the meson receiver.

     Um, I don't think so.  I always thought that the meson communicator
receiver worked more or less on the same principle as the meson screen.
As I understand it, a working meson screen makes an incoming meson
beam decay "early," on contant with the screen.  If this is how the
receiver works, then you don't need to know the range.  If you use a
diffuse beam, you don't even have to be all that accurate with your aim,
either.  You just have to get a small fraction of the beam to the
receiver so that the early decay of the mesons can be detected (we have
detectors that can handle small numbers of particles *now*--who knows
what a TL15 culture might manage?).  If you use some form of, say,
pulse modulation that is designed to be easily distinguishable from
random noise (assuming that there's all that much of a chance of running
into "wild" mesons), then the resultant energy density needed at the
receiver end is safely low.  This is assuming that the receiver is at
the extreme range of the transmitter, which increases the chances of
the beam reaching the end of its lifespan in the same general area.  If
you're closer to the transmitter than that, I would think that it would
be perfectly safe, since I can't think of any good reason to ever set
the beam duration for anything less than maximum.


- - --
     Brent

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