Here are my five minutes: nanomachines need to carry a charge to be accelerable, right? Well, it works the other way too—they will decelerate on their own in destination’s Van Allen belts.
They don’t actually decelerate in the Van Allen belts, though. Magnetic fields apply a force to a charged particle perpendicular to it’s direction of motion. F*V = Deceleration Power = 0. Also worth noting that a charged nanomachine has a much higher mass/charge ratio than the usual charged particles (He2+, H+, and e-), so it would be much less affected.
I was actually thinking of neutralizing the seed at the muzzle to avoid troublesome charge effects.
Here are my five minutes: nanomachines need to carry a charge to be accelerable, right? Well, it works the other way too—they will decelerate on their own in destination’s Van Allen belts.
They don’t actually decelerate in the Van Allen belts, though. Magnetic fields apply a force to a charged particle perpendicular to it’s direction of motion. F*V = Deceleration Power = 0. Also worth noting that a charged nanomachine has a much higher mass/charge ratio than the usual charged particles (He2+, H+, and e-), so it would be much less affected.
I was actually thinking of neutralizing the seed at the muzzle to avoid troublesome charge effects.