Are jump sails in any way meant to operate as stellar shielding?

[Thunderbolt]

Visually, jump sails are depicted as hanging down below jump ships, between the ship and the star it's charging over

This resembles some sort of shield, as if one function of the sail were to somehow deflect fast polar stellar winds and any occasional flares, storms or mass ejections safely around the JS and any of its docking ops

Is it possible for the Writers to comment in any definitive way at present as to whether or not...

"Are jump sails in any way meant to operate as stellar shielding?"

[Paul]

No. And they barely work as chargers as well. Just an old idea that was well meant, but completely impractical given the distances involved. Many writers just cant grog the distances.

[cray]

I'll second that. Sails are light, thin foil that offer no shielding benefits.

(I'll ignore any canonical "radiation sheeting" in MechWarrior RPG books. ;) )

[Thunderbolt]

That's final?

No way to argue that sails are 30-100 microns thick, enough to include multiple layers in addition to the photo absorbent charging layer, such as a capacitive layer which could be powered up to millions of volts, and or a current carrying layer to generate a magnetic deflector field?

One vaguely like the proposed Mars magnetic shield?

[Paul]

That's final?

Yes.

No way to argue

Sure, but there's no point. Given the distance between a jump point and the sun, or even the distance between a planet in the goldilocks zone and the star, the sail doesn't need to provide any shielding. The hull does it.

[Adrian Gideon]

Every instance I've seen, the sail has a huge hole in the center, and the ship points nose down towards the star. So again, no point as it wouldn't cover the ship?

[Thunderbolt]

I was told in another thread the sail hangs down below the JS, whose station keeping drive points towards the star hovered over

[Paul]

Either/or. The gravity at a jump point is so minor, it doesnt need to run its engine full time at full power. It can point in any direction it wants, most of the time. 0.1 G is actually a lot of thrust when you can run at that rate for days on end.

[Thunderbolt]

Either/or. The gravity at a jump point is so minor, it doesnt need to run its engine full time at full power. It can point in any direction it wants, most of the time. 0.1 G is actually a lot of thrust when you can run at that rate for days on end.

certainly your call

Stern straight to starwards and maybe the JS would shadow less of the sail?

[Paul]

Stern straight to starwards and maybe the JS would shadow less of the sail?

Sure. But since it doesnt make sense as a power source, the amount of shade is also irrelevant.

[Thunderbolt]

Sure. But since it doesnt make sense as a power source, the amount of shade is also irrelevant.

well, you writers have complete discretion on all matters of course

Collectively you have already taken 50km jump sails billowing above the JS into 1km sails hanging below, generally if not exclusively

Writers have basically turned JS on their heads once already

So nothing would stop you guys from hypothetically re-revising the rules and say moving the proximity points closer to the star

If anyone actually cares about numbers let me know, but it turns out that the general pattern of increasing recharge times... For decreasing stellar mass...

Is qualitatively consistent 100%...

With the JS always residing as close to the star as it can get on 0.1G

If JS always "anchored" at the local 0.1G limit, at a point as "proximate" to the star as they could hover against at 0.1G

All of the qualitative features of the canon recharge table would be preserved

And you could harvest oodles more energy, during your ~1 week of recharging -- in fact the increase in energy capture would just about be equivalent to and exactly enough offset the 50:1 sail diameter reduction from proto canon to current canon, so you could argue you had a sort of justification

Such that the BTU would be much more realistic, and the canon depiction of stern straight starwards with a star shade stellar shield would make perfect sense to boot (as well as the implied rugged construction of the sails)

Nothing stops you guys from writing this into "DS&JS II", everyone just loves the visuals, so you have the power to tweak the numbers again for sake of realism and scientific accuracy
 
Of course nothing makes you make such updates either  :)