Solving the debris hazzard at high C speed.

Why not just shoot a cloud of nanoparticles several hundred km in from the ship followed by several foam whipped shields spaced a km apart. Remember proton radiation becomes a huge problem at relativistic speeds.
 
@Admiral_Ritt I would imagine the foam shield only being effective for small particles, like dust, sand, and small pebbles.

The idea of repairing it is cool.

Originally I was thinking about just relying on redundancy and probability, i.e. hopefully not continuing to hit particles in the exact same location.
 
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I guess at these high energies an active protection system is required. It would consist of a detection system and a destruction system.

Detection could be via Radar or Lidar. Any particle incoming at .45c should give a pretty good echo.

Destruction could be with a strong laser. It should be capable of vaporizing the target. Ideally particles are evaporated to charged plasma. A magnetic field generated by the ship forces the atoms aside. For those coming through (thin) shields at the ships front and rear (for the braking phase of the flight) should absorb them.

These systems will consume a lot of energy and have to operate trouble- and maintenance-free for dozens of years.
 
Except depending on propulsion technogy, accellerating and braking could be a significant portion of trip, up to and including the WHOLE trip.
 
For braking you might be able to use your engine plume as a defense, depending on what kind of propulsion system you're using.
 
I'm a bit curious about how a warp drive would be affected. If you only bend space-time, what reaction and trajectory would an outside particle have upon encountering the bubble? Does it just get "bent" around the vehicle? Does it strike it as if the ship was static? (Again, static relative to what?).
 
Keeping in mind that I don't think they will pull off warp drive
for millennia or Ever.

I think warp drive would solve the problem, you
just cause a bending of space when you are confronted
by a debris that is too large to destroy or deflect. Make
it go the long way, instead of right to you.

On shielding, I think to annihilate the debris it needs to encounter something
close to its density and mass, or Less density compensated by more mass
overall so your trying to make Kinetic energies cancel out.
KE = p^2 /M. p = momentum = m * v KE is in Joules
 
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