starship-design: Pellet track

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Isaac

You wrote to Kelly:

>Well, then I guess my idea is more original than I thought.  So here is
>my concept for the acceleration track:
>
>1.  An relatively slow moving acceleration track is set up so that
>    somehow a track of small fission/fusion pellets are spaced along
>    a line.  (I imagine a string of pellet shooting fuelpacket ships,
>    to minimize the time/distance between firing the pellets and
>    their target pickup points.)

If the pellets are slow moving, then what is the use of pellets?
Catching pellets like this, will not give a significant energy advantage
over taking the pellets with you (=attached to the starship) from the start.

>The idea for the deceleration track?
>
>Same idea, but with the ship turned around 180 degrees.  Yes, this
>implies having some shielding in the back of the ship, but the
>deceleration run shouldn't last too long.

Still you have to launch the pellets many many years in advance. This above
all is considered the worst problem for the "pellet-track" idea. It may not
be a technological problem, but it surely is a big ideological problem.


Timothy