Tether/station momentum exchange ( TGD)

>> releasing something from a spinning arm (whether
>>a rope or station hull) _does not_ affect the
>>rotation rate, but rather the orbital momentum of
>>the releasing body.

Ed M. wrote:
> I am not talking about tethers at all. What I have
>in mind is a torus-shaped mass driver around the
>perimeter of the station.

You'll need to go into this further. As I see it, if you're mounting a
mass driver to a station, why bother with the puny velocity of the
rotation?
Any release of mass from the perimeter of a rotating body (even a
ring or cylinder station) does not affect rotation. Sure, reaction
from something shot tangentiaally out of a mass driver will (as a
rocket to spin-up/down), but the rotation velocity is insignificant
compared to the to the launching velocity given to the projectile,
isn't it? Are we concerned with the projectile?

> Delta vee is affected, yes, but pretty much equally
>in all directions for each complete circuit... The
>net effect is on the station's spin rather than the
>orbit.

So you're talking of a pinwheel? Throwing stuff off in all
directions? Why? (besides spin-up/down)

>> Mackenzie (author of the above article)...
>>deliberately keeps the initial systems small & simple.
>
> Electromagnetic mass drivers have no moving parts.

Really? None? (aside from the moving projectile)
One thing I heard as a counter to the idea of mass drivers being
useful _in the near term_, is that there has yet to be a demonstration
of a 'reciprocating bucket' mass driver, where the buckets are re-used
after they throw a load. There has also never been an autoloading mass
driver demonstration with or without buckets.
Granted, these shouldn't be a problem, but it is an issue of R&D.