Dealing with ISS trash

On 18 April 2012 17:46, Al Globus wrote:

>
> On Apr 18, 2012, at 9:19 AM, Ian Woollard wrote:
>
> > On 18 April 2012 06:55, Al Globus wrote:
> >
> > > On Apr 17, 2012, at 7:37 AM, brooksn wrote:
> > >
> > > > Well there are two options, either includes developing a mass
> > > > launcher to dump the waste for extra lift.
> > > >
> > > Mass drivers accelerate very rapidly.
> >
> > No they don't.
> >
> Yes they do. O'Neill was able to get 100s of gs (or something on
> that order) in a few meters with prototypes build in his lab. SEP,
> which you refer to below, accelerate ions to 10s of thousands of m/s
>

Nope. You're still not getting it. That's the peak acceleration of the
*propellant*.

The gun is *much* heavier, and doesn't accelerate at anything like that
amount.

And the time averaged acceleration of the gun is far lower still. So you
just mount the gun on springs and dampers, or if you're really fancy you
can use magnets to transfer the forces.

--
-Ian Woollard