Inverted Aerobraking

I am not sure if I understood the concept. (I read the article quite
quickly and maybe I am missing details, so forgive with I show obvious
misinterpretations below.) Are you talking about creating a kind of
"chemical Orion flying in a flammable stream of fuel droplets"? That is:

a) Something in space drops fuel in the atmosphere.
b) Your ship enters the fuel stream and somehow ignites fuel behind it.
c) The "continuous explosion" of fuel propels the ship to outer space.

Is the above correct? If so, then I would see a problem in (a) - because
the fuel would disperse over a huge atmospheric volume and then you
would need huge amounts of fuel to have any appreciable concentration of
fuel in the air. And also a problem in (b), for the tendency would be
for the ship to create a vacuum on its trail where there would be no fuel.

Supposing that (a) and (b) can somehow be solved (and supposing that I
understood the concept :-), then there is still the eternal
chicken-and-egg problem: your "inverted aerobraking" needs
extraterrestrial fuel sources to provide CATS, but extraterrestrial fuel
sources probably need CATS to be explored in a viable way.

Axel Walthelm wrote: