Jumping the Gun.

Hang on here,

Why would a mass driver need fuel, doesn't it work on electricity? And
if it doesn, why not use solar power and huge capacitors? Why should we,
once again, go towards fuels that will eventually go away?

Ok, so asteroids, it's not like they are going away, but what if you
find that perfect rock, that you could essentially send as is (after
breaking it into smaller pieces), where do you get your fuel? See my
point?

Of course, it'll never happen, just like Appolo 13's incident never
could have happened and Challenger never could have happened and the
rest... It only needs to happen once to become a problem, what's the
backup plan?

We are in space, why is solar power not what is going to be used here.
Remember, I'm not a scientist, layman terms, please

Karell Ste-Marie
C.I.O. - BrainBank Inc.

From: Combs, Mike [mailto:mikecombs@...]
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 10:01 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Re: Jumping the Gun.

Seems like I remember O'Neill commenting that a mass-driver engine could
have twice the specific impulse of the Space Shuttle's chemical main
engines. But as Rick commented, the big advantage is that they could
use just about anything lying around for reaction mass: oxygen from an
ore-refining operation, regolith from an asteroid, etc..