Jumping the Gun.

Please note that I said "reaction mass", not fuel. Solar power is
indeed the power source, the materials I mention below would be the
reaction mass.

If using regolith from the asteroid, yes, some percentage of the
asteroid will be consumed in the process. We could do some simple
resource extraction enroute, and only throw away the less-valuable
parts. This contrasts with steam rockets (be they solar or nuclear) or
any variety of hydrogen rocket, where we're throwing away the most
valuable parts.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: Karell Ste-Marie [mailto:stemarie@brain-bank.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 2:22 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Re: 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.