I was thinking about something similar.
First we need to establish how fast the nugget goes, and how far it will travel.
As we are talking about asteroid and ring mining the speed may not need to be large as there isn't any deep gravity well to escape from, buth rather a gravity well going towards.
A Linear accellerator could be buoldt with the mass driver rules from FF&S.
When the mass and the speed is known we know how large break engine we needs to install. An EAPLAC are more or less a solid fuel rocket. When the fuel is spent, the rocket is pretty much used up.
Launch of nuggets may be aimed towards lunar orbits or something simliar.
--
Roger Malmstein
www.travellerfreeport.com
From:
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 10:04 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Mining Vessel Contest
Prior to launch you attach a reusable breaking device to the front that
consists of an EAPlaC engine, a flight computer, and a radio antenna.
Once the projectile enters the vicinity of the target world the flight
computer is activated via an RFD signal and uses the rocket to brake and
place the hunk of rock in a far orbit to be picked up when convenient.
.