On 30 Jan 2010 at 2:38, Roger Malmstein wrote:
> 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.
As noted in another post, velocity doesn't have to be that high when
it reaches the destination.
You don't really need the braking (note spelling) rocket, but it
might be useful.
Assuming you have power to burn, you *can* make one sort of rocket
out of asteroidal material. Aluminum/pxygen. Real world plans for
exploiting the moon and asteroids have designed such.
Not all that practical on earth but on the moon they'd suffice to
reach orbit and land again.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com