From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 09 2003 - 10:42:03 MST
Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
>
>>for Kuiper belt objects. These aren't *really* useful from our
>>persepctive since the are mostly water and CO2 (though the C may
>>be useful).
>>
>>
>Reaction mass.
>
>
That's wasteful. You want C for carbohydrates. Use something besides
CHON for your reaction mass (though H has it's rationale, being the most
common element). Fe might be a good choice. It's easy to find, you can
manipulate it easily with magnets. It ionizes well. etc. Pity it's so
heavy, but that means that you don't need as high a terminal velocity to
get the same reaction. (Use linear accelerators rather than mass
drivers if you want any efficiency. Mass drivers are for delivering
cargo. [The mass that's driven, and caught!])
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:35:51 MST