All space development efforts are hindered by the cost of placing payloads in orbit. Reducing launch costs allows more mass to be placed into orbit for a given budget. Most of the weight (mass) in any rocket is used to launch the fuel and not the payload. Electromagnetic (EM) railguns or mass drivers would avoid that problem. A major assumption made in the paper is that construction materials including solar panels do not have the same accelerations limits as humans.
Mass Drivers for Space Construction
Earth and Space 2014 ; 2014 ; St. Louis, Missouri
Earth and Space 2014 ; 328-342
2015-06-15
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
AIAA | 1977
|Tema Archive | 1979
|Mass drivers I: elektrical design
Tema Archive | 1979
|Mass Drivers for Planetary Defense
AIAA | 2004
|Recent developments in mass drivers
NTRS | 1981
|