From: Paul Dietz (dietz@pop-blue.interaccess.com)
Date: Sun Jan 19 1997 - 10:11:30 MST
>. The lunar mass driver designed
> by O'Niel was long enough for people to ride comfortably, with maximum
> Gs of less than 9. It was over 75 km long.
This isn't right. The acceleration in O'Neill's mass driver was much
higher that that. Heck, I think the 3rd prototype at SSI hit 200+
gees. It was also designed to launch payloads much smaller than
a person (a few kilograms at a time, at a high rep rate, with the
buckets being decelerated and recycled.)
The long length you may be thinking of is the post-acceleration
phase, where the packets are tweaked electrostatically or
magnetically to remove small velocity errors (this is needed to make
the mass catcher sufficiently small).
Paul
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