Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
Accuracy does not matter for thrust. The real problem with mass drivers are that they are energy hogs because of the inefficiency of ionizing random matter. While people can talk about ISRU with mass drivers, water is more common than dirt in the outer solar system, and a fusion drive that uses water as reaction mass is vastly superior to a mass driver (meaning that mass drivers are only really useful in the Inner Solar System).
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I don't think the usual mass driver propulsion plan is to ionize random dirt. I think the plan is to have reusable metal buckets on tethers.
As for mass-drivers vs. drives that use water reaction mass, obviously volatile miners will want to use volatiles as reaction mass. If they really can be made to work as assumed in
Spaceships, though, they'd shine for purposes of mining stony and metallic asteroids.