[Spaceships] Million Merchant Marathon

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by scc

So just firing off tanks full of gas or liquid has some problems. #1 is controlling their entry into Cis-Lunar space. Keep in mind the the original idea of using Mass Drivers in this sort of manner was for getting Luna material on the Moon, the catcher ships where designed to shred the blocks of pressed together material, I'm going to need to put them in boxes with some sort of maintenance equipment, which I'll want to reuse.

If your reactionless drives can be used as "space brakes", strapping one of those onto the cargo box and activating it remotely should slow it down enough for orbital assets to scoop it up. Failing that, perhaps use your magsail+particle accelerator idea.
EDIT: Also, if you can't afford to have single-use cargo containers (as implied by the desire to be able to reuse them), you probably can't afford to terraform anything.

Originally Posted by scc

#2 is stopping them from hitting each other mid flight. Items launched during the two week least time interval don't all take the same time to travel, those launched first arrive last and those launched last arrive first, so there's a nasty crossover problem, and the moment you start saying it's firing all year despite the rate of launch being steady the rate of arrival will not be.

I don't see this as being a problem. Venus and Mars move laterally relative to each other, so it's not like you have a string of boxes in a straight line along their path - each leads the target. If you do have a case where two boxes might intercept each other, the solution is simple - alter the velocity of the second box a bit, and it will have to follow a different path. I doubt you'll be able to saturate the target enough that there will literally be no path that lacks the risk of a collision.