I wouldn't do that. The problem is you have to get the dummy material up there. It has to match the weight of the real payload. It would be cheaper IMHO to build a rail system where the rail has two rocket engines attached to it to provide counter thrust. That way the only thing you would have to do is refuel them and occasionally replace the rocket engines. You could if we have the tech at that point use nuclear engines as well.
Lanzman agrees: Yet another reason to go back there. Disagree. Why launch, go to the moon, land on the moon, and then relaunch to your destination? Once you launch from Earth simply go to your destination. If you've got the ability to break Earth orbit and go to the moon you've got the ability to go anywhere in the solar system. Plus if you need to you can orbit Earth and launch more rockets to join up with each other in space. Certainly much easier then trying to do it on the moon. You're still going to need enough fuel on board to stop at your destination and then come back to Earth. Imagine trying to land a spacecraft loaded with all that extra fuel on the moon and then launch it again. You'd be better off just building the rail system in orbit around Earth. Plus a thought just occurred to me.... The acceleration would probably be too great for humans. Imagine MF's 100 mile track can accelerate you to a measly 5% of the speed of light. I'm not a math expert but even I know that accelerating from 0 miles per second to 9300 miles per second within 100 miles will turn a person into a corpse. Acceleration to high speed (say 5% of the speed of light) has to occur over a long time period in order to accommodate humans on board.
It depends upon how great the acceleration is. Get it high enough, and it'll feel equal to, or greater, than what is felt on Earth. At 1 G (10 meters per second squared) acceleration, if Mars is on the opposite side of the sun from Earth, it'll take about a week to get there.
Of course that is perfectly feasible as well. But if you use rockets, you're still going to need to get the propellant up there.
Of course. Just as you feel weight sitting on Earth--because the Earth's gravitational field is an accelerating field--so you would feel the "weight" of acceleration in space. In fact, Einstein's grandest insight turned on this. He imagined a rocket in space. The rocket had a tiny window in the side that let light from a distant sun come in. The rocket was oriented such that the beam of light came in and shone on the opposite wall of the rocket, directly across from the window. From the passenger's point-of-view, the beam comes in the window, goes straight across the cabin and shines on the wall. He then imagined what the beam of light would do if the rocket were moving with constant velocity. From the point of view of the passenger, the light beam comes in the window and goes diagonally to a spot "below" where it hit when the rocket was "stationary." We're defining "below" as the direction opposite to the rocket's movement and how diagonally is dependent on just how fast the rocket is going. This doesn't seem like much, but, if you remember that the speed of light is always observed to be c regardless of the motion of the observer, then the effects of Special Relativity will arise from this scenario. But here's where it got truly momentous... Einstein then imagined what the beam of light would do if the rocket was accelerating. If you think about it, you'll see that the beam of light will appear to bend opposite the direction of motion. The light will still hit the wall below the original spot, but the path from the window to the spot will appear curved. So far so good? Here's where it gets mind-blowing. Einstein recognized that the person in the rocket could not--even in principle--tell any difference between the following two cases: a rocket setting on the Earth, in the normal 1g gravitational field; and a rocket in space accelerating at 1g. From the standpoint of physics, there is no way to tell the difference between those situations. Einstein reasoned that if they were indistinguishable, they must be, in some sense, the same situation. So if a beam of light curves inside the cabin of an accelerating rocket...it must ALSO do so in the presence of a gravitational field. That's General Relativity: a gravitational field will cause light rays--or more accurately, the space-time they're passing through--to curve.
Absolutely. I went back and found some acceleration calculators...... To accelerate from 0 miles per second to 9300 miles per second (5% of the speed of light) within 100 miles (using MF's rail launcher) would generate roughly 141971997.881362 g's. A person is not going to survive that g-force. The ship probably isn't going to survive it either. (Not without Star Treks Inertia Dampening System ) If you're in a space ship that is accelerating you're going to travel in the opposite direction of the thrust. Think of being in a car and you put your foot on the gas pedal and accelerate at a fast rate and you feel as if you're being pushed into your seat. It's the same concept. But with larger numbers then what you can produce in your car. If you could constantly accelerate a ship at 1g you would feel the same as if you were standing on Earth. You would have "gravity", artificial of course. If you accelerate long enough you could get up close to light speed and that would introduce time dilation and other stuff. Now once you stop accelerating and the speed of your body matches the speed of the rocket you will once again feel weightless. It's not really feasible to constantly accelerate because of the fuel requirements so if you want the feeling of gravity then spinning your craft or a part of it will work better.
Here is a video of the International Space Station and acceleration. [wyt=Space Station ReBoost]sI8ldDyr3G0[/wyt] The acceleration part is about half way through the video.
