Wonder how they would do frequent flier miles...
After a lay over in Atlanta.
Sci-Fi concept art masquerading as science.
I can hear Ralph Kramden now: “You’re goin to da moon, Alice! Bang! Zoom!”
What would it do and where would it go when the earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun?
Beaming me aboard would be quicker...just sayin’.
What’s the point? You still need to accelerate cargo at launch and decelerate it at its destination, so why not just fling containers and catch them when they arrive?
The devil is in the details. If there are human passengers, there is the time taken to move up to 3,000 kilometers per second. While moving up to the cruising speed, G-forces will be experienced by all humans. Will they be able to walk around during this period? I think not. The same goes for the deceleration phase. I suspect, if someone does the math, the time for acceleration and deceleration will take up more than a few hours.
Not sure I see much point. You have to accelerate to the speed of the train to ride it, and you have to decelerate yourself when you approach your destination. Any resupply for the train also has to be accelerated so it can be loaded, so you’re really not getting much benefit from riding vs doing the whole trip yourself. About the only thing you do gain is that because the “train” can be bigger since it can accelerate over a long time rather than needing to do it all at once, it can carry a more comfortable living environment, since it can be resupplied in stages and you won’t consume the entire environment on your trip. At a SWAG, this might make for a small efficiency savings overall on an interplanetary mission, but only to destinations that the “train” serves, and only if you use the train over and over again. If you only do a few missions, and then something better comes along, it’ll all go to waste.
This ‘train’ does not slow down to pick up passengers. In order to match speeds to catch up with the train, you are already goi g fast enough to go to your Mars destination without the train and as g forces need to be in the 1 g range (except for short periods) it would take more than the 37 hours to safely attain such speeds.
Perhaps a long bungee cord to slowly bring one up to speed. Now we are in the realm of road runner and coyote.
The hype didn’t fool FR readers. They understood the acceleration/ deceleration problem right away.
“sans forced evolved spice addicted navigators folding space”
Where is the fun in that?!?
This concept actually isn’t bad, but would be much more feasible to put something like this in permanent translunar orbit. Mars and Earth have no simple orbital resonance, so you would be aiming at a constantly moving target, whereas with the moon, you can put it in one orbit and then only use fuel to maintain that orbit.
Then, we would only need to launch things into earth orbit, they could rendevouz with the “train” there, and hop off at the moon, where they need very little fuel to descend to the surface.
I think I have my next project for Kerbal space program :D
3000 km/sec is 100 times the speed of the Earth orbiting the Sun.
Such a craft would not go to Mars; it would depart the Solar System for intergalactic space in short order.