What if you took the principle of magnetic acceleration, created a bunch of acceleration gateways in space, and then shot space trains through it? Have catching gates on the opposite end for the deceleration part.
What's the maximum speed that magnetic acceleration can accelerate an object to in a vacuum before the object is travelling so fast that the magnetic effect can no longer impact upon it as it passes the gates?
I wanna build some fucking space trains. What can I read that's explored this?
That's a brilliant idea. Just shooting trains into space along giant magnetic rings instead of rails.
Then you can have connecting rings or change other rings in advance to change course.
Singular rockets or ships would never work for a space faring society.
Building a giant track and rings and powering them all seems insanely inefficient, compared to a fission rocket, and a cyro chamber that fills with foam so your body can withstand the 100g burn when you slow down. Unless this is just a planetary thing.
I think a single fission rocket with those rings built into the cylinder of the rocket might work.
As it hurtles through space towards a destination, it releases a ring (maybe solar powered) until reaching an end point.
In that scenario, if you can plot a course for a fission rocket that takes several years, repeat trips along the same path would be easier.
you run into problems with fuel mass when you attempt to take any kind of rocket up to near-c. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation
one way around this that i've seen is to set up relays of giant lasers to boost solar sail ships
Exactly! Like the Large Hadron Collider but instead of particles getting looped for acceleration you do space trains instead.