Shpaget

So don't. Have a ban on FTL ships coming closer than whaterver you like and the planet has the shuttle service set up, or space elevator or whatever..

Small nuclear bombs are not easy to make. The idea behind mini mag is that it doesn't use pusher plates. So what is it, tiny or huge bombs? And what does any of this have to do with mass production of energy collecting satellites?

Induction motors regularly hit 90% efficiency (and more in industrial applications). There just is not much room for anything revolutionary.

I don't get it. What do magic batteries, mini mag, fusion and orion have to do with energy collection? The payload of a single one kg battery is trivial to send to orbit even with 60's tech. A single Falcon 9 can launch all the magic batteries you could ever hope to need.

Well, I certainly can't and BO apparently didn't, so I dunno, maybe, probably yes in the long run, but the specific tech they used may be not capable of it. There certainly are processes that can do it from regular Earthling ore. Lunar one may pose different challenges.

While that is a noteworthy achievement, isn't it still quite a few 9s away from purity needed for decent solar panels?

Mini Sea Dragon. Just add water!* *Salt to taste.

You'll have to provide specs for this AM rocket for anybody to be able to make a comparison.

Are we now talking FTL or generation ships? If FTL is on the table, then who cares about propellant?

Uh, I was debating with myself whether I should write 1,3 kW or 1300 W, and managed to mess it up. Bed time for me, I guess. In my defense, 4x10^5 W is correct.

Well, since you ask... I noticed two errors. You should use Moon's cross section not surface area, and insolation is about 1300 kW/m^2, not W, so about 4x10^15 W of incoming energy.

Apparently, they didn't teach it chess.

They made ChatGPT play chess against Stockfish (a chess engine). It showed a novel approach to the game.

What's stopping you from having it? It has been said so many times, but here it goes again: Just have it any way you want, and don't overexplain.

The only reason it is loose and all wobbly is to increase accuracy.

What makes you think that gas wouldn't stick to the nozzle?

Not entirely fiction, and this was an actual shower thought, but after that wretched Rose hoarded that entire frikkin huge door all to her selfish self, just to watch poor old dear Jack freeze to death, Jack should not have sunk. His lungs were not flooded. Besided, she should have taken off her floatation vest, shoved it under the door, perhaps add a few more from the surrounding donators (such as that poor propeller guy) and it would have made a nice raft, but noooo.... she was too busy clutching that awful, gaudy neckless Mr. Sleazy gave her. She didn't even like him, or so she says. Also, don't lie in freezing water, you'll catch a cold. Stand up to minimize contact with cold water.

Wow. Do you have it indexed? Such a huge amount of data is of little use if it's impossible to navigate.

It's not really a boom boom boom thing. It's a single continuous explosion that just keeps on going. As the shock front pases one part of the toroidal combustion chamber, new fuel is injected behind it just in time for that same shock front to come again after making a full lap (actually there are multiple shock fronts chasing each other, but whatever).

One more of those ideas that would/could/should work in practice, if only all the problems with it could be engineered away. What happens when the pellets start hitting the shield off center, and the spacecraft is pellet-weeks away? I'm having trouble imagining a shield sturdy enough to withstand continuous relativistic impacts, big enough to be a viable target for an interplanetary shooting range, yet still light enough to fit the one-ton-spacecraft description.

Sounds thermodynamically illegal.

Agreed, but not my idea to use solar.

Op considered nuclear option and quickly dismissed it. His focus is on solar energy, I'm just working within those constraints.

No mention of ISP in the article.

No. You most certainly do not. Producing antimatter is not making an energy source; it is storage, of poor efficieny. Making antimatter on the fly just to anihilate it immediately is wasteful.