Fun With Scifi Tropes.... Tractor Beams (shaped like actual beams)

[Spacescifi]

Main Question: How high up in space are antimatter bomb blasts safe? Nuke level yield but using only AM annihilation?

Reason: I figured out that scifi tractor beams that can both push and pull as beams would work great for pushing or retracting an otherwise massive stationary launch platform into LEO space. From there Orion drive tankers could take off and use AM bombs to fly into orbit, saving most of their propellant for crewed rocketships that dock in orbit and refuel

Normally an orion drive used as a giant propellant tank would make little sense. But in this setting it would make plenty. As the space rocketships are proper warp starships but rely on tankers for propellant. Orion drives save chemical propellant by using bomb push propulsion.

Lots of ISRU bases would help too, with more tractor beam luft platforms.

Like they say, once in space you are halfway to anywhere. So if that becomes easier then rockets become a whole lot more practical when you use a lot of Orion tankers.

And getting back to Earth is just as easy... adjust your speed via tankers far away, warp in and land on a platform and let it take you back down to Earth.

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Spacescifi

[Vanamonde]

Since nobody has any idea how a tractor beam might work, there is no way to guess what the power requirements might be. It could turn out to be less efficient to launch payloads that way. 

[Codraroll]

If you have the tech to build tractor beams, what the heck do you need Orion drives for? Especially with antimatter again? You seem strangely hung up with using antimatter-based Orion drives despite being told repeatedly how ludicrously impractical it is and that pretty much every other wishlisty science tech makes it obsolete. 

Also, if you can shape the tractor beams anyway you want, you obviously must shape it like a tractor. Preferably the old type with an open-air seat and a tall exhaust pipe that goes puff-puff-puff.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

Since nobody has any idea how a tractor beam might work, there is no way to guess what the power requirements might be. It could turn out to be less efficient to launch payloads that way. 

 

That is a legit point.... but in a scifi trope setting it could work well enough (don't explain the impossible, not the job of scifi).

All the other stuff is based on reality and theoreticals that we do understand some.

 

13 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

If you have the tech to build tractor beams, what the heck do you need Orion drives for? Especially with antimatter again? You seem strangely hung up with using antimatter-based Orion drives despite being told repeatedly how ludicrously impractical it is and that pretty much every other wishlisty science tech makes it obsolete. 

Also, if you can shape the tractor beams anyway you want, you obviously must shape it like a tractor. Preferably the old type with an open-air seat and a tall exhaust pipe that goes puff-puff-puff.

 

All scifi is a paradox... I like Orions and rockets. People pick what they like.

 

My reasons for liking rockets with tankers is it allows greater freedom of movement while still not making them overpowered as a torch drive that can go 1g for days.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Spacescifi

[wumpus]

If grabbing scifi tropes, why not include the tractor?

Tractor  beam at 9:49.