Cycler Ships

[Sandworm]

I'm still wondering how this intercept thing would work. You launch from the surface or mars and accelerate up to match the speed of the Cycler as it whips by. But that means you are on an escape trajectory without the ability to turn around ... in a ship not capable of making the journey. If you miss the rendezvous, you are dead. You might be able to wait a few days/weeks until both craft are in deep space with lower relative velocities, but having a craft ready for that contingency sort of defeats the point.

*I just did some reading on Aldrin's book Encounter With Tiber (1996) which discusses cyclers and found this in a review:

"The book contributes one of the most embarrassing factual errors in science fiction: 4097 (17 × 241) is not a prime number. "

http://sites.inka.de/mips/reviews/EncounterWithTiber.html

Edited December 10, 2014 by Sandworm

[EzinX]

That "reusable" nature of the cyclers means that the science fiction cliche of them is that they are kind of ramshackle and smelly inside after a few decades of use. That's the real problem with the Cycler concept - how many cycles could that reactor, those ion engines, etc continue to operate before wearing out? It might be difficult to replace integral components of the spacecraft when the next supply shuttle from earth rendezvous with it.

[EzinX]

I'm still wondering how this intercept thing would work. You launch from the surface or mars and accelerate up to match the speed of the Cycler as it whips by. But that means you are on an escape trajectory without the ability to turn around ... in a ship not capable of making the journey. If you miss the rendezvous, you are dead. You might be able to wait a few days/weeks until both craft are in deep space with lower relative velocities, but having a craft ready for that contingency sort of defeats the point.

If you have telemetry from the cycler and it reports all the systems work, and your intercept craft looks good as well, I'm trying to imagine a scenario where if you were in a larger, more capable spacecraft you would survive when you would be dead in the cycler scenario.

I suppose if you had a mishap similar to what befell Apollo 13, where you have a tank explode and kill your entire service module while making the burns to intercept the cycler, you'd be up the creek. You would be hundreds of m/s short of ever meeting the cycler, and you would not be able to return to earth. While, on the other hand, if you were in a massive spacecraft like the proposed Mars Colonial Transporter (yes, I know that thing is unlikely to ever be built, but if it were...) you would probably have additional stages you could use to return to Earth with, similar to Apollo 13.

With all that said, there's going to be a large number of potential failures that could kill everyone no matter how you do it. That's just the reality of what you're trying to do. The marginal risk increase of missing your cycler intercept might not matter much in the grand scheme of things.

[fenderzilla]

[deleted by me]

Edited December 10, 2014 by fenderzilla

[Northstar1989]

EzinX said:

That "reusable" nature of the cyclers means that the science fiction cliche of them is that they are kind of ramshackle and smelly inside after a few decades of use. That's the real problem with the Cycler concept - how many cycles could that reactor, those ion engines, etc continue to operate before wearing out? It might be difficult to replace integral components of the spacecraft when the next supply shuttle from earth rendezvous with it.

Everything wears out. But if you manage a couple decades of use out of one of a Cycler Ship, you've more than got your money's worth- that's at least 12 cycles over a little more than 20 years' time (each cycle takes about 20 months- 5 one way, and 15 the other). DEFINITELY cheaper than 12 separate manned missions each with their own Mars departure and return vehicles (most plans actually call for 2 separate vehicles, so the return stage will already be at Mars before the first astronauts arrive).

I also have to point out, nuclear reactors last a lot longer than 20 years- many reactors operational today are 30-40 years old... And an onboard nuclear reactor isn't strictly necessary- you could more than get by with solar panels or Microwave Beamed Power from Earth/LEO...

Solar Sails essentially never wear out- except the electric motors used to rotate them and occasional micrometeorite impacts that would punch holes in them...

In fact, micrometeroites would probably be the greatest hazard to Cycler Ships (or any other interplanetary vessel), and any Cycler Ship would probably best operate unpressurized when uncrewed (to avoid loss of atmosphere through small holes) and with repair materials onboard to repair leaks from small impacts...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 27, 2017 by Northstar1989

[fenderzilla]

If anyone wants to try this, http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/comments/1x06wa/how_to_make_a_kerbinduna_aldrin_cycler/ is super useful.

[shynung]

-snip-

Trust me, he knows. And he's right in one aspect: correction burns on every pass will be needed, though it won't be as much as a typical Mars transfer burn.

I think you should hold back on microwave-beam thermal rockets for now. Yes, it's plausible, but I don't see any new engines working on that principle being developed as of now, so it's still far-future stuff. I think we'll have more to say about it when the first engine has been successfully test-fired (or explodes on the test rig. It happens occasionally).

[KerikBalm]

Any orbit will need corrections, just as satellites need station keeping.

But those need not be high thrust burns, which means a VASMIR type propulsion with an ISP of 15,000 is perfectly acceptable. So while its not free, its pretty cheap.

You save a lot of propellant by not having to accelerate the life support *equipment* even if you have to accelerate the *supplies*

You can also save some propellant used to accelerate the mass of hab space, deep space communications, and radiation shielding.

Its not that hard to get a capsule and a few tons fo food on a mars intercept trajectory.... but the crew won't survive in such a capsule.

What makes a mars mission so hard is not the dV requirements, it is the life support requirements. The cycler design means that you get a massive economy of scale as far as launching the life support systems.

I wouldn't bother with it in KSP though.

I "3 stage" back to kerbin

#1) Ascent from celestial body -> rendevous in low orbit

#2) Rendevous with mothership in highly eliptical orbit

#3) Kerbin transfer

My first aerobraking pass is only to get the craft captured, but ideally it takes only a small burn to reach escape velocity.

Then I detach part of the craft, and aerobrake and circularize into low orbit

Then I detach and descend to the surface.

Of course, all that also works without aerobraking.

Anyway, my point is that a Cycler would still benefit from an orbital rendevous.

When you ascend from mars, you don't need to go direct to a mars escape and rendevous with the cycler.

You can ascend from mars, rendevous with something left in orbit, and then use that to rendevous with the cycler.

I haven't looked at real life numbers, but in KSP, the dV difference between escape velocity and a duna transfer orbit is quite small.

I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just put the "cycler" into a very eccentric martian orbit.

That way, its always at mars, ready for departure, and you don't need a bunch of cyclers because the windows are so infrequent.

[RainDreamer]

Here is something I wonder. If we are able to get far enough in the future for tractor beams and force fields and the like that are able to stop something moving super fast, wouldn't it be possible for us to just shoot a capsule straight up to space in an interception path with the cycler, and have those sci-fi tech capture the capsule and take it along?

[Albert VDS]

For everyone who thinks "But what if you miss the rendezvous?": Really?

Think about what you are sitting in as you rendezvous with the cycler: a spacecraft which needs to course correct to get into the Mars atmosphere once it detaches from the cycler.

Ok, you could argue "But you wont have enough ÃŽâ€V to return to Earth!". Why would you use a spacecraft not capable of returning to Earth in case of an emergency?

That makes as much sense as sticking your craft next to 2 SRBs and hoping nothing will go wrong the next 2 minutes.

Also a nice graphical representation of a cycler's orbit:

[KerikBalm]

Here is something I wonder. If we are able to get far enough in the future for tractor beams and force fields and the like that are able to stop something moving super fast, wouldn't it be possible for us to just shoot a capsule straight up to space in an interception path with the cycler, and have those sci-fi tech capture the capsule and take it along?

Tractor beams and force fields and the like are pure speculation and best regarded as Future-Fantasy.

A more reasonable question would be using a mass driver/space gun to shoot a capsule into space.

Either way, you won't have one of those on Mars for the first several missions, so its an irrelevant point.

[RainDreamer]

Tractor beams and force fields and the like are pure speculation and best regarded as Future-Fantasy.

A more reasonable question would be using a mass driver/space gun to shoot a capsule into space.

Either way, you won't have one of those on Mars for the first several missions, so its an irrelevant point.

Well, I am just in speculation mode here. Cause I don't think we have anything in our capacity even in near future to be able to accurately capture something being shot up from the planet while moving in orbital speed doing a fly by. And I thought we are just speculating about far future here about cycler ships? I don't think we ever need it in near future.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I haven't looked at real life numbers, but in KSP, the dV difference between escape velocity and a duna transfer orbit is quite small.

I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just put the "cycler" into a very eccentric martian orbit.

That way, its always at mars, ready for departure, and you don't need a bunch of cyclers because the windows are so infrequent.

It's about 1060 m/s in real life as opposed to about 110 m/s in KSP. Which is quite a lot bigger than the usual ratio of real life : KSP. So I don't think it's a useful guide. Also areocapture of the mothership is difficult. Shedding over 1 km/s in one pass will require at least some form of thermal protection.

Interesting stuff:

Duna capture burn: 110 m/s -> Low Duna orbit: 370 m/s (so lowering the orbit requires 336% of the dV of capture)

Mars capture burn: 1060 m/s -> Low Mars orbit: 1440 m/s (so lowering the orbit requires 135% of the dV of capture)

[Red Iron Crown]

Ideally there would be two cyclers: One for a low time transfer from Earth to Mars, and another for a low time transfer from Mars to Earth.

[Northstar1989]

Trust me, he knows. And he's right in one aspect: correction burns on every pass will be needed, though it won't be as much as a typical Mars transfer burn.

Considering the correction-burns would be a few dozen m/s at most, and he was describing them as expensive in propellant, I *highly* doubt he has an accurate idea about how a Cycler ship works...

I think you should hold back on microwave-beam thermal rockets for now. Yes, it's plausible, but I don't see any new engines working on that principle being developed as of now, so it's still far-future stuff. I think we'll have more to say about it when the first engine has been successfully test-fired (or explodes on the test rig. It happens occasionally).

Actually, working Microwave Thermal Rockets have already been built and fired in the laboratory (the technology scales perfectly well to larger sizes- unlike combustion engines- if you can build a 1 kN unit you can build a 10,000 kN unit...) The gyrotrons that would be used, on the other hand, already find various applications in heavy industry (especially metallurgy).

So it's basically taking some off-the-shelf microwave heating-units from a foundry, and scaling up a thruster that already works in the laboratory, and you have a working thruster that can be scaled to any size. The engineering challenges are MUCH simpler than with combustion (which experiences all sorts of problems when you scale it up...) There's nothing far-future about it.

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Cause I don't think we have anything in our capacity even in near future to be able to accurately capture something being shot up from the planet while moving in orbital speed doing a fly by.

Rendezvous with objects making an orbital flyby is perfectly possible. Try doing it with a few asteroids, and even craft already on transfer-trajectories to other planets that haven't yet left the Kerbin system before saying it's impossible (the latter is much more difficult, and I've done it). The only thing that changes in real-life is the amount of Delta-V necessary...

And honestly, that Delta-V doesn't add up to a lot of fuel when you're just accelerating a tiny capsule. In fact, you need not even use a pressurized capsule- if the rendezvous will take less than 36 hours, I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the ask the astronauts to sit in their space suits and space diapers, hooked up to oxygen tanks in an unpressurized capsule, to save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mission cost...

Regards,

Northstar

[shynung]

Considering the correction-burns would be a few dozen m/s at most, and he was describing them as expensive in propellant, I *highly* doubt he has an accurate idea about how a Cycler ship works...

A few dozen m/s would be expensive propellant-wise if the hab module has a low specific impulse engine and is pretty massive. Of course, we can always slap engines like VASIMR on it.

Actually, working Microwave Thermal Rockets have already been built and fired in the laboratory (the technology scales perfectly well to larger sizes- unlike combustion engines- if you can build a 1 kN unit you can build a 10,000 kN unit...) The gyrotrons that would be used, on the other hand, already find various applications in heavy industry (especially metallurgy).

So it's basically taking some off-the-shelf microwave heating-units from a foundry, and scaling up a thruster that already works in the laboratory, and you have a working thruster that can be scaled to any size. The engineering challenges are MUCH simpler than with combustion (which experiences all sorts of problems when you scale it up...) There's nothing far-future about it.

Really? Then why haven't I seen news of any organization attempting to make a serviceable version? If the tech is as simple as you described, why has no one attempted to make pre-production prototypes, like what Ad Astra is doing with VASIMR?

[KerikBalm]

It's about 1060 m/s in real life as opposed to about 110 m/s in KSP. Which is quite a lot bigger than the usual ratio of real life : KSP. So I don't think it's a useful guide. Also areocapture of the mothership is difficult. Shedding over 1 km/s in one pass will require at least some form of thermal protection.

Interesting stuff:

Duna capture burn: 110 m/s -> Low Duna orbit: 370 m/s (so lowering the orbit requires 336% of the dV of capture)

Mars capture burn: 1060 m/s -> Low Mars orbit: 1440 m/s (so lowering the orbit requires 135% of the dV of capture)

Still, 1060 m/s is not such a big deal IRL terms

Thats about 1/8th what you need to get to orbit on Earth.

Also, for what I'm talking about, we should be comparing escape velocity from Earth, to the dV needed to get to Mars

So I looked it up:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.php

A hohman transfer from Earth to Mars takes

16,540 m/s if you launch from Earth, and land on Mars

Since the escape velocity for mars is 5.027 km/sec, it seems that if you don't capture and land on mars, it would be

16.54-5 = 11.54 km/sec

The escape velocity for Earth is 11.186 km/sec

Thus my quick approximation based on this numbers is that it only takes ~360 m/s more to escape Earth, than to get a mars flyby.

Also using those numbers, it takes 5,748 m/s to go from mars orbit, to Earth orbit.

I assume they don't include aerobraking...

Thus if you are nearly at Mars escape velocity (5 km/s), you'll need less than 748 m/s to get to an earth intercept... pretty cheap. The ejection burn is probably going to be much less, because your main craft won't be stopping at earth, much less circularizing, your capsule can aerobrake and do that.

Doing it the non-cycler way, but with a low orbit rendevous + very eccentric orbit rendevous, will only add several hundred m/s to each trip to for the main craft, as compared to a cycler (while the other craft can be smaller)

This is much more than a cyclers "0" (ideally, but course corrections are needed), but still pretty cheap.

I suppose it depends how many trips you plan on making....

It lets 1 craft do the work of multiple cyclers, and each cycler you put up there needs ~12 km/s of dV, most from low ISP chemical propellant, while the several hundred dV could be accomplished with NTR or electric propulsion.

So it seems to me that if you need to launch a second cycler to have the schedule you need, a mothership that just goes into highly elipitical, near escape velocity orbits, could get you many many trips for the same price.

I guess it depends on the launch schedule.

I'll note the shuttle was doomed by a much lower launch rate than anticipated for break even.

I suspect cyclers would end up being the same way

Edited December 10, 2014 by KerikBalm

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Still, 1060 m/s is not such a big deal IRL terms

Thus my quick approximation based on this numbers is that it only takes ~360 m/s more to escape Earth, than to get a mars flyby.

Also using those numbers, it takes 5,748 m/s to go from mars orbit, to Earth orbit.

I assume they don't include aerobraking...

Thus if you are nearly at Mars escape velocity (5 km/s), you'll need less than 748 m/s to get to an earth intercept... pretty cheap. The ejection burn is probably going to be much less, because your main craft won't be stopping at earth, much less circularizing, your capsule can aerobrake and do that.

Yeah but you need that 748 m/s twice, once to break from the transfer and once to boost back into it. And probably slightly more than that because you wouldn't want to be in such a massively eccentric orbit. And 1500 m/s is a very significant chunk of dV - a 100 tonne mothership would require 58 tonnes of USDH/N2O4 for that.

If you want to reuse the mothership you have to park it in earth orbit at a cost of 360 m/s and then, presumably, boost it back to Mars again. In total that's at least 2220 m/s of dV or 97 tonnes of USDH/N2O4 for a 100 tonne mothership. Compared to 0 tonnes for an ideal cycler.

Edit: Also the Aldrin cycler takes crew to mars once every 2.1 years - which is the same frequency as the Hohmann transfer orbit window opens. Fair enough you need 2 cyclers (inbound and outbound) but it's not a staggering investment.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Fuzzy Dunlop

[Northstar1989]

A few dozen m/s would be expensive propellant-wise if the hab module has a low specific impulse engine and is pretty massive. Of course, we can always slap engines like VASIMR on it.

Not expensive propellant-wise compared to a Mars or Earth-transfer, which is the whole point...

Really? Then why haven't I seen news of any organization attempting to make a serviceable version? If the tech is as simple as you described, why has no one attempted to make pre-production prototypes, like what Ad Astra is doing with VASIMR?

They have. Or rather, they're working on it now. Expect to see similar prototypes within the decade (a subscale demonstration is scheduled for 2018).

The main obstacles to Microwave Thermal Rocketry are not scientific, engineering-related, or technological. Rather, they are political/bureaucratic and financial...

First of all, there's getting government authorization to shoot the Microwaves through the air at a Thermal Receiver outside of a laboratory- people have unreasonable fears about that kind of thing- even though we already shoot loads of radio waves through the air- and Microwaves are less energetic than Visible Light or Infrared (which is why they pass through the air so much more efficiently, whereas lasers tend to diffract...)

Second, Microwave Thermal Receivers and (especially) Microwave Transmitters (aka. gyrotrons) aren't cheap. The technology is inherently expensive, because it involves some of the same microlayer-coating techniques used to manufacture photovoltaic panels and circuit boards. Not more expensive than a space-grade rocket engine, mind you (such an engine is MUCH more expensive)- but rocket engines are actually an inherently cheap technology. You can build a low-quality rocket engine (definitely *NOT* up to standards for use in space) for a fraction of the cost of a Microwave Transmitter (a gyrotron), Microwave Thermal Receiver, or for that matter, a jet engine. A 1 MW gyrotron, by contrast, goes for $2 million a pop (Microwave Thermal Rocketry is cheap because you leave the gyrotrons on the ground, and can re-use them literally *thousands* of times before they eventually wear out...)

The cost of researching Microwave Thermal Rocketry on even a small (1 Megawatt) scale means very few laboratories/universities can afford to do so in the current economic climate. ESPECIALLY when there isn't exactly a lot of government support for this kind of research (unlike, say, research on high-powered lasers...) We're lucky that NASA just recently shelled out $2 million to actually buy a Microwave Transmitter unit for use specifically in Microwave Thermal Rocketry research...

Here, the lead NASA researcher on the project (at NASA's Ames Research Center) discusses the technology. Note that he mentions there are currently only 3 people on the project as of 2011, when the article was written (NASA hasn't *YET* made it a high funding-priority, which is why progress has been slow), but he also mentions that they're trying to recruit more researchers, and that they were slated to receive the $2 million 1 MW gyrotron in 2012 (later articles confirm that they did indeed receive the unit, and are working on a subscale demonstration for 2018 as planned and on-schedule...)

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/nasa-researcher-kevin-parkin-discusses.html

There's also a small private company called Escape Dynamics working on the technology, by the way- for which the lead NASA researcher on the project is an adviser. They hold some patents related to the technology, and are working on designing working spaceplanes using the technology (the MUCH higher ISP than chemical rocketry makes spaceplanes actually feasible- and spaceplanes can lift off with a TWR less than 1, meaning you can lift a heavier vehicle with the same amount of beamed-power...)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited December 10, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

each cycler you put up there needs ~12 km/s of dV, most from low ISP chemical propellant, while the several hundred dV could be accomplished with NTR or electric propulsion.

Besides the flaws in your mothership argument, which Fuzzy quite succinctly and effectively points out, you seem to be under some fundamental misconceptions about which type of vessel would require which type of propulsion...

A "mothership" vessel, since it would be manned, would need to rely on "low ISP chemical propellant", so as to keep the acceleration and trip time to a reasonable length.

A Cycler ship, on the other hand, can launch completely unmanned (it would pick up crew on its second cycle around Earth) and SLOWLY accelerate to its cycle trajectory. There is no limit to how low the TWR could be, except for human patience. You could use Nuclear Thermal (American NERVA, Timberwind, or the Russian-American BNTR cooperative project), Microwave Thermal, Nuclear Electric, Microwave Electric, or even solar sail propulsion (which requires ZERO propellant) if you were patient enough...

Regards,

Northstar

[shynung]

The main obstacles to Microwave Thermal Rocketry are not scientific, engineering-related, or technological. Rather, they are political/bureaucratic and financial...

Ah, I see. Too bad most politicians aren't scientifically passionate. Or literate.

First of all, there's getting government authorization to shoot the Microwaves through the air at a Thermal Receiver outside of a laboratory- people have unreasonable fears about that kind of thing- even though we already shoot loads of radio waves through the air- and Microwaves are less energetic than Visible Light or Infrared (which is why they pass through the air so much more efficiently, whereas lasers tend to diffract...)

It's not entirely unreasonable; there's a WIP less-lethal weapon system developed by the US military, the Active Denial System, that works on the same principle, though on a different frequency. That, combined with the fact that the microwaves are powerful enough to lift rockets into orbit (in the scale of megawatts) would make them politically dangerous to develop; it'd be just as useful as a propulsion system as it is as a directed-energy weapon. Imagine if one of them accidentally swiped at a passing airliner...

Second, Microwave Thermal Receivers and (especially) Microwave Transmitters (aka. gyrotrons) aren't cheap. The technology is inherently expensive, because it involves some of the same microlayer-coating techniques used to manufacture photovoltaic panels and circuit boards. Not more expensive than a space-grade rocket engine, mind you (such an engine is MUCH more expensive)- but rocket engines are actually an inherently cheap technology. You can build a low-quality rocket engine (definitely *NOT* up to standards for use in space) for a fraction of the cost of a Microwave Transmitter (a gyrotron), Microwave Thermal Receiver, or for that matter, a jet engine. A 1 MW gyrotron, by contrast, goes for $2 million a pop (Microwave Thermal Rocketry is cheap because you leave the gyrotrons on the ground, and can re-use them literally *thousands* of times before they eventually wear out...)

The cost of researching Microwave Thermal Rocketry on even a small (1 Megawatt) scale means very few laboratories/universities can afford to do so in the current economic climate. ESPECIALLY when there isn't exactly a lot of government support for this kind of research (unlike, say, research on high-powered lasers...) We're lucky that NASA just recently shelled out $2 million to actually buy a Microwave Transmitter unit for use specifically in Microwave Thermal Rocketry research...

I think it'll be cheaper when technology demonstrators have been fired/flown, mass-produced, and after many spaceports have gyrotrons installed, launching microwave thermal rockets regularly. Until then, I suppose we can only wait.

There's also a small private company called Escape Dynamics working on the technology, by the way- for which the lead NASA researcher on the project is an adviser. They hold some patents related to the technology, and are working on designing working spaceplanes using the technology (the MUCH higher ISP than chemical rocketry makes spaceplanes actually feasible- and spaceplanes can lift off with a TWR less than 1, meaning you can lift a heavier vehicle with the same amount of beamed-power...)

Great, some progress. I hope they succeed in whatever they end up doing.

Edited December 10, 2014 by shynung

[RainDreamer]

Rendezvous with objects making an orbital flyby is perfectly possible. Try doing it with a few asteroids, and even craft already on transfer-trajectories to other planets that haven't yet left the Kerbin system before saying it's impossible (the latter is much more difficult, and I've done it). The only thing that changes in real-life is the amount of Delta-V necessary...

And honestly, that Delta-V doesn't add up to a lot of fuel when you're just accelerating a tiny capsule. In fact, you need not even use a pressurized capsule- if the rendezvous will take less than 36 hours, I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the ask the astronauts to sit in their space suits and space diapers, hooked up to oxygen tanks in an unpressurized capsule, to save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mission cost...

Regards,

Northstar

Uhm...I think the problem is to stop the capsule as it flies to the cycler with super high speed, not how hard the maneuver is. I mean, yeah, you can rendezvous with stuff on a fly by trajectory with proper planning like anything else, but how do you stop the capsule you launch up to be basically a bullet that will smash into the cycler and destroy stuff?

What have we got now or in near future to instantly disperse all those kinetic energy with all the parties involve intact? I am curious.

[andrewas]

You don't need to rendezvous with a high relative velocity if you time it right, only if you are impatient and launch after the Cycler has passed the optimum position. A normal transfer would basically be an ejection into the cycler's transfer orbit at roughly the same time the cycler is passing periapsis. Launching early or late means you have to trade off how long you spend in the transfer shuttle against your relative speed at rendezvous.

[shynung]

Uhm...I think the problem is to stop the capsule as it flies to the cycler with super high speed, not how hard the maneuver is. I mean, yeah, you can rendezvous with stuff on a fly by trajectory with proper planning like anything else, but how do you stop the capsule you launch up to be basically a bullet that will smash into the cycler and destroy stuff?

What have we got now or in near future to instantly disperse all those kinetic energy with all the parties involve intact? I am curious.

Uh, the capsule's main engines? Because, like, that's how orbital rendezvouses are done; accelerate to target, match trajectory, and bleed off relative velocity as the capsule gets closer.