Tacking on Gravity: Propellant Free Maneuvers
Tacking on Gravity: Inside the Main Belt’s Propellantless Catcher Fleet Zen's University Press , August 13, 2063 By harvesting momentum and terajoules of electricity from passing asteroids, independent salvage and mining vessels cross the solar system without burning nuclear fuel—reviving the lost art of the tall-ship navigator. Watch the infrared approach boards at Ceres Dock long enough, and two distinct philosophies of spaceflight announce themselves before a hull ever clears visual range. Corporate bulk freighters and patrol cruisers arrive behind blinding fission-powered plumes, broadcasting their mass, vector, and reactor pedigree across millions of kilometers. Every kilometer per second they shed represents leased fissile rods from the Energy Consortium (EC), thousands of metric tons of boiled reaction water, and a trail of regulatory paperwork stretching throughout the Trans-Kármán Authority (TKA). Then there are the catchers. They slip into dock cold. No reactor c...