Ian Stirling wrote in
:

Jorge R. Frank wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote in
:

If you have a string of bombs spaced a second apart on a trajectory,
is there a reason that you can't simply ride the stream with an
orion, and constantly accellerate to 0.1C at ~1G?

For one thing, the bombs couldn't be spaced out on "a" trajectory -
if they are all in the same orbit, the first bomb would boost the
Orion *out* of the orbit and it would miss the second and subsequent
bombs. The bombs would each have to be placed on slightly different
trajectories, with bomb 1 being on the Orion's current (coasting)
trajectory, bomb 2 on the Orion's predicted post-bomb-1 trajectory,
bomb 3 on the predicted post-bomb-2 trajectory, and so on.

The bombs would be on a trajectory, they would be on the trajectory
that the orion follows.

Let me rephrase myself: it is inaccurate to speak of "the" trajectory the
Orion follows - its trajectory changes noticeably every time it is
accelerated by a bomb. Each bomb must lie on "a" predicted future
trajectory for the Orion - a prediction that changes ever so slightly every
time it hits a bomb.

So your predictions of each bomb's effect on the Orion's trajectory
must be highly precise, and therefore so must be your prediction of
the Orion's position relative to each bomb at the time of detonation.
It seems to me that one second between bombs does not allow
sufficient time to track and correct dispersions that inevitably
build up on such a scheme. You could probably eject the first bomb
from the Orion and hit the second one fairly precisely, but you'd be
slightly off-center for the third bomb, and completely off for the
fourth and subsequent.

Yes, you need to have some sort of stationkeeping arrangment on the
bomb, and some way to destroy them early if they are way off target.

I think you drastically underestimate the precision of the navigation
required, and the reaction time for the bombs.

--
JRF

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