Interesting…
Earlier this year, Charles Bombardier dreamt up a way to tour between continents at hypersonic speed (think New York to Dubai in 22 minutes). However now he’s set his sights on something much larger. Pushing the limits of his mind out of this world, the Montreal-based leader has envisioned Solar Express—a futuristic train intended to ferry goods and passengers between celestial bodies and space station.
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1. Nothing doing .1 C is going to “orbit” anything. That’s escape velocity from the Solar System.
2. No way to catch it to board it without achieving impossible acceleration.
3. No way to get off of it without achieving impossible declaration.
4. The impossible acceleration and deceleration would use the exact vast amount of energy the concept is supposed to avoid.
5. At .1 C, every molecule and subatomic particle it encounters in interplanetary space becomes part of a lethal sleet of radiation that kills everyone and everything on it and, eventually, erodes the entire ship into junk.
6. At .1 C, a slight adjustment in course turns the ship into a planet destroying kinetic bomb. Hopefully, the planet that gets destroyed is Mars rather than Earth.
7. At .1 C, the particle radiation erodes the entire ship into a relativistic pile of planet destroying junk. Good thing that at that speed, it isn’t hanging around in the Solar System anyway.
Other than that though, the idea has great promise.