Could we transport matter to other planets with a charged particle beam?

Instead of flying say tons of metal and/or water and other raw materials/molecular matter to the Moon or Mars, could we shoot it there in ionized form by accelerating these sufficiently?

Maybe subsequently shooting the previously removed electrons so that the matter can be discharged on-site.

Of course we would need a simple (?) base built there previously that is able to "catch" the beam.

I imagine this could be much cheaper and faster than sending rockets filled with stuff.

Is this in any way feasible? Or would the atmosphere get in the way? In that case, just bringing the stuff into earth orbit and only then shooting it would no longer be much cheaper, but still faster.

That is, if such a beam of reasonable size (a few tens or hundreds of meters) could transport any reasonable amount of mass in reasonable time.

posted about 9 years ago

masterxilo‭

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