How to resupply a starship?

Consider a hard-SF (slower than light) starship. Boosting it up to speed takes enormous energy.

There are good reasons to want to not take all the fuel with you, but to collect energy on the run. Current thinking is that the Bussard ramjet, as popularized by the fiction of Larry Niven, would not gain energy in excess of its drag. Too bad. ☹

But the ideas of Robert L Forward are sound: use a laser to beam power from collecting points close to the sun.

You can beam power to a relativistic craft under way. But what about material goods? I have contemplated the idea of launching the craft and then sending pellets of matter after it. These would supply momentum when they are caught, and they can be released again or bounced back to avoid gaining needless mass, or retained if they are valuable useful types of atoms that you need.

More generally, how might you resupply a starship? And why would you send matter later rather than launching it initially? Since energy is m•v², it's more costly to make it catch up as opposed to including the item in the initial launch.

Note: two Answers have focused on Aldrin cycler, but that has zero applicability here. This craft in question will be under thrust or coasting at relativistic speeds and is interstellar; that is, between stars.

posted almost 8 years ago

JDługosz‭

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