Quote:
Originally Posted by Oregon Elephant
The best way to minimize the fuel used, is to minimize the number of trips to the surface of a planet. If you had two stations, one around earth and one around mars, a large transport-type ship could very efficently travel between the two, and lighter smaller ships (that are very fuel effeicent with traveling through atmosphere and against gravity). The larger ship can't waste room trying to be areodynamic or that will greatly limit the amount it can carry to and from mars (in space, it can be any size and any shape).
Another form of fuel for the deep space stuff (like out past Saturn and to the Kepler belt) would be nuclear explosion into a sail. That one is still working out some kinks though.
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The idea of a larger between-station transport ship, and smaller surface-to-station ships is a very efficient way to boost cargo capacity and minimize fuel consumption. If a ship has no need to be aerodynamic, then it'll be able to carry much more cargo. But, there will also be the issue of finite materials on Earth, assuming that the ships, stations and fuels will all be put together with materials from Earth, which would prove to be very costly in terms of money and depleting resources.
As far as the nuclear-explosions-into-sails plan, I believe that is an amazing idea, especially provided that the amount of fuel needed is very, very little. The kinks always need to be ironed out before anything can officially be declared a working method of transportation.
P.S. Did you mean the Kuiper belt?