Bad form to reply to your own post, but here's an afterthought anyway.
I attended the ICDERS 19 meeting (International Colloquium on
the Dynamics of Explosions and Reacting Systems) in Hakone,
Japan, this year, where one of the presentations related to research
on implosion-tube launchers -- the
Robert (or maybe Larry) writes:
I suspect I'd lean towards a mass-driver + small rocket combination
before I'd go with a space elevator. The nice thing about
robotic missions is that they can be hurled off a mass-driver
at much higher velocity (due to higher G-force acceleration)
than can
