Abstract
Henry Kolm (MIT National Magnet Laboratory, co-builder of Mass Driver 1 with O'Neill) wrote a September 1980 progress report in L5 News describing Mass Driver 2 design and the lunar mass driver case for $1/lb to L-5. Mass Driver 2 began development in fall 1978 under a NASA university-level grant shared between O'Neill and Kolm. Design: evacuated 4-inch caliber tube, 500 g acceleration, superconducting bucket, oscillating push-pull coil system. Crew chiefs: Bill Snow (Princeton), Peter Mongeau (MIT doctoral candidate). Senior researchers: René Miller, Peter Graneau. Funding: NASA grant + government surplus capacitors + SSI donations + DoD funding for broader EM launcher research. Headline lunar mass driver claim: "A conservative design using existing technology could theoretically deliver 600,000 tons a year to L-5, or more easily to L-2, at a cost of about $1 per pound, assuming only ten years of operation." Most striking incidental finding: Earth-launch from atmosphere is more feasible than commonly assumed — "a vehicle the size and shape of a telephone pole could be launched out of the Solar System with a loss of only about 3% of its mass" to atmospheric ablation effects.
Key claims
- md2-design: "Operate in an evacuated, four-inch caliber tube at an acceleration of 500 gee, with a superconducting bucket and an oscillating, push-pull coil system."
- lunar-cost-headline: "A conservative design using existing technology could theoretically deliver 600,000 tons a year to L-5...at a cost of about $1 per pound, assuming only ten years of operation."
- earth-launch-finding: "A vehicle the size and shape of a telephone pole could be launched out of the Solar System with a loss of only about 3% of its mass" to atmospheric effects.
- funding-status: NASA grant + government surplus capacitors + SSI donations + DoD funding for broader EM launcher research.
- collaborator-network: Bill Snow (Princeton chief), Peter Mongeau (MIT chief), René Miller, Peter Graneau (senior researchers).
Reviewer notes
Tier A (popular-aerospace press, not peer-reviewed, but author is credentialed primary researcher). The "$1/lb / 600 kt/yr / 10-year ops" headline is what propagates into the contemporary trade-press literature as the canonical optimistic figure. Cross-references the 1979 NASA SP-428 chapter (same author network, same numbers). The 1985 operational target was not met; the gap from 1980 design optimism to 2011 NASA cost-benefit pessimism (Wright et al.) is the most important historical fact for q7. Useful as a primary anchor for the 1970s-80s mass driver intellectual lineage; not directly load-bearing for modern engineering claims.