Routine ISVs en route to Pandora

[SnowRider]

Then another question occurs to me on the Pandora side of the question. Perhaps this has already been answered somewhere else, but I wonder about it.

If there needs to be a laser to accelerate and decelerate the ships leaving and returning to Earth, then there has to be a similar setup at Pandora. Otherwise the ISVs would never be able to get up enough speed just with their ion/plasma/whatever engines.

If so, then there has to be a pretty good size store of energy on Pandora (i.e., a LOT of deuterium and/or antimatter available to power the lasers) for the purpose of powering the laser at Pandora.

That isn't as much of a problem on Earth, because (in theory, at least) the Earth laser can tap into the whole worldwide energy grid to power up, but on Pandora, by necessity there must be a much, much smaller infrastructure to supply power to the laser.

So, they must have a way of very quickly refueling their power supply on Pandora (i.e., the used shuttles to get deuterium from Polyphemous) and they'd probably need a LOT of fuel every time they accelerate a ship that's leaving or decelerate one that is arriving.

If they have a fast turnaround time (and they'd need one if one ship is leaving and another one is arriving right on its heels) that can mean only one of two things.

Either a) they are very, very efficient with their use of energy or b) they can get a LOT of fuel in a very short amount of time.

(or perhaps there is Option C, they can do a little of both)

In any case, it must mean that keeping the laser supplied with enough fuel and Hell's Gate running at the same time must be a very, very complicated balancing act!