Wikipedia
A mass driver or electromagnetic catapult is a proposed method of non-rocket spacelaunch which would use a linear motor to accelerate and catapult payloads up to high speeds. All existing and contemplated mass drivers use coils of wire energized by electricity to make electromagnets. Sequential firing of a row of electromagnets accelerates the payload along a path. After leaving the path, the payload continues to move due to momentum (at constant velocity, assuming lack of friction with the environment).
Although any device used to propel a ballistic payload is technically a mass driver, in this context a mass driver is essentially a coilgun that magnetically accelerates a package consisting of a magnetizable holder containing a payload. Once the payload has been accelerated, the two separate, and the holder is slowed and recycled for another payload.
Mass drivers can be used to propel spacecraft in three different ways: A large, ground-based mass driver could be used to launch spacecraft away from Earth, the Moon, or another body. A small mass driver could be on board a spacecraft, flinging pieces of material into space to propel itself. Another variation would have a massive facility on a moon or asteroid send projectiles to assist a distant craft.
Miniaturized mass drivers can also be used as weapons in a similar manner as classic firearms or cannon using chemical combustion. Hybrids between coilguns and railguns such as helical railguns are also possible.
Usage examples of "mass driver".
And you still must depend for several decades on the mass driver back in the Solar system for getting you to your preplanned terminal velocityno more, no less.
And what about the solar farms and the mass driver and all your astronomical equipment out on the crater floor?
Conversion from VSTOL to VTOL could be helped by a special application of the mass driver principle.
In fact the visible outer surface was lumpy and irregular, chunks of slag spit into Earth orbit by the mass driver at the American lunar base and fused there into armor for Fortress.
The ship, however, was refitted with a couple of E-8 engines attached to anchor points on the side of the hull, with half a dozen mass driver turrets patched on as well.
Briefly Doug wondered what it'd be like to be launched off the Moon by the mass driver.
His plan was to place a robot-controlled mass driver on an ice asteroid and push it into an aerobraking orbit around Mars, thus burning it up in the atmosphere.