Editing Openai/691a2d9f-c044-8012-bccf-942bfce6334d (section)

=== Assistant: 17-11-25 05:07 ===
17-11-25 05:07
GPT-5.1

Short answer:

Sometimes yes, sometimes absolutely not.

A zig-zag route with caches is only better than a straight route with no caches if the “bends” cost you less than what the caches give back in usable delta-v, safety, or redundancy.

Let me make that concrete.

==== In interstellar flight what matters isn’t just: ====
* where the cache is (position), but also
* how it’s moving (velocity).

To use a cache efficiently, your ship must get close to it in position ''and'' in velocity:
* If the cache is near your path but screaming past you in a very different direction/speed, catching it is insanely expensive.
* A “zig zag” that demands big sideways or speed changes might cost more delta-v than the cache can possibly repay.

So the right framing:

: 

==== It helps when: ====
# Near the star (Solar System) - Climbing out of a gravity well is expensive. - Having depots in the inner/outer system can: - let you launch lighter, - refuel after escape from low orbit, - pick up extra shielding and mass where it’s cheaper to deliver. - Here, even a messy route (Earth → Lagrange depot → outer depot → “edge”) can be vastly better than “one giant direct burn with everything on board”.
# Caches are almost on your natural route - If a depot is only a small course correction away, and its mass lets you: - top up reaction mass, - restore radiation shielding, - replace spares… - then a small zig or zag is absolutely worth it.
# You care about redundancy / failure modes - Even if it’s delta-v neutral, a cache gives you: - abort options, - rescue staging, - fallback plans. - For a generational ship, that risk reduction can outweigh some extra trip time/path inefficiency.

In those regimes, yes:
A slightly crooked route with smart caches is much better than a mathematically pure straight line with zero help.

==== It becomes a liability when: ====
# Caches are too far off in angle or speed - If intercepting a cache costs, say, 5 km/s of sideways and speed-change maneuvers, and the extra propellant you get only buys you 3 km/s of useful delta-v, → you are net worse off. - This is what happens if you throw depots without extremely tight trajectory design.
# You’re deep in the interstellar gulf

Once you’re well away from any star:
* Space is dynamically “flat”: you’re just coasting in a straight line at nearly constant velocity.
* Every zig-zag is pure waste: - it lengthens the trip, - eats fuel, - adds habitat stress and time for failures.

Here, the optimal strategy is:

: 
# Time costs dominate

For a generational ship:
* Every extra decade of travel: - increases cultural drift, - multiplies maintenance burden, - compounds failure probabilities.

So even if a zig-zag is marginally delta-v positive, it might be strategically negative because it extends mission duration.

==== You can think of it like this: ====

: 

In other words:
* It must be phase-space close and
'' It must be net-positive in both delta-v ''and* mission risk/time.

==== For your solar-catapulted ice depots: ====
* Near the Sun & in the outer Solar System: Zig-zag with depots? Very likely worth it. You’re fighting the gravity well; every bit of staged mass helps.
* Out past the “shoreline” (Solar gravity mostly done): - You want your starship on the cleanest possible outbound trajectory. - You only touch depots that have: - nearly the same outbound direction, - similar speed, - modest intercept costs.

So the refined statement is:

: 

Beyond that, the zig-zag turns into self-sabotage.

If you want, we can now sketch a two-zone mission profile:
# Zone 1: “Messy” depot-rich region (inside Solar System out to, say, a few thousand AU).
# Zone 2: “Straight shot” region (pure cruise toward Alpha Centauri).

That gives you a crisp mental map of where your logistics lattice lives and where it must give way to clean inertial flight.