>>12132118>Still too much, Saturn should be 3-4 months away at max, Mars and Venus maybe 1 month max, Moon - 1.5 daysIf you can't tell I'm picking 6 months out of a hat, I'm not bothering to do calculations in a question of the philosophy behind methods of space travel.
Regarding your examples, expending the time and effort to set up this propulsion system's acceleration and deceleration nodes would not be worth cutting a mere 36 hours off of an otherwise 72 hour trip. That's retarded. Instead it would make sense to use the propulsion system to shove kiloton and megaton scale vehicles and payloads between the Earth and Moon without needing to use large mass fractions of propellant, thus allowing for an order of magnitude or greater decrease in per kilogram transport costs.
For going to Venus or Mars, cutting off several months of travel time may be more valuable, but still, the dichotomy of speed VS payload mass exists, and it seems the payload is worth FAR more than the time. Accepting a doubling in transfer time from a minimum of one month up to just two months would increase the payload mass limit by 4x. Going to a three month transfer time gives you 9x the payload of the one-month trajectory, while still offering a several-month reduction in transfer time compared to a free return or a Hohmann trajectory. This seems to be a sweet spot in terms of value tradeoff; you're effectively spending several months of time in order to arrive with a vehicle that has a gross mass of 9000 tons instead of 1000.
For going to Jupiter and beyond, the value in time saved by sacrificing potential payload mass becomes more important. Nobody wants to sit around in a personnel shuttle for 8 years to get to Saturn, but at the same time it wouldn't be logical to blast out to Saturn and arrive with minimal payload mass in three months instead of arriving with twice as much mass in 4 months. This will be true until the places you're going don't need significant cargo shipments.
