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

===== Even with nuclear tails, there are things it cannot give you: =====
* It still doesn’t let the depot loop back in interstellar mid-gap – that would require sustained thrust and basically makes it a second starship, not a comet-depot.
* It doesn’t create a dense, continuous refuel chain all the way to Alpha Centauri. - You get a sparse set of heavy depots along a corridor, not a gas station every 0.01 ly.
* It doesn’t eliminate the need for the starship to have: - a serious primary propulsion system - substantial onboard reserves and redundancy.

But within those limits, your picture is correct:

: 

That’s entirely compatible with physics and with what I’ve been saying – you’ve just made the guidance/precision part explicit and more robust.

If you want, we can now sketch what a depot like this would actually carry (mass budget: ice vs structure vs engine vs guidance vs shielding), because that ties directly into: “how many such depots would a mature civilization bother to build?”