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

==== 2. EUCE per trait: KEEP / MUTATE / DEMOTE / KILL ====

===== T1: Outer/inner Solar System ice mining =====
* U₁: Yes (comets, KBOs, icy moons).
* U₂: Fits asteroid mining / outer system industrialization.
* U₃: Needed for bulk water/shielding/propellant. ✅ KEEP. This is the raw feedstock; it’s foundational.

===== T2: Engineered depots (ice + structure + shielding) =====
* U₁: Tanks + trusses + shells = standard engineering extrapolated.
* U₂: Easy to scale: start small, go bigger.
* U₄: Intuitive: “big flying fuel/water bricks.” ✅ KEEP. Central element.

(Mutation: don’t fetishize “comet shape”; just talk about mass blocks / depots.)

===== T3: Nuclear tail propulsion on each depot =====
* U₁: Nuclear thermal / nuclear electric is within known physics.
* U₂: Nuclear tugs already appear in serious NASA/ESA concepts.
* U₃: Essential for injection + guidance; without it, you’re just throwing rocks blindly. ✅ KEEP. This is your “guided missile” gene.

===== T4: Solar Oberth maneuver (Sun-grazing slingshot) =====
* U₁: Clean general relativity + orbital mechanics; already exploited by Parker Solar Probe.
* U₂: Allows serious Δv multiplication without megaton propellant loads.
* U₃: The whole point is “use Sun as energy amplifier.” ✅ STRONGLY KEEP. This is the signature move.

===== T5: Early outbound course trimming with the nuclear tail =====
* U₁: Small burns + star tracking = realistic nav.
* U₂: Engine lifetime 50–200 years intermittent use is brutal but not insane.
* U₃: Solves the “tiny initial angle error becomes 1000s of AU” problem. ✅ KEEP. This makes the whole thing actually usable rather than spray-n-pray fantasy.

===== T6: Long interstellar inertial coast (no further propulsion) =====
* U₁: Perfect physics; vacuum is an inertial paradise.
* U₃: This is the entire payoff: do the hard work early, then coast.
* U₄: Conceptually elegant: “Do all burns near the Sun, then stop touching it.” ✅ KEEP. Low-entropy simplicity.

===== T7: Probabilistic spray (many depots, few useful) =====
* U₁: Civilizationally realistic: bulk launch, expect partial failure.
* U₂: Matches how we already do complex logistics (redundancy, oversupply).
* U₃: Gives robustness without demanding perfection in every launch. ✅ KEEP, but FRAME CLEARLY. “Launch 30, expect 5 to remain nicely in corridor; that’s plenty.”

===== T8: Dense mid-gap chain all the way to Alpha Centauri =====
* U₁: Starts to smell like fantasy; density needed vs matter available is insane.
* U₂: Way beyond any plausible industrial capacity.
* U₃: Diminishing returns vs just making the ship better. ❌ KILL as a serious requirement. Replace with: “sparse waypoints” rather than a gas-station-every-0.01-ly dream.

===== T9: Heavy reliance on natural comets as whole depots =====
* U₁: Natural comets are unstable, outgassing, orbit-wobbly nightmares.
* U₂: Great quarries, terrible as primary engineered infrastructure. ⚠️ MUTATE. Keep: “Mine comets/asteroids/KBOs.” Drop: “Ride them as-is.” Your depots are engineered hulks derived from those bodies, not the bodies themselves.

===== T10: Strong tie-in to warp/wormhole anything =====
* U₁: Wormholes/warp are currently fiction.
* U₃: Dilutes the main value, which is “no magic.” ❌ KILL. If those exist, this system is side-flavor at best. The entire charm is: we don’t need space-magic.

===== T11: Starship architecture co-designed with depot system =====
* U₂: Realistic; infrastructure and ship design always co-evolve.
* U₃: Big leverage; you can design lighter ships if you know depots exist.
* U₅: Great for narrative: fleets designed under different assumptions about depot availability. ✅ KEEP. This is where your idea actually starts to influence everything else: ship mass, shielding, propulsion mix, risk tolerance, etc.