Mass in special relativity detail by Oliver Heaviside (1889) and George Frederick Charles Searle (1897). So the electrostatic energy behaves as having some sort of electromagnetic mass formula_25, which can increase the normal mechanical mass of the bodies. Then, it was pointed out by Thomson and Searle that this electromagnetic mass also increases with velocity. This was further elaborated by Hendrik Lorentz (1899, 1904) in the framework of Lorentz ether theory. He defined mass as the ratio of force to acceleration, not as the ratio of momentum to velocity, so he needed to distinguish between the mass formula_26 parallel to the direction of motion
Mass driver velocity would rather be around 62.75% of total mission delta v if operating at constant specific impulse, except greater optimization could come from varying exhaust velocity during the mission profile (as possible with some thruster types, including mass drivers and variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rockets). Since a mass driver could use any type of mass for reaction mass to move the spacecraft, a mass driver or some variation seems ideal for deep-space vehicles that scavenge reaction mass from found resources. One possible drawback of the mass driver is that it has the potential to send solid reaction mass travelling at