Ion Booster

The Ion Booster, like the Atomic Bolt, comes from Atomo-Dyne labs. Also like the Atomic Bolt, the Ion Booster is descended from long-perfected technology that the Toba use every day in their home system. While the high acceleration Atomic Bolt is often used to rocket Toba from moon to moon at high speed, the ancestor of the Ion Booster, with its slow steady acceleration, is typically used for moving bulk cargos around the system.

Toba ion engines use electricity from batteries to electrically charge and then expel via electrostatic repulsion the dense nuclei of heavy elements like mercury or cesium. The reaction mass in an Ion Booster is somewhat rarer than the water used in the Atomic Bolt, but on the other hand the simple batteries in the Ion Booster are much less complex than the micro fission pile in the Atomic Bolt.

If ion engines typically have slow and steady acceleration, and the Toba use them to move bulk cargoes from moon to moon, doesn’t this mean that they’re a terrible technology for a Rocket Dog who’s concerned with speed, speed, and more speed?

Not at all! While Toba cargo ships have small ion engines with tiny batteries and use a dribble of reaction mass, the Ion Booster, specifically designed by Atomo-Dyne for Rocket Dogs races, cranks all the design knobs to 11, using super charged batteries, high discharge rate ionizers, and a large tank of cesium reaction mass, making the Ion Booster more than the equal of any other rocket.