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I am thinking of the type of balloon that was experimented on already, where it is inflated in orbit, but does not retain pressure after that.
I am thinking of placing that in synchronous orbit of a asteroid or comet and also tethering it to the object.
A passive version of this then interacts with the solar wind as the asteroid or comet spins. When it opposes the solar wind the bow shock is more significant. When moving in the same direction, then less force.
The objective would be to alter the orbit of the object to serve a collision purpose. More or less after installed rotational energy would be exchanged for an alteration of orbit around the sun.
A less passive version would have a saucer shaped balloon that could pivot on it's tether. I presume that a rectifying device could extract energy from the differential voltage between the balloon and the object as conducted through the tether. That stored electrical power would allow it to present a greater or lesser resistance to the solar wind.
Preferred targets might be Ceres and Callisto. If habitation of those objects were considered then an iron/nickle object delivered for collision would provide an ice covered lake and iron/nickle. Timing would be important. Delivering humans and their machines to the area of impact before the ice got too thick.
Then keeping the lake liquid with fusion power I presume.
Mars can also be considered, it's polar ice caps, but I suppose there will be a human population there before such a mission could be mounted. That would complicate things.
If the North cap then a lake. If the south, then vaporize the CO2, and temporarily inflate the atmosphere. Perhaps if at a point where sufficient greenhouse gasses were deployed, that timing to inflate the atmosphere would be good.
I am also thinking of Orion nuclear methods to fine tune the impact area. Fission or Fusion.
But I am more interested in Ceres, Callisto and objects beyond.
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If this were considered for Mars, It might make the most sense to put in place the super greenhouse gasses of choice first which might require a human presence on Mars before the impact. If the South Polar cap, then the size would need to be enough to vaporize the bulk of CO2 in it, but not to sear the planet with water vapor steam or at least not too much.
Certainly if using greenhouse gasses, you could simply wait for the caps to thaw, but this would hurry things up quite a bit I think, and timing might be important.
Human culture is not unlike the stock market, it fluctuates, and is more or less subject to something like A.D.D.
Presuming that an effort had been mounted to get humans to Mars, you could not necessarily count on it to be sustained for decades since notions of what is important go in and out of style. It would really be nice to have Mars upgraded to a average pressure of 11+ mb and to have significant greenhouse gasses in it.
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For Void ... I just found this interesting idea of yours while looking for topics with the word "orbit"
Since the topic was created in 2014 and has idled for nearly 10 years, please update it. You've had a ** lot ** of ideas since then.
(th)
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Lets Consider a Magnetic Balloon: http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 37#p217237
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00xyBT70sB4
Quote:
NSS Space Forum - July 14, 2022 - Fast Solar Wind Sailing with Jeff Greason
National Space Society
12.4K subscribers
It still has to be proved to work in space, but looks interesting.
You could center the field on an object or place it on a tether. If on a tether you could turn it on and off to either be pushed to spin something up or down in spin speed.
If more centered on an object, then you could generally drag an object outwards in the solar system.
So, the hope would be to gather Mars crossing asteroids to Mars orbits.
I am not currently a fan of crashing asteroids into Mars myself. My hope would be to be able to nudge objects into the Mars gravity well to be sucked in by Ballistic Capture. Not sure I understand enough about that.
But then you could clear some dangerous asteroids, and also build stuff in Martian orbits from them.
Done
Last edited by Void (2024-01-08 14:38:20)
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For Void .... thanks for picking up your topic from 2014...
Hopefully this suggestion will further stimulate your creative thinking....
In your original idea (to the extent I understand it) it seemed that you had a vision of a giant balloon pushed by solar wind.
I noted that you suggested the balloon would not be kept inflated.
In case you had not considered the Echo balloon, that was an early experiment with communication facilitated by a large metal object. It was easy to see, and for folks who were alive at the time, it was quite interesting.
My understanding is that the balloon was allowed to lose it's round shape, so eventually it became deformed and eventually fell into the gravity well.
Thus, I would propose for your consideration the value of keeping the balloon inflated if you want to get long term use.
(th)
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