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By "continuous," it would only fire minutes or hours, not like an ion engine for months at a time. The thrust these engines generate is MASSIVE compared to an electric engine.
Thanks. That is about what I expected.
Where do we stand with the technical capability to build flight ready versions of either engine? And what kind of time frame would we be looking at assuming funding was adequate from program approval to flight readiness?
That really isn't necessary. I just wanted the people here to know that I had reregistered and why.
Appreciate it.
Would either engine be continously thrusting?
A book and BBC production this last fall described in great technical detail a hypothetical "manned Grand Tour" type of mission with a five man international crew aboard a large fusion propelled ship.
Members of the crew land briefly on Venus, Mars, Io, Titan,Pluto and finally a comet. The landings on Venus and Io are of course very brief. Given the rather brief landings in the scope of the total six year mission time, the whole exercise seems like a colossal "flags & footprints" type of mission.
But I wonder, given as much serious thought as obviously went into the book and program just how feasible such a multi target mission would be
Thoughts?
A high-end GCNR or mid-high NSWR rocket could do it for about the same difficulty as getting to Mars with chemical or NTR power.
In English please.
Sorry, but I'm merely a small town history teacher and assistant football coach.
For a 12 man crew, assuming in situ usage of resources on Callisto (ice that is) what would be looking at in terms of one way and total mission times and mass of vehicle leaving Earth orbit?
The vehicle I envisioned involved two habitation/activity areas about the size of shuttle external tanks rotating around a central core so that the crew would have a reasonable level of gravity in sleeping, eating, and exercise areas while the central core would be micro gravity. On the forward end of the core would be the command area where research is conducted, unmanned probes are launched and the spacecraft controlled.
The aft end would have the propulsion system.
IMHO, not feasible without serious nuclear power. Propulsion and life support.
I thought I specified nuclear/electric propulsion.
I finally had to reregister here with a new password and username.
Dayton3 no longer worked.
And I could never contact anyone to get things fixed.
Whats up with that?
I can't find anything online about the potential of manned missions to Jupiter and its moons. I don't recall ever seeing one aside from something in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science bacn in the 1980s about a Soviet mission to Callisto that some had planned.
To me, a mission to Callisto (it alone of the Jovian large moons is in a low radiation area) followed by telerobotic exploration from there of Jupiters atmosphere makes alot of sense as a goal in space exploration.
I've read that with nuclear electric propulsion it would take only about 2 years and 73 days (2.2 years) to go one way to Jupiter. How long would a crew have to stay before heading back? What is the overall launch windown like?.
I've been taking a shot at designing a mission architecture though I'm no rocket science. Utilizing a space vehicle similiar to the one disigned for Mars Exploration by Livermore called "Livermores Great Exploration" if I recall correctly. I envision 12 astronauts evenly split between flight crew and scientists.
Anyone with thoughts on exploration of the Jupiter system?