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Space Forum / Space Flight / December 2003Nexus Rocket Engine Test Successful; 10 Times More Thrust Than Deep Space 1 Engine and Lasts 3 Times Longer (10 years)
Does anyone know how much this engine would cut down the time to a Mission to Mars. If such a mission could take 2 to 3 weeks then gentleman I'm convinced that we will have settlements on Mars in 10 to 15 years providing there is water up there. harrymurphy1@bigmailbox.net : > Does anyone know how much this engine would cut down the time to a > Mission to Mars. If such a mission could take 2 to 3 weeks then > gentleman I'm convinced that we will have settlements on Mars in 10 to > 15 years providing there is water up there. First it will not speed up trips that much, and the best trips will not change in lenght of time, instead a more powerful engine would be likely used to more a heavier craft. As for the trip time tell you friend he is a fool if he thinks settlements only took place when trip times were two to three weeks he was sleeping all thru history. In the days of sail it was not unusual to take six months to reach you new home and in some cases an one year trip was seen as possible. The design, space-craft and supplies were available right now you would have no problem finding thousands of people today to go on the trip even if the trip time was over a year, even if it was one way only. Your friend is making the same mistake so many other people also do. They think if they would not want to do something then no-one else would. It is not true. Earl Colby Pottinger  SignatureI make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos, SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp > harrymurphy1@bigmailbox.net : > [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > > Earl Colby Pottinger Well others have written me that DeepSpace1 would make it to Mars in half the time or 3 months. But with these new Ion engines having 10 times more thrust than DeepSpace1 and last 3 times as long, I am calculating it would take about 2 weeks to get to Mars. harrymurphy1@bigmailbox.net : > > harrymurphy1@bigmailbox.net : > > [quoted text clipped - 30 lines] > times more thrust than DeepSpace1 and last 3 times as long, I am > calculating it would take about 2 weeks to get to Mars. To do that you need a power supply that supplies ten times the power but does not weigh anymore than the present power supply. Earl Colby Pottinger SignatureI make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos, SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp > Well others have written me that DeepSpace1 would make it to Mars in > half the time or 3 months. But with these new Ion engines having 10 > times more thrust than DeepSpace1 and last 3 times as long, I am > calculating it would take about 2 weeks to get to Mars. Okay, I see how you did the calculations, but you misinterpretted the values. Sure, the new Ion engines have ten times the thrust. However, the way ion engines work, the new engine and its power supply are probably (ballpark) ten times as heavy as the old one. It's unlikely that such an ion engine will deliver 10x the acceleration - the engine is heavier, scientists will want to use it to move more instruments, engineers will want to add more fuel, etc. until it's pushing a much bigger spaceship than Deep Space 1. You might only see a x2-x3 acceleration. Again, those are rough figures. Further, that "last 3 times as long" does not mean "the new ion engine will run 3 times as long before running out of gas." The ability of the new engine to "last 3 times as long" is a measure of how long the ion engine can operate before it needs a tune-up and some replacement parts. It says nothing about how long the engine will operate before running out of fuel (reaction mass). The ability of a spaceship to go anywhere in a certain time is mostly dependent on how much fuel is available, and the articles you provided links to said nothing about how much fuel would be given to the engine when it was finally installed on an unnamed, undesigned future space probe. In the case of an ion engine, acceleration is so low that acceleration actually matters, too, and a doubling or quadrupling of Deep Space 1's minute acceleration will not get a probe to Mars in 2 weeks. To do that, you'd need a high initial velocity and/or acceleration of at least 1/100th of a G...far more than an ion engine will deliver. Mike Miller, Materials Engineer > > harrymurphy1@bigmailbox.net : > > [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > times more thrust than DeepSpace1 and last 3 times as long, I am > calculating it would take about 2 weeks to get to Mars. The new engine will be not much better than 10 Deepspace1 engines. The new ion engine will make virtually no difference. Ion engines are power limited - in other words, they're only as good as the power source. The power supply will weigh much more than ion engine itself, even if you use solar panels rather than nuclear power. Being power limited they have low initial acceleration which makes them slower than chemical rockets for short journeys like Earth - moon. They do however have great potential for journeys lasting years, such as NEO retrieval or trips to the outer planets. |
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