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Earth to Mars in 39 Days
Shiny, Badass Fire Fighting Machine for the Year 2025
San Francisco, 10:37 PM
Sun Dec 6
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/28/09
07/27/09
As long as we don't name the ship Ares Seven, and get work on bubble drive tech, stat, we should be fine.
07/27/09
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07/27/09
@alphanumeric1971: That's the real reason why they want to test it on the ISS, I mean, c'mon, have you seen the thing through a telescope recently?
07/27/09
07/27/09
That's true of a lot of systems on current space faring vessels. Not a good reason to rule this out.
07/27/09
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0403/04.html
07/27/09
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07/27/09
buzzkiller
07/27/09
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07/27/09
Based on basic physics, I think you still need to be shooting mass out to gain momentum, it's more the problem that rockets can ONLY accelerate quickly in short bursts. Thus, to get up to the same speed as a gradual engine, you'd need to have lots of rockets fired in bursts that won't kill the astronauts with sheer G forces. The ion engine will have to expend more fuel/energy than a rocket to get going faster (basic momentum conservation, I think), but the fact that it can do this gradually is actually the main advantage here.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, the ability to store tons of energy using nuclear power is probably a space-saver, since you need less fuel and just use the nuclear-produced electricity to power the ion engines. My bad, should have thought that through more completely.
07/27/09
And "g-force related problems" has nothing to do with why ION engines are better, making the rest of your post completely moot.
07/27/09
07/27/09
Soooo...
07/27/09
Discuss!
07/27/09
And now that we can get to wherever we're going faster, the degradation that goes along with zero-gravity isn't as bad. 39 days is nothing compared to what some of those guys pull on the ISS.
07/27/09
Yup. Coriolis effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity
Anything as small as the Discovery foot-track (or even the Leonov's rotating arms) wouldn't be big enough in diameter.
That said, perhaps even a *little* artificial gravity might go a long way towards keep folks healthy.
07/27/09
Problem is, what ever they decide to use, 1g acceleration is pretty close to the limit of what your going to be able to do.
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07/28/09
Of course, you can't put raw ore in a reactor. Mining and enrichment requires a substantial infrastructure that no one will re-create on the Moon (and it will be more difficult because it is the Moon) without a very good, profitable reason. A handful of ships to Mars won't be it...
07/28/09
07/27/09
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07/27/09
Like all forms of propulsion in space, there aren't so much breaks as just reversing the direction of the engine.
07/27/09
Reverse the polarity of the ion flow?