New answers tagged interplanetary
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Misc.:
If you were to start from space, like the L5 point, you need less fuel to escape Earth. Fuel needs to be sent to L5, of course. We might be able to make it on the moon!
Another issue is if part of the vehicle returns to Earth/L5; only part (the payload) needs to decelerate at Mars.
You might harness solar winds to drive you there, and loop the ...
2
There are no risks, only benefits, but the laws of physics dictate that this won't happen for a loooooong time, even with the first couple generations of nuclear rockets, whenever that happens.
Earth has a minimum escape velocity, irrespective of mass and currently all space-craft just reach it and coast until they get to their destination and then burn the ...
11
The limitations, as we know it:
Fuel. The infamous rocket equation means we get roughly a few times more fuel for every km/s delta-v budget.
#1 is why we avoid braking by rocket engines. When we reach Mars, we need to be almost at the speed of Mars and then brake in its atmosphere.
If we go faster, Mars' tiny atmosphere cannot brake us enough. And even if ...
43
The biggest risk on a flight to Mars is cumulative exposure to radiation, so a 1-2 month flight would actually be much healthier for a crew than a 7-8 month flight. I don't know of any risks that would be increased by a shorter flight.
The limitation to making a faster spacecraft is fuel. In order to go a little bit faster, you need to fire your rocket ...
6
well, You might get a huge amount of data back by putting a satellite with optical comms on a cycler orbit.
A small(ish) satellite on a cycler orbit would pass by Mars and Earth with regular frequency, and so missions at Mars could take advantage of the fact that nearby transmissions are much, much faster than more distant transmissions. The small satellite ...
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The communication bandwidth used between an Earth Station and a distance spacecraft is basically a narrowband to reduce power transmitted from the craft. Redundancy bits, for error correction is introduced and compression algorithms are applied along with the transmitted data.
Hence, the data transitted is serialized over a bandwidth. At Earth Station ...
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