giveitawhirl2008 wrote:
On Aug 3, 9:37 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
giveitawhirl2008 wrote:
On Aug 2, 8:08 am, Sylvia Else wrote:
I think I'll wait until fusion rockets have been developed.
Sylvia.- Hide quoted text -
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(Also responding to BradGuth, on swinging cats, etc. - Schrodinger
didn't like cats, either, did he?) :-)
Sylvia Else wrote: " I think I'll wait until fusion rockets have been
developed."
That's one my most key points; the idea is to develop a FAST system.
It might be fission, fusion, antimatter, or whatever. The idea to me
is to have CONGRESS MANDATE acceleration of 1G and cruising speed of 1
million mph.
Once you've reached the point where propellant mass is not significant
compared with payload, you might as well run a constant acceleration all
the way (including during turnover), even if that's only, say, 0.1g.
This also reduces the power requirements, resulting in a lighter power
generator.

Sylvia.- Hide quoted text -

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A gradual acceleration that gets us there and back in a time frame
similar to what I'm talking would be fine for any particular mission.
The reason I use 1 G and 1 MMPH is that the craft is intended for use
to go to at least the entire TRADITIONAL solar system, including
Neptune and Pluto. But it would also be nice to be able to go to
Sedna, etc. By having a craft that alway performs (speed and time of
travel - wise) at least as well as one having a typical or cruising
speed of 1 million mph, the whole traditional solar system, at least,
is within reasonable reach.

Sylvia, looking at your profile, I see I don't need to explain basic
physics to you, afer all! :-) Sorry, I should have looked first before
that last post. I also checked and see the Jupiter can be up to 600+
million miles from earth, whereas I said half a billion miles , but
that's close enough for government work. Ha! Ha!

Earth -- Neptune is in the area of 2 - 3 billion miles (of course,
these distances vary as the planets orbit the sun). That's 18 weeks
one way. Sedna is about 8 billion miles away: 48 weeks! See why I
want a craft that waste's no time getting to 1 MMPH? But any
acceleration that keeps the SAME time frames, should be acceptable.
The whole point is keeping trip times down to these that I'm talking
about.

Even modest accelerations get you places fast if you can maintain them.

Your trip to Sedna, at 0.1g. 12.8 billion km. But you need to turnover
half way, which is 6.8 billion km, or 6.8 * 10^12 metres. At 0.1 g, that
gives 1034 hours, or about 43 days. Double it for the deceleration time
and you've done the trip in about 3 months.

Mind you, the power requirements are horrible.

Sylvia.