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To: Frank_Discussion

What I couldn’t find was what kind of terminal velocity they could get out of it. Wiki only has “ultra fast deep space transport” as one of it’s attributes.

It does sound like it will be much faster than the engine driving the probe to Pluto at 10 miles per second.


15 posted on 04/14/2009 3:39:12 PM PDT by cripplecreek (The poor bastards have us surrounded.)
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To: cripplecreek

The man developing the thing has a mission profile that will take you to Mars in about two weeks. Serious as a heart attack.

The spacecraft would accelerate halfway to it’s destination, go to a brief coast, turn the opposite direction, then kick in thrust again. Thrust is an acceleration, and it produces massive velocities. The spacecraft in this case would carry a great deal of fuel to do this, but not anything we couldn’t manage. Imagine a half-dozen liquid hydrogen tanks clustered around the ship, each about the size of a Shuttle external tank. You’d have to assemble the ship in orbit.

(Oh, BTW - that’s what we’ve done with ISS. Probably its greatest value, and not a small contribution to science and engineering.) :)


16 posted on 04/14/2009 3:46:50 PM PDT by Frank_Discussion (May the wings of Liberty never lose a feather!)
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