Posted on 09/02/2006 11:16:44 PM PDT by saganite
There ain't no green on the moon. Maybe that wasn't very brown of them?
Congratulations, seriously.
Good science. I didn't read the entire article, but was encouraged by the apparent performance of the "Ion Engine". Was there a price tag disclosed for the mission somewhere therein?
It was an ESA probe so I didn't look for a cost. The ion engine tested fine as did the US ion engine on deep space 1 and I believe the Japanese have tested an ion engine. There are already improvements in the works that will more than double, even triple the efficiency of the current ion engines.
I thought the moon was white.
That's really cool (forgive my excessively-formal semantics). Perhaps an imaginative team of engineers will send a circumsolar ion-engined well-instrumented hunk of expensive junk out to, say, something recognizable beyond the ecliptic and back.
Catching a little dust could be just a bit helpful in that department, couldn't it?
Your sarcasm is noted.
Actually, they just crash-landed it on a secret soundstage and then told us they crashed it on the Moon. </conspiracy>
I really wasn't kidding.
Shoot the damn thing toward the sun, angle it inward, and let the solar gravity shoot the thing outward towards stuff that is near, but not necessarily within the scope of Sol's gravitational field. Put enough gas in the thing to return it to splash down in the Pacific about forty years from now or so.
Smart one was an ESA probe. Take a look at deep space one if you want to see an ambitious mission for an ion engine. It was a proving run for the ion engine as well and the results were outstanding.
My usage of the word "junk", I think, is what made my original sound sarcastic. Wasn't meant that way at all.
Hell, if ion engines can be recharged by solar radiation, you've cut costs for science by orders of magnitude - enough for, say, a proprietary atmospheric study of Venus with a big Archer Daniel Midland logo on the side of the thing.
Which is good. Imagine just having to pay for a ballistic "permit" and sending whatever the hell instruments you want "out there".
Please excuse my ignorance, but you seem knowledgeable bout this...What type of 60 L fuel are they using to create Xe? thanks.
They can't be "recharged" by solar energy. They just use the electricity generated to convert the fuel into ionized gas that propels the craft. Ion engines, on the other hand can do as much as chemical propulsion on 10% of the propellant. The drawback is that they're veeery slow to accelerate. They can either use the weight savings for more propellant to go further or use the weight savings to add more instrumentation. The solar powered version works fine as long as it's close enough to the sun but as it gets farther out it needs another power source, say nuclear.
Fine with me. Engineer expensive, heavy, double-redundant systems in the initial vehicles and once someone realizes Return On Investment, Moore's Law (or some variant) will kick in.
Ethanol grown in space! [slight sarcasm, I think]
Moore's law is already kicking in. The Australians have already designed an Ion engine 10 times more fuel efficient than the one on smart 1.
Okay, you've mentioned ESA, the Japanese, and now the Australians. Am I missing something here, or is it latent xenophobia?
The Australians haven't launched anything but a design group there working for ESA has improved the ion engine design. So far as I know the US and Europe are the only ones to launch an ion engined probe and the Japanese are working on it.
Xenon is the fuel carried onboard. Not sure what your reference to 60 L fuel means as far as what's onboard the craft.
When I delivered mail at ORNL, one of the guys who worked in the military robotics division was named Borg. Of course, if you've never watched Star Trek, The Next Generation, that might not mean anything.
"I meant to do that."
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