Ion Engine Propels Probe to Moon

lenin writes "The BBC is reporting that Europe's first moon mission, SMART-1, appears to be a success thus far. It also talks about the low-cost technology being used and the charged xenon (ion) propulsion system. Can TIE-fighters be far off?"

Comments

Re:Its about time.

[jdhutchins]

You're russian history is incorrect. They have had several mishaps. The ones that I can think of off the top of my head are Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11. They have probably had somewhere between 150-200 manned launches. We'll hav change your definition of "launch mishap" to "the rocket went up but the people didn't come down alive".
We have had two accidents in our space program (3 if you count Apollo I, but in the above definition, it doesn't count)
The Russians do more launches than we do. In the past, they've done more manned launches than we did. Since the past 5 years, I'd say that we've probably done about the same number of manned launches.

Other science fiction reference...

[dpilot]

This one is more reputable, I believe credited to Arthur C. Clarke.

It was a short story about an Earth-to-Moon (orbit-to-orbit) space race, in the spirit of the Kremer prize. The spacecraft were propelled by ion engines, which were energized by Whimshurst-type machines, which were powered by ...

bicycles.

The racers pedaled their way to the moon, the pedals effectively powering the ion engines that drove them. The race took several days, with the right stuff added in for absurd athletics, rest breaks, minimal life-support, race security, etc.

No doubt someone here will do the math that I never bothered trying to do. One of these days, maybe I will.

Re: Friction

[shoemakc]

There will be no TIE fighters until we have friction in space. To be able to turn like an airplane in an atmosphere you need something to react against.

AFAIK, space isn't a perfect vacuum, there is matter in space, just that it's concentrations are extraordinarily low. You'd need either a very large control surface, or some method of increasing friction over what limited matter there is. Why do we use brake pads on a car and not say, bars of moist Ivory? Same reason.

Also, there is also free energy in space...particularly in a solar system. I'm not sure if light energy is believed to be particulate this week, but is it possible that photons or other forms of high frequenty energy could be used as a repuslive force? There's still quite a bit we don't understand about this stuff, and though at this point it's still probably the rhelm of science fiction, It's not impossible. Remember, there are no fictionless surfaces, no perfect vacuums, no perfect superconductors, only asymptoticly approaching approximations.

-Chris

PS - I apologize in advance for the above average number of typos and possible flaws in knowledge and logic....I'm on an iMac today ;-)

Re:Its about time.

[RayBender]

You're russian history is incorrect. They have had several mishaps.

In more than 35 years of spaceflight the Russians have had something like 4 fatalities, and 3 (?) accidents (including one where the crew survived a booster failure in mid-flight - the stage didn't separate). In comparison to the U.S. record this is remarkably good. They have also flown more people for longer periods of time.

Since the past 5 years, I'd say that we've probably done about the same number of manned launches.

The same number of launches as the U.S., with a total budget of something like 200 million dollars, a factor of 30 less money. That's pretty impressive. The simple turth is that the U.S. is a second-rate space power.