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Solar Electric Spacecraft Propulsion Could Get NASA To an Asteroid
coondoggie writes "In the process of detailing its $17.7 billion 2014 budget this week, NASA highlighted a mission to snag a 500-ton asteroid, bring it back, stash it near the moon and study it. It also took the time to put in a plug for an ongoing research project called Solar Electric Propulsion, which NASA says could be the key technology it needs to pull off the asteroid plan."
Glad you linked that article that includes mention of this mystery research project for Solar Electric Propulsion and mentions not a single speck of information as to what the hell that is.
in case you're wondering its the kind of ion drive Deep Space 1 (NSTAR) , progressing technology but not some crazy new thing.
Ok, so once the asteroid collector has delivered the asteroid to high lunar orbit, what does the spacecraft do then?
Well, if its got even a tiny fraction of its propellant left over (remember it just towed something maybe 100x its size clear across the inner solar system) , it slowly spirals down to low earth orbit and... REFUELS.
Now here's where things get interesting. Once it's refueled (remember that while its main consumable is up to 12,000 lbs. of Xenon, it gets its energy from solar power), it can do any number of things. Of course it could be sent out again to get another asteroid, including, as I mentioned in a previous post, one with precious WATER (Fuel and Oxygen!), but that might be boring. How about having it PAY FOR ITSELF by moving satellites from LEO to geosynchronous orbit. (This is very expensive as it typically requires an additional booster, I think the cost per pound is at least double that to low orbit). I think this market is on the order of $5B per year.
The reason why this would work is because the asteroid tug would clearly be capable of moving very(!) large payloads. It wouldn't even have to be very slow, if it can accelerate a 500 ton asteroid at 1/10,000th of a g, it could accelerate a 5 ton satellite at say 1/200th of a gee (taking into account the tug's own weight). So it could deliver the satellites in weeks if not days. Of course there would need to be a few minor design modifications to the tug. The collapsible "bag" would have to be removable and some sort of industry standard docking ports added. There would need to be some provision for refueling ports and critical components (gyroscopes, reaction wheels, electronics) would need to be replaceable/upgradeable like the Hubble space telescope. Of course servicing this "space tug" in this way is probably beyond the near term capabilities of robotics. However, rather than this being a problem, it could be an opportunity... ... for the International Space Station to actually be USEFUL. Here it could serve as a fuel depot, servicing "garage" and interchange point for these "space tugs". The kind of problem that robotics can't handle yet are ideally suited for an astronaut with a wrench (and maybe some elbow grease). The fact that the main propellant for these tugs is Xenon, an inert noble element, makes handling the fuel much less problematic (no problems with corrosion or toxicity) and safer (no fear of explosive combustion). Even the fact that these tugs use ion thrusters would be an advantage meaning that everything would be happening very slowly, if one went out of control they could probably move the entire station out of the way (like they do when avoiding space junk). The station could also keep spare, interchangeable parts for these tugs such as additional "bags" or robot arms or other modules. In short, the ISS would have a PURPOSE. (Although a pressurized "dry dock" would be preferable, substantial maintenance could be performed in a vacuum as the Hubble telescope servicing missions, Skylab repairs and recently tested refueling robot at the ISS).
With even a little thought, these space tugs have lots of additional uses. The same high power ion engines that can move a 500 ton asteroid could also send 500 tons of cargo cheaply (if slowly) to Mars. The same collapsible bag that can capture a tumbling asteroid can easily capture a much lighter piece of space junk. All it takes is for a government with foresight to make the initial investment that may (as I've suggested) quickly repay itself perhaps many times over. And isn't that the purpose of government (if not NASA)?
(By the way, putting the mini-asteroid in high lunar orbit may be useful as a last resort because, if we detect a threatening object heading our way, it might be in a good position that we could put the mini-asteroid on a new trajectory to hit the object and thus deflect it out of the way. With luck the 500 ton mass will strike the incoming object at a high incidental angle and at a significant velocity since it'll be c
It's loud. Even in space.
SEP encompasses a lot of things. Do they mean an Ion thruster (of the various gridded or gridless variants), a Hall-effect thruster, a FEEP thruster, an MPD thruster, a Helicon thruster, a VASIMR engine, an arc-jet or resistojet, etc? There are a lot of electric engines you could hook up to some solar panels (or an RTG, or compact radiatively cooled reactor).
You also have to figure out where to get more xenon than mankind has, so far, captured. It fails at the basic "can I actually get that" logistics level.
Too bad they can only make a drive that works during sunny days in space.
rewriting history since 2109
As long as it (the spacecraft) was already in orbit.
And it would have to be unmanned, since its gonna take a lot of time to get anywhere.
Np I havent RTFA
NASA is being smart here. They know going to an astroid is a long-term project. They know that when Obama is out of office, whoever replaces him might cancel the project (it happens a lot).
So they are going to start by researching a new technology that will be useful whether the project gets cancelled or not. It's a clever way to deal with uncertain and shifting funding and requirements.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why is it that NASA will not go and put a permanent base on the Moon? Everything else from that would be doable, expected. Is it that NASA is a afraid of using the Moon as a test bed?
Apologies to Kermit the Frog.
Solar Electric (ion) propulsion already HAS gotten NASA to a comet: the DAWN spacecraft which spent a year at Vesta and is now off to Ceres.
While it is great that NASA is focusing on efforts to do something that may be very worthwhile in the long run, they (and the government) are ignoring the critical strategic importance of the moon.
With Russia pledging to spend 7 times NASA's annual budget on space exploration this year, and with both Russia and China determined to establish permanent moonbases, the U.S. government is seriously dropping the ball.
I really have to say, honestly, sometimes I think this administration is trying to pull the U.S. down on purpose.
The real cost of getting a 'working model' of a solar-electric propulsion will cost $18 billion, of the $17.7 billion 2014 NASA request that NASA is not going to get. Maybe NASA will get $10 billion.
But, how long will the 'Sequestration Theater' last ?
4 years ? 10 years ?
We have lived under Security Theater for 12 years now and there is no hope in sight.
That this could really be a bad move? I mean what if some mistake or miscalculation happens and then we have a 500 ton asteroid headed straight for Earth? Wouldn't it be better to examine the Asteroid in the field instead of bringing it back to Earth?
Lots of details are in the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) study from last year. Not sure when NASA is going to release details about their version, but I bet it is pretty similar. http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
in case you're wondering its the kind of ion drive Deep Space 1 (NSTAR) , progressing technology but not some crazy new thing.
Actually, Deep-Space 1 was an ion engine-- specifically, an electrostatic ion thruster.
Solar Electric Propulsion for asteroid missions-- at least the ones I've been involved in analyzing-- tends to be Hall thrusters (aka "Stationary Plasma Thrusters"), which are higher thrust and use energy more efficiently (in terms of less energy per unit of impulse), but aren't as fuel efficient (in terms of more propellant per unit impulse). Some people call Hall thrusters a form of ion engine (after all, the exhaust is plasma, which is ionized), but it's a different kind of thing from classic ion engines.
http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://htx.pppl.gov/ht.html
That's what I figured it was. I'm somewhat disappointed NASA decided to hype it up with green terms. Solar! Electric!
"Electric propulsion" is a generic word for any sort of rocket engine in which the reaction mass is given energy from electricity (rather than, say, chemical energy). There are a whole array of different technologies to do this, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.
Solar electric propulsion narrows that down to specify that the power source is solar. This is in contrast to, say, Nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) in which a nuclear reactor is the power source, or conceptually beamed-power electric propulsion, in which the power comes from a laser or microwave beam. A SEP system is very different from a NEP, but actually, a SEP using an ion engine looks a lot like SEP using, say, a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (although the details will be different).
I'm sorry if you think that the term "Solar Electric Propulsion" is green. From my point of view, it's simply descriptive.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Am I the only person who worries that these missions will change the system in some non-computable way such that in a million years time a giant asteroid the size of Manhattan slams into Earth at twenty times the speed of a rifle bullet, killing all life except some extremely primitive microbes, which otherwise would have missed the Earth and headed into the Sun?
Did that make sense?