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So they found a material which won't degrade in 24 hours due to radiation from the sun, or a way to shield it? And what about the mismatch between the rotation
by wbhart 7y ago
So they found a material which won't degrade in 24 hours due to radiation from the sun, or a way to shield it? And what about the mismatch between the rotation of the moon around the earth and geostationary orbit? And they figured out how to go around the van Allen belts to prevent frying sensitive electronics in the payload? And when the payload gets close to the moon, they have a way to stop it plunging to the surface of the moon for unscheduled disassembly?
Of course the cheapest part of getting to the moon is the bit between the edge of space and moon orbit. Approximate current cost: $0. Approximate cost after placing 40,000kg fishing line in the way....
I'm also pretty sure crawling along a fishing line will be prohibitively slow compared to letting a rocket coast with its engines off.
- jimrandomh 7y ago> Of course the cheapest part of getting to the moon is the bit between the edge of space and moon orbit. Approximate current cost: $0. No, it costs 4.1km/s of delta-v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v
- wbhart 7y agoI meant to compare getting to GEO (as proposed in the paper) as opposed to Lunar orbit. Of course the way I worded this is a bit lose, and it's not completely free, but according to the figure in that Wikipedia article, the difference between getting into geosynchronous orbit and getting to lunar orbit from earth seems to be only about 0.1km/s, which is negligible compared to the total cost. So my basic point still stands. It's actually really expensive to get to GEO.
- civilian 7y ago"letting a rocket coast with it's engines off" you should play some Kerbal Space Program to get an intuition for delta-Vs and the cost of getting to the Mun.