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It doesn't have enough fuel onboard to go from LEO to the Lagrange point itself.
by Symmetry 5y ago
It doesn't have enough fuel onboard to go from LEO to the Lagrange point itself.
- CyanBird 5y agoIt wouldn't need to, you could park it there a secondary liquid fuel booster attached, and then after the origami shenanigans if it unfolds correctly the second booster could send it away to its final position I saw some interviews of engineers of the jwst and few of them had similar ideas, or at least to assemble them in leo then slingshot them to their final positions/orbits
- bendhoefs 5y agoWhat booster would you use? Another booster up in the fairing? That would need to be quite heavy. It would be a totally custom thing for this specific mission. You would need a suitable storable propellant. Leave the booster from the Ariane attached? The lh2 and lox would boil off after a few days. What do you do if the deployment fails? SpaceX's dragon can't do space-walks on its own, it doesn't have an airlock. There would be no way to fix it short of developing a whole new space craft for that task.
- samwillis 5y agoFor space walk accessibility maybe they should have docked it to the ISS for initial setup before then boosting it to its final point?
- zrail 5y agoISS is in a very low and eccentric orbit. I think boosting from ISS to a geo transfer orbit, let alone escape, is more expensive than just going straight to escape velocity.