3 ms·
I think you are misinterpreting where the fuel consumption comes from. It isn't the reoriantation. That you can do with internal reaction wheels. All you want i
by hnaccount_rng 5y ago
I think you are misinterpreting where the fuel consumption comes from. It isn't the reoriantation. That you can do with internal reaction wheels. All you want is rotation, not movement. Turn something inside in one direction and the outside will turn the other way.
The only problem is movement for that you need to eject stuff the opposite way you want to go. And that is needed because L2 is unstable. I.e. you roll down over time. Which needs to be counteracted by station keeping. I'm pretty sure they'll use the fuel usage to measure the local gravitational field around L2 and from that update mass distribution estimates around the inner solar system.
- verytrivial 5y agoStation keeping, yes, is probably going to need the lion's share, but I have no idea by what factor. I have read that dealing with reaction wheel saturation is also another fuel consumer though. Perfect reaction wheels attached to a spherical cow would use no fuel. As would perfectly balanced solar pressure engineering etc. It basically all ends up nibbling some fuel.