JAXA+ | What if Japan had an unlimited space budget? (RSS/RO) | 2048-12-20 - Massive crewed missions to Venus, Mars, the Moon, and the asteroid belt! [VIDEO]

[Pipcard]

 Reposting here for posterity (as to why I'm using nuclear thermal propulsion instead of electric, which would make more sense considering Japan's usage of it in the Hayabusa missions)

On 7/30/2022 at 11:34 AM, Beccab said:

Now I'm curious, has NASDA/JAXA ever published a design of a crewed mars lander/base? I've tried searching a bit for it on google to no avail, the furthest I got was finding a few lunar landers (and even then, it's one crew lander and one cargo lander)

On 7/30/2022 at 1:47 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

A search of “日本の有人火星着陸” (Japanese crewed Mars landing) yields nothing.

[...]

They would probably use an opposition class profile, to avoid a prolonged stay on the surface. If the Fukushima disaster still happens in any world you decide to use this in, nuclear power is likely out of the question. Lack of a reactor would probably not permit a prolonged surface stay.

If somehow Japan doesn’t develop a “nuclear power allergy”, nuclear electric propulsion would also be a possible choice. But NTRs are unlikely to be adopted, simply because Japan has more experience with ion propulsion.

5 hours ago, Pipcard said:

I was thinking of the same thing, too. But Japan has started to come back to nuclear power in spite of the Fukushima disaster.

I know that in reality, Japan would be more likely to use (low-thrust) electric propulsion over nuclear thermal, and was considering it for my Ceres mission, but from what I've read elsewhere, the Persistent Thrust mod isn't always reliable.

Edited March 4 by Pipcard