Rakaydos

And so they are only useful for the first half, to Lunar Transfer. But you can get to lunar transfer in a single burn from the ground. Lunar capture and escape is a separate issue.

They seen to be basing this on OMS. Does the SSME have a better ISP? That is, could you use an extra tank in the bay to extend the iniial launch burn out to LTO?

The way I see it, the way to "Rationalize" something like this is to, ironically, start a corporation. Aquire a broad enough base of production... then start loading on retirement benifits, scholarship incentive packages, corporate dorm housing, and so on until your entire workforce is rolling in, if not cash, all the things they would otherwise need to spend money on.

My idealized view of "what should happen" involves basically giving everyone a baseline "wellfare check" starting at age 16, that is enough to make them consumers. There's only so much wealth production to go around, which means that this requires per-capita to be above the poverty line before it works, but once in place, there can be a boom in "starving artists", hobbyists, and dilettantes.

The problem with using Sphinx is launching a 10 ton transfer stage on a croudsourcing budget. A 4.5 KG cubesat can hitchhike for MUCH less than a dedicated launch for sphinx would be. That's also the reason we planned for a GTO launch, because those are far more common than lunar transfer or mars transfer launches. One possibility for comunication is to laounch 2 cubesats, one of which is a "Ion engine as massive radio emitter and an antenna formed by folding the 3u hull out into a cross" in a stable martian orbit as a comunications relay, and a dedicated landing cuesat.

A capture slingshot/aerobreak off a hot superjupiter, perhaps?

It's been awhile, but most of the phobos studies we've worked on have focused on building ~1500 m/s of delta V into a 4.5 KG cubesat. With a LTO launch instead of GTO, we can shave about a third of that off, but that's still talking about an ion engine that may not have the TWR to do a controlled landing- Real life ion engines are REALLY weak.

That's assuming we have enough TWR to have a dead stop above the surface, not guarenteed if we went for an Ion engine. Alternate techniques call for landing "aircraft style" at phobos orbital velocity (of a whopping 8m/s tangental to the surface), and sledding to a stop.

The Known Space series covers a huge span of time- a few of the stories follow the first astronaut on Venus and Mercury, for example. But though alien tech shows up fairly early, Niven like to explore the fridge logic of these devices, like a teleportation booth that works like a phone booth, making alibis no longer a thing in criminal cases as you can murder someone halfway around the world and be back in the time it takes to use the restroom.

Read the Larry Niven short story "Neutron Star" for the dangers of something like this. It's only a neutron star in the story, they've got FTL drives and indestructable hulls... and effectively a murder mystery. (The makers of the indestrucable hulls wants the main character to investigate what bypassed the hull, so they know if they need to update their guarentees.)

Launching a 10 ton payload just to get a cubesat or similar to phobos is probably out of our price range- it's more the domain of a "Proper" space program. That's why we've been focusing so much on economizing the D/V budget, to squeeze everything into a 3u that can go up on a normal commercial launch as ballast for much less than a proper launch. One thing we might consider for a 3u's comunicatios consider is having a 3u that folds it's frame out into a 70cm antenna, or even a 130cm antenna

Given how much D/V the original phobos lander called for, a LEO test could .... around adjusting orbit for quite awhile, perhaps try some rendevous tests and hardware recovery at the ISS. Model the rosetta launch with the kick from the station and an attemted redevous in 1 orbit. Send a separate cubesat up of just replacement fuel, to get multiple flight tests?

Once again, let me say that the phobos lander is going to take some trial runs before we can consistantly get a "rosetta slingshot", and if we plan for an aerocapture at Mars to save D/V, that's going to take practice (at earth, presumably) as well. The phobos lander wont be a third mission, more like 5th mission.

Better than that... it's already a LTO insertion, so we dont have to transfer under our own power at all, just manage course corrections.

So since this seems as good a time as any to revive the topic, I think the reddit project fits better with my "Advanced flights" focus- the whole "Lunar flyby into rosetta earth flyby primary mission, mars aerocapture and Phobos L1 drop stretch goals" plan for flights 2,3,4, and 5. (you know, AFTER we have the credibility of putting SOMETHING in space) If they have a lunar taxi, that might save about half our delta V requirements, which either gives more mass for science payload, or makes conventional capture at mars a reasonable option. I've also got some thoughts on a fold-out telescope for a 3u with a 1m effective aperature, but that might interfere with solar panel deployment for a propulsive cubesat.

I maintain that the technical problems inherent with getting a lunar flyby into a rosetta slingshot are enough to make success it's own engineering reward. Nailing a Mars aerocapture and a Phobos L1 drop is more icing, but will probably take additional launches, watever funding we get.

question concernting the "advnced" flights beyond LEO... a magtorquer works with the earths magnetic field, but how do we intend to aim our craft once we go beyond earth's magetosphere? Can a magtorquer interact with the solar wind at all?

Ask your friend what kind of expirimentation he could put into half a 10cm cube?

Your confusing the Quantum Thruster concept with questionable science like EM Drive that nasa recently "tested."

This sounds like a decoupler cannon, or perhaps one of Dannys mass relay stations. Is that right?

So, Someone check my concept here... An electrotether interacts with movement through a planetary magnetic field, either pumping energy into the orbit to speed up, or generating electricity from slowing down. The idea is to place an electrotether ion Io's Spheere of Influence, trailing Io. Draining power from it's own velocity arounf jupiter, it generates free power, as Io's own gravity accelerates the probe back up to Jovian orbital velocity. I believe the power comes from Io's momentum (which is slowed by a mass hovering behind it in orbit) but the ratio is so huge that it might as well be neligable.

The wired article seems to be confusing the EM Drive with the Quantum Thruster.

From Harold White's description of the Q thruster above, it seems like the capaciter is just as important as the magnetic field, in that it's being used to maipulate the virtual particle potential into a predictable form, so the magnetic field can, in physics terms, do "work" on it.

This is an explanation for the "old style" Q thruster, with diagrams: Note that this was taken from an article 2 ears old, so it has nothing to do with the current EM-drive controversy.

The problem is, there's an actual Q-drive that should work, (even if it has photon drive efficency) who's explanation has been stolen to explain a second device the EM Drive/Cannae Drive, which is the BS microwave resonator thing.