Starting and stopping a spacecraft is one of the hardest parts. So what if you didn’t?
(Kind of glosses over how you get on and off.)
https://www.wired.com/2016/07/travel-solar-system-aboard-train-never-stops/
Starting and stopping a spacecraft is one of the hardest parts. So what if you didn’t?
Comments
7 responses to “Starting and stopping a spacecraft is one of the hardest parts. So what if you didn’t?”
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There would have to be smaller offloading and rendezvous craft that would undock & dock for passengers and cargo. A lot cheaper to make those do the stopping.
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Yeah, you still have to accelerate all the consumables and decelerate all the deliverables, but you would no longer need to accelerate/decelerate the larger structures that provide the living/working environment for the trip.
While The Martian did have a number of scientific quibbles, it did present a solution like this with the Hermes‘ two flybys of Earth and Mars. We just had to super-accelerate the resupply mission and the Mars-surface launch. The Hermes itself didn’t need to slow down or speed up much.
Put enough of these into various orbits (as there are multiple Earth-Mars cycle orbits), and you can save yourself a lot of thrust over time.
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Dan Thompson – yup. You’d have to add fuel and parts (for repair and maintenance) into the resupply (dock/undock) chain. But it would work.
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Now I want to write about the people who do the maintenance on the Solar Express.
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Buzz Aldrin proposed this a lot of years ago for an Earth-Mars continuous shuttle (and fictionalised it in his ‘Encounter with Tiber’). I thought it was a pity ‘The Martian’ didn’t credit him but presented it as a new idea 🙂
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Mike Reeves-McMillan Maintenance (vs. resupply) would have to be done en route. So, are you thinking of a semi-permanent crew?
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Not necessarily. Could be, say, the lunar crew who catch up with each ship as it passes, do what needs to be done, and get off again.
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