when do you think the first manned ion drive space mission will be? (obviously i asked you this way because typical men will think you have no brains but i know better)
2006-08-27 06:26:46 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
I don't know. What the heck happened to TAU?
TAU stands for Thousand Astronomical Unit. It was an ion propulsion driven probe that was supposed to travel 93 billion miles from the Earth in a 65 year mission. The photographs it sent back of distant objects would help us better calibrate our knowledge of distances that we have calculated based on parallax.
TAU's ion propulsion drive would only operate at 1/10000th of a g, but it would run for 4.5 YEARS, after which the spacecraft would be going something like .6c.
About fifteen years ago, I attended an openhouse at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Down the hill, in the experimental labs, was the ion drive. The next year I went, it was at the top of the hill, no longer in the experimental laboratory. The thing WORKS.
So where is TAU? It's not on the JPL site. No one there has ever heard of it. I do not take drugs; I did not hallucinate this.
GRR.
Well, in any case, not soon. There's no use for it yet. With a 1g drive, you could get to Mars in 17 days, but why would you do that now? There's no base, and we need to bring too much stuff to make it feasible. Let us build a base on Mars using things trucked there by conventional means, establish a manufacturing plant there (iron + oxygen = red soil, iron + oxygen + carbon = steel) and THEN we will have use for an ion drive to get us to Mars.
After all, people traveled the world by clipper ship before the invention of the steam ship. The journey from England to India took more than 17 days, but people went on business.
But Mars won't be a vacation destination any time soon, unless we somehow manage to invent a reverse gravitational field. No one would sign up to boost at 2g all the way to Mars (4 days at 2g). To stop a revolution, maybe, but not for a pleasure cruise. It would do too much damage to the body.
2006-08-27 06:45:12 · answer #1 · answered by TychaBrahe 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
wow ty mr t.!!! Very interesting subject...I think that once the tests are in on ion driven propulsion compared to chemical propulsion, and the technology catches up, we could see this in our life time. Once they work out fuel consumption and fuel effiency say, and acceleration speeds its very plausible to have a manned mission to Mars.
2006-08-27 13:41:11 · answer #2 · answered by xtcsathena 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
NASA is estimating about 150 to 200 years. It's a great concept but has a long way to go to be a practical technology.
2006-08-27 21:44:08 · answer #3 · answered by aviophage 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I broke the rules!!! Mwhahahaha!
2006-08-27 13:31:47 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
typical men!, not all :). Anyway i dont know when that will be, hope its in our lifetime
:)
2006-08-27 13:32:24 · answer #5 · answered by sree 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
"treat us the way you would want to be treated" isn't that what women fight for,...maybe you should apply it as well!
2006-08-27 16:36:28 · answer #6 · answered by M.O.B. 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
why are you asking only woman to answer this?
2006-08-27 13:55:58 · answer #7 · answered by That one guy 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋