What do you think would be the best way to move the ISS from its current place in low Earth orbit to a Lunar orbit?
My guess would be some sort of ion engine. There's no need to get it there quickly; but I haven't yet looked up the mass moved, power requirements, poor best type of gas to use.
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yeah VASIMR or some such device
Best gas type currently commonly used would be Xenon.
I'd have to agree, but you'd also need some thrusters attached in different vital points for RCS and SAS, allowing you to adjust orbital positions before "burning" your Ion Engines. With appropriate timing, it'd be relatively easy. You just need to probably wait a good year for the moon to land in just the right spot where you can do a little gravity maneuover to keep you in place without decelerating.
I excite my ion engines thank you very much, all it takes is some engaging talk about space privitization to get them all charged up.
only trouble with the ion drives is power. The ISS was designed to be refueled semi frequently, rather than having a large power plant for ion thrusters
Sure has my cerebral electrons stimulated.
Just slap on one of those little thermoelectric nuclear generators they put on the Voyager probes. Problem sorta kinda solved, you'll just either need a lot of them or a real big one. I'd be more concerned with Ion Gas storage though, because that does have to go somewhere.
as i understand them, the thermo-electric devices output can't be easily modulated, meaning that you can run into heat-sinking problems. also, the power requirements of the current ion drives are large... so, as you've suggested you'd need many thermoelctric gens. but that lowers the specific impulse of the thruster.
i'm a subcontractor working on the ad astra ion rocket funnily enough. AMA.
What's your favourite colour?
blue! wait no! aaaaargh!
>2018
>not using Argon
Pleb
NOT SPENDING BILLIONS ON SYNTHESIZING ENOUGH OGANESSON TO MANEUVRE IN SPACE
>calling other user "pleb"
just wow kys
Sounds like a job for the meme drive
>unironically a better way to get the lunar orbit
You do know that ion engine produce extremly low thrust, right?
>tfw 'meme drive' becomes the official name of this propulsion
Low thrust isn't that big an issue if you're already in space. You'll still get to the destination. It will just to take a bit longer to get going.
It's probably a big issue if you are in a low orbit. There is still atmospheric drag where the ISS is which will make your ion engines less effective.
The thrust is really low so burn times need to be very long to accumulate, long burn times in an orbit need constant directional adjustment just to keep from lowering your periapsis, which would be an issue.
Burning just as periapsis, so maximize the apoapsis increase, would mean hundreds, maybe thousands of orbits, if it can even overcome the atmospheric drag induced by each orbit like that.
LEO is not the place to be using ion engines.
What do you think of the current drive for reusable rockets? is it a good idea?
the ISS orbits very fast, a few hundred orbits is not much time at all, like what, a week or two?
Look, I haven't done the math. I was just throwing something out there.
If anything the fact it orbits that fast is even worse because it means it is that much more within Earth's gravity and atmosphere.
Ion engines ain't gonna do shit. We use them on things that already have an escape velocity.
Isn't VASIMIR more beefy that most ion engines? Maybe one of these baybys could work msnwllc.com
ISS electronics won't survive going through Van Allen belts for days and weeks. It's not designed to operate outside LEO so your proposal would be a huge waste of money.
VASMIR looks like it has potential. One of the candidate uses is drag compensation for space stations, so basically they wouldn't have to boost their orbit, so it might be sufficient.
This.
And I'm afraid it tells something about how serious are discussions here.
A NERVA and the station's weight in hydrogen should do the trick.
About 5400 to 5600 m/s of delta-v. Maybe even enough to get their and land on it?
I mean it's an absurd idea to move a LEO space station instead of a purpose built Lunar station, the thing is probably not symmetrical or strong enough to take any chemical propulsion worth talking about. Besides, the ISS has a mass of 420 blazing tons, so with a typical rocket thruster you'd need an enormous 1100 tons of propellant. even with VASIMR you'd need ~400 tons of propellant, not to mention all the power supply to go with it
Basically as absurd as your initial instincts would tell you
Could you actually land the ISS on the Moon?
ISS is already kinda obsolete anyway, it was constructed out of small tin cans to accomodate the Shuttle. An inflatable Bigelow module would offer 2100 m3 volume for a mere 100 ton mass.
pierce the hull and use the discharge of the inner atmosphere to propel the craft into a Munar Intercept orbit. If that's not enough throw the heat radiators back at kerbi- ...Earth.
>inflatable
That's going to destroy the station in the process...
>how to move things in space?
Like this
It's an old piece of shit that needs to be decommisioned asap
>vasmir is still not a thing