Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Where the hell are electric-ion thrusters????
Summary: Implications of ION drive
Keywords: not to mention "Jupiter at Night" and "Saturn at Night", etc, etc!
Message-ID: <232@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 29 Aug 89 18:05:35 GMT
References: <8908241857.AA02943@fermat.Mayo.edu> <6091@lynx.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: usa
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 35

In article <6091@lynx.UUCP>, neal@lynx.uucp (Neal Woodall) writes:

|  Is this the real reason? Why the hell cannot our country do with two fewer
|  B2 bombers, and give that money to JPL for probes, including a full
|  program of electric-ion engine probes to various parts of the solar system?
|  All of the JPL people on TV the other night were saying that this is the
|  last Neptune mission in their lifetimes (even some of the younger ones said
|  this).....if we had an working electric-ion system, we could send probes
|  to all points in our system! Hell, a manned Mars mission would be fast
|  with an ion thruster!

  I'm not sure that an ion thruster would have enough thrust for a manned Mars
mission, but consider how small the solar system gets with constant
acceleration... 3 billion miles at .01ft/s/s in 651 days would get
another look at the far planets pretty quickly. Not a bad deal to Mars,
either, assuming a slowdown for orbit and a distance of 250 million
miles (I had to assume something), I get about 266 days.

  If we could convince the politicians that this was a good idea it
could happen before the end of the century, based on what I read about
the state of the technology. And if it could be launched by a cheap
rocket instead of the shuttle the cost would be pin money. The probes
would be cheap enough to send out a bunch and live with a failure rate
of (name it).
 ___________________________________________________________________
|                                                                   |
|   I'm off on vacation, expect replies Sep 18 or 25 depending on   |
|   weather in Utah.                                                |
|___________________________________________________________________|

-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon