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From: wiml@milton.u.washington.edu (William Lewis)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: space news from March 18 AW&ST
Summary: What is a "fast trajectory"?
Message-ID: <1991May18.231158.24883@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 18 May 91 23:11:58 GMT
References: <1991May10.034743.29351@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 19

In article <1991May10.034743.29351@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Stafford group will strongly back restarting nuclear-rocket programs for
>use in Mars exploration.  Both nuclear-thermal and nuclear-electric systems
>are of interest, but nuclear-thermal looks most promising for openers:  it
>offers a high enough exhaust velocity to make fast trajectories possible,
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>greatly reducing worries about radiation and free-fall effects, and it has
>enough thrust to make far more abort modes available in case of trouble.

   What does a "fast trajectory" mean? Faster than a Hohmann orbit?
Or faster than some other orbit I'm not familiar with? How much time
would this hypothetical trajectory take, and how picky is it about 
planetary alignments? Inquiring minds want to know ...


-- 
 wiml@milton.acs.washington.edu       Seattle, Washington   
     (William Lewis)   |  47 41' 15" N   122 42' 58" W  
 "Just remember, wherever you go ... you're stuck there."