Re: Striking a Lunar target in the near future...
From: John Schilling (schillin_at_spock.usc.edu)
Date: 08/21/04
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Date: 21 Aug 2004 10:54:06 -0700
Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen@shaw-spamguard.ca> writes:
>On 19 Aug 2004 15:31:59 -0700, thomsona@flash.net (Allen Thomson)
>wrote:
>>The far side Tsiolovski Evil Object is a somewhat different
>>target, and obviously harder. Probably you'd want to have a
>>couple of satellites/probes in sight of it and the earth to
>>help the nuke get where it's going.
>Another proposal elsewhere in this thread involved gutting a
>geosynchronous communications satellite that was already in the
>pipeline for launch to serve as a lunar transfer vehicle. Would any
>existing comm sats already in geosynchronous orbit have enough onboard
>fuel to get them out into the vicinity of the Moon to act as a
>communication relay for a farside strike?
Unfortunately no. A communications satellite sitting on the launch
vehicle, has enough propellant to reach Lunar orbit. Even in the
transfer orbit that takes it to geostationary orbit, you can wait
a few weeks for everything to line up and turn what should have been
the GEO circularization burn into an insertion burn for a translunar
orbit. This is what Boeing did with HGS-1 a few years back, to get
the lunar gravity assist when a third-stage malfunction meant that
they couldn't reach GEO directly.
But once you're actually in GEO, you've burned that fuel and all you've
got left is a modest allowance for stationkeeping. Even for a brand
new late-model comsat, that's at least a factor of three low for a
lunar mission.
-- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * *schillin@spock.usc.edu * for success" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
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