New Job For Hubble

[belovelife]

is this possibloe

a friend named derrick smith, or smitty,

 

came up with an idea,

 

give a new job to hubble

 

find a way to attach a ion drive rocket to hubble,

 

slingshot it to a planet in the outer reaches of our solar system

 

and give it a new life

 

there would be less thermal shock in this region, so less upkeep

 

and we could potentially get unique measurements of stars and use the to triangulate positions of other stars and get a more accurate distance measurement to other stars

 

also the potential of less light interferance

 

what do you think

 

this could be instead of deorbiting it

[belovelife]

how difficult would it be to attach a rocket to hubble, and is it safe for travel, or would it need to be shielded?

[Lancewen]

how difficult would it be to attach a rocket to Hubble, and is it safe for travel, or would it need to be shielded?

 

Without the shuttle it would be a bit problematic. Also, it wouldn't pay to send Hubble anywhere else without some maintenance and an upgrade or two. But then your not asking how much all that would cost at a time when NASA's having trouble funding the current projects it has.

 

However, aside from all that, I like the idea.:thumbs_up

[belovelife]

would there be less wear and tear due to thermal expantion in the outer reaches of our solar system?

 

does it have the potential desighn to survive in the cold areas?

 

what type of upgrades would it need if any?

 

what would be the differance in price from a de-orbit and loss of the instrument, to new job and continued use?

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

would our outer solar system be large enough distance to triangulate positions of stars and get better distance measurements?

 

if we had hubble orbiting another planet which one, based on the benifits to our knowledge of our solar system, or could we orbit multiple planets and get multiple

mapping done in high resolution?

[Lancewen]

would there be less wear and tear due to thermal expansion in the outer reaches of our solar system?

 

does it have the potential design to survive in the cold areas?

 

what type of upgrades would it need if any?

 

what would be the difference in price from a de-orbit and loss of the instrument, to new job and continued use?

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

would our outer solar system be large enough distance to triangulate positions of stars and get better distance measurements?

 

if we had Hubble orbiting another planet which one, based on the benefits to our knowledge of our solar system, or could we orbit multiple planets and get multiple mapping done in high resolution?

 

Where ever you put it, it will be out of repair range, so replacing old modules and power supplies is a must. By the way, doesn't the Hubble use solar panels for power. That probably won't work out to well further out in the solar system. I would recommend a nuclear power upgrade.

[belovelife]

i don't know the difficulty level of replacing a power supply on hubble in space,

 

probably pretty high

[belovelife]

you could put an array pof solar pannels in space and beam electricity to hubble, but that would be difficult to say the least

[CraigD]

Re-purposing the old but good Hubble Space Telescope is a cool idea! :thumbs_up Rather than continuing to use it as a deep space telescope, consider how well it would work as a moon/planet surveyor. You might recall being wowed about a month ago by images of the Moon from the LRO, which temporarily changed its orbit from a nearly circular one at 50,000 m altitude to an elliptical one with apogee at about 21,000 m altitude, which managed a pixel size/resolution of about 0.2 m. The HST at an altitude of 50 km could resolve about 0.025 m, at 21 km, about 0.01 – fine enough to read large print text! :)

 

:( Before getting too excited about the idea of flying the HST anywhere, though, we need to be mindful of a big problem – at 11,110 kg, it’s freaking massive!, slightly more than a 1960-70s era Apollo CM+LEM’s about 10,500 kg. So to deliver it to the Moon, for example, you’d need something that could produce about the same [imath]\Delta[/imath]V as an Apollo SM (which masses about 25,500 kg), which in turn needs something somewhat better than a Saturn IB booster, the kind used in 1968 to launch Apollo 7’s partially fueled CSM for Earth orbit testing.

 

To fly a massive instrument like the HST will-nilly around the solar system, you need a next-generation spacecraft. Back in the early 2000s, such a spacecraft, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter was planned. It was to fly a 1,500 kg payload, so couldn’t come close to carrying anything as massive as the HST, but it was designed to maneuver for 20 years, using advanced ion thrusters powered (as BL suggested) by a 200,000+ W turbogenerator-powering nuclear fission generator (as arKane recommended), making it IMHO one of the coolest seriously planned spacecraft ever.

 

Alas, the JIMO, and the whole program it was a part of, the Prometheus project, was shut down in 2005. I really miss the JIMO – but at least we still have some cool artist’s conception images of it:

The big panels are radiators for the JIMO’s nuke – cooling in space is a big challenge.

[belovelife]

why not use a orion rocket, the set was diverse enough right?

[Lancewen]

This article might be a little off topic, but it talks about a better way to get around the solar system.

 

 

Antimatter Spaceships Could Make Long Flights Before End Of Century, Space Consultants Say

Posted: 09/12/2012 8:58 am Updated: 09/12/2012 8:58 am

 

Video, Antimatter Spaceship, Daedalus Spaceship, Fusion Antimatter Spaceship, Fusion Spaceship, Future Fusion Spaceships, Future Spaceships, Science News By: Mike Wall

Published: 09/12/2012 06:36 AM EDT on SPACE.com

 

Nuclear fusion reactions sparked by beams of antimatter could be propelling ultra-fast spaceships on long journeys before the end of the century, researchers say.

 

A fusion-powered spacecraft could reach Jupiter within four months, potentially opening up parts of the outer solar system to manned exploration, according to a 2010 NASA report.

 

A number of hurdles would have to be overcome, particularly in the production and storage of antimatter, to make the technology feasible, but some experts imagine it could be ready to go in a half-century or so.

 

It's "probably not a 40-year technology, but 50, 60? Quite possible, and something that would have a significant impact on exploration by changing the mass-power-finance calculus when planning," Jason Hay, a senior aerospace technology analyst for consulting firm The Tauri Group, said during an Aug. 29 presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group. [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]

 

 

 

The Daedalus spacecraft's spherical tanks contain the fuel pellets for the nuclear fusion engine.

 

The power of fusion

 

The fuel for such a fusion-driven spaceship would likely consist of many small pellets containing deuterium and tritium — heavy isotopes of hydrogen that harbor one or two neutrons, respectively, in their nuclei. (The common hydrogen atom has no neutrons.)

 

Inside each pellet, this fuel would be surrounded by another material, perhaps uranium. A beam of antiprotons — the antimatter equivalent of protons, sporting a net electrical charge of minus-1 rather than plus-1 — would be directed at the pellets.

 

When the antiprotons slammed into uranium nuclei, they would annihilate, generating high-energy fission products that ignite fusion reactions in the fuel.

 

Such reactions — for example, deuterium and tritium nuclei merging to create one helium-4 atom and one neutron — throw off huge amounts of energy that could be harnessed to propel a spacecraft in several different ways.

 

"The energy from these reactions could be used to heat a propellant or provide thrust through magnetic confinement and a magnetic nozzle," states the 2010 report, called "Technology Frontiers: Breakthrough Capabilities for Space Exploration," which NASA produced with the help of The Tauri Group and other experts.

 

The basic idea is not new: Project Daedalus, a study conducted by the British Interplanetary Society in the 1970s, proposed using a fusion rocket to power an interstellar spacecraft. Daedalus' fusion reactions would be sparked by electron beams rather than antiproton beams, however.

 

Not there yet

 

While antiproton-driven fusion is a promising technology, several obstacles must be overcome to make it feasible, Hay said.

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge is obtaining enough antiprotons — which can be produced in particle accelerators — and storing them for long enough to make a far-flung space journey feasible.

 

According to the "Technology Frontiers" report, about 1.16 grams of antiprotons would be required for a trip to Jupiter. That may not sound like much, but production levels are currently measured in the billionths of a gram.

 

"Antiprotons are extremely expensive; a few grams would cost multi-trillions of dollars," Hay said. "I believe the total production so far since the 1950s is on the order of like 10 nanograms."

 

But antiproton production is ticking upward at a fairly fast rate, he added. So perhaps the technology could be the next big breakthrough in space propulsion systems — in the year 2060 or so.

 

"With a steady supply of antiprotons and nuclear fuel, antiproton-driven fusion can provide abundant energy for large space stations, outposts, and extended exploration missions with relatively small power systems," the "Technology Frontiers" report states.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/antimatter-fusion-spaceships-interstellar-nasa_n_1876760.html

 

 

 

[belovelife]

and also, once we get to the moon, exit deltaV would be low enough to make it easy

[LaurieAG]

How about landing a cradle on a comet/space rock and then landing the HST on the cradle? You could even add a few positioning rockets to cancel out any spin.

[belovelife]

amazingly good idea, if you could get past the dust factor, especially with rockets that change the spin,

 

but if it could be done, it would be an interesting ride

 

you might even have a chance of making the asteroid be able to exit the solar system, that would be cool

again, you would need probably a NTR to do such a thing,

[belovelife]

have we ever tried to extend a non-conducting elastic pipe into an atmoshere to try to het more hydrogen off the top of the atmosphere,

if we could do this, we could refuel a rocket for exiting deltaV from different planets

 

while i know this line would have to be really long, if we had a compressor at the end of the line, we could pump the gas up the line,

 

althought the speed of the orbit would probably melt the line as it goes in, i wonder if this hurdle could be overcome?

[Lancewen]

have we ever tried to extend a non-conducting elastic pipe into an atmosphere to try to get more hydrogen off the top of the atmosphere,

if we could do this, we could refuel a rocket for exiting deltaV from different planets

 

while i know this line would have to be really long, if we had a compressor at the end of the line, we could pump the gas up the line,

 

although the speed of the orbit would probably melt the line as it goes in, i wonder if this hurdle could be overcome?

 

Regardless of what the hose was made of, as soon as it hit any atmospheric resistance it would quit sinking any further into the atmosphere and just drag along the surface of the resistance. Probably not deep enough to suck up a worth while amount of hydrogen. But how about some scoop technology that could make use of the of the thin top atmosphere?

[belovelife]

good point, something like a cone, that can potentially collect hydrogen from the super thin layer, this might be a good experiment for the iss

 

i know the density of the atmoshere up there is really low, but over years it may be able to gather a measurable amount

[belovelife]

i wonder if thats possible?