flaugher
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Question: What would be the Holy Grail of inter-planetary space flight? In my mind it would be an engine that could deliver forward thrust of 32 ft/sec/sec over a long time. In other words, a 1-G spaceship. I've been playing with this idea with Orbiter for awhile now and have come up with some intersting results: 4 days to Mars, 17 days home from Rhea. What's more, you can stand up in your ship, drink Tang from a glass, and flush the toilet. Is this really so far fetched considering the ground we've covered recently with ion engines? I hear that 10 ft/sec/sec has actually been achileved.
An easy way to try this principle out is start from Lunar orbit, point just to the side of Earth, and use the Accelerometer MFD and set your thrust for something around 9.5 meters/s/s. Use Earth in the Orbit MFD to check your distance (altitude) and turn your ship around when you get halfway home. I was totally shocked at the times and speeds involved.
On my way back from Rhea the other day, I hit the halfway point to Earth where I reverse the thrusters on my Firefly Sport, and I found that I was clipping along at over 3.7 million meters per second! Gosh! :yes:
Nowadays I'm looking for a good MFD to navigate considering constant acceleration and decelration.
An easy way to try this principle out is start from Lunar orbit, point just to the side of Earth, and use the Accelerometer MFD and set your thrust for something around 9.5 meters/s/s. Use Earth in the Orbit MFD to check your distance (altitude) and turn your ship around when you get halfway home. I was totally shocked at the times and speeds involved.
On my way back from Rhea the other day, I hit the halfway point to Earth where I reverse the thrusters on my Firefly Sport, and I found that I was clipping along at over 3.7 million meters per second! Gosh! :yes:
Nowadays I'm looking for a good MFD to navigate considering constant acceleration and decelration.