> terminal velocity of the thing?
What?
What?
So after you falcon9 the thing into orbit, and push it along, and it then uses this engine to go the distance, will it constantly increase or hit a max terminal velocity. In either case, would that not tell you how much fuel to give it; which comes down to “if it is powered by helium and we are supposedly running out of helium, how much helium would it use vs how much helium is available?”
Is that not a sound question?
The second part of the question is “if we give it one ton of fuel, how far can it get?”
Pretty simple MPG question in my mind...
In the real world you probably have a destination in mind... and maybe want to come back. For one way mission, accelerate till half your fuel is gone, perhaps coast for a bit, then decelerate with the remaining fuel (maybe keep some reserves for maneuvering).
Once you get to mars, or any destination, you need fuel to get back/other things...
So assuming we have an engine that can deliver us back and forth in a reasonable time, then we need to think about deploying intermediate refueling drones... and then drones to refill them... and then how to manufacture and deliver that fuel to the various nodes...
And if we are running out of helium, on earth, we need to find the most harvestable noble gas we can in the solar system...
What are the atmospheres of the other planets made up of, specifically Jupiter, how could we slurp off its atmosphere to Bush is around the solar system?
Assuming other energy sources don’t pan out
https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_Sheet#Delta-v...
Trying to learn here, not be belittled.
On Earth we’re used to power scaling with maximum speed because of drag. In space, there is no drag. The weakest engine can propel something to close to the speed of light given the time and energy.
There is a measure called specific impulse. It asks how long an engine would hover if fuelled with a take-off weight ratio of one in Earth’s gravity (ignoring the mass of structure, tanks, et cetera). I don’t have an answer for this engine, but ion thrusters clock in around 30,000 seconds while most rockets are between 250 and 500.
Terminal velocity relates to the interaction between drag and an object in free fall.
Specific impulse is directly proportional to exhaust velocity, and the units of "seconds" come dividing the velocity (m/s) by the acceleration of gravity (m/s^2) leaving 'seconds'.
But I haven’t thought about specific impulse much, so I am very naïve (but curious)
So, what, if any, does the mass of the object being pushed by an engine with the 5.4 Newton’s of energy have of the ability of the engine to push it?
If you push a 1-ton thing with 5.4, and a 100-ton thing with 5.4 Newtons will they reach mars at the same time? And what will be the fuel consumption diff?
Acceleration. For equal mass a more powerful engine would make the object go faster, faster.
> If you push a 1-ton thing with 5.4, and a 100-ton thing with 5.4 Newtons will they reach mars at the same time?
Force = Mass * Acceleration
Acceleration = Force / Mass
a: 5.4 / 1000 = 0.0054m/ss
b: 5.4 / 100 000 = 0.000054m/ss
The following would be the same time: "assuming reactionless drives, if you push a 1-ton thing with 5.4N, and a 100-ton thing with 540N."
So if we smack 4 engines on 100 tons, assuming the same fuel... how far do we get.
I’d love to get these numbers.
But I noticed you had a stated m/s - so is there a constant of Newtons of thrust to acceleration of 1ton of mass in space?
(Sorry I don’t know how to word that question better)
I guess that this is why the slingshot method is so important.
Your intuition is closer to correct than many might think. It's harder to move massive things than non-massive things in space. This is because of inertia. Inertia may be more fundamental to physics than mass [1], and could be thought of as matter "dragging" against the gluon (and possibly other) fields [2].
[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~pear/pdfs/2001-inertial-mass-quan...
[2] http://web.mit.edu/physics/news/physicsatmit/physicsatmit_03...
There's a difference between stupid and unaware. We live in an environment that is vastly different to space. You have to know quite a bit of Newtonian mechanics before it really starts making intuitive sense. Asking questions is how you get there.
I asked the guy to fix it and he exclaimed “oh, sorry can’t help you there - all of these cars are dead. We can’t work on any of these! It will tend to just stay!”
Just then, another car of the exact same model and color drove out of the lot, right by us!
I said “what! That’s the same freaking car! Same color and body style and everything!”
And he said, well you can find another person to try to work on it, but that body tends to stay in motion, this one... not so much...
Clearly I don’t know enough Newtonian mechanics!
Appreciate the response.
Assume I give 1 ton of noble gas fuel in whatever format that is, how far and fast will it get before the fuel is consumed?
Hall effect thrusters decouple energy and propellant. The noble gas is the propellant. It’s stuff you’re throwing. The energy, however, must come from elsewhere, e.g. solar panels or a nuclear reactor.
There is an aerospace term called specific impulse [1]. It measures engine efficiency. Ion thrusters are about as efficient as the turbofans on a modern jetliner. Those, in turn, are about 12x more efficient than the Space Shuttle’s solid-fuel boosters and like 7x better than cryogenic, i.e. hydrogen-oxygen, fuelled engines.
I was a reactive gas...