NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
Robotic Spacecraft (Astronomy, Planetary, Earth, Solar/Heliophysics) => Space Science Coverage => Topic started by: soyuzu on 05/25/2023 04:34 am
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Not upper atmosphere flyover, but actual landing and return.
https://twitter.com/girlandkat/status/1661564247963471873
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Pretty cool concept
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"just refuel" always feels hand wavey.
Land on earth and just refuel too! What if there isn't water anywhere near where you land. How do you gather it, process it, clean it, store it?
This is like 5 flag ship level missions without having a science instrument.
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"just refuel" always feels hand wavey.
Land on earth and just refuel too! What if there isn't water anywhere near where you land. How do you gather it, process it, clean it, store it?
This is like 5 flag ship level missions without having a science instrument.
Ralph Lorenz is a serious guy who has done some great work. He has a lot of published papers. I think he just published one about the microphone recordings from the Mars rover. He has done a lot of work on Titan because he is supporting Dragonfly.
I suspect that this is part of work done under NIAC--the AC stands for "advanced concepts." The purpose of that kind of research is to explore some concepts and technologies that are many decades away so that people can then develop technology roadmaps to achieving those goals. These are not near-term mission proposals in any way. Often people will take a really difficult mission and try to figure out how it might be done.
There have been a number of proposals for in situ propellant gathering by spacecraft. I've seen proposals for Mars hopper and Triton hopper landers that would use local resources to make enough fuel to enable the lander to hop to a new location. The Triton hopper was NIAC-funded research.
So think of this primarily as a thought experiment, not a mission proposal. This is the kind of thing that might be possible five decades from now, and the question is what technologies we need to develop to make it possible.
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"just refuel" always feels hand wavey.
Land on earth and just refuel too! What if there isn't water anywhere near where you land. How do you gather it, process it, clean it, store it?
This is like 5 flag ship level missions without having a science instrument.
"Just refuel" is hand-wavy.
That said, isn't the Titan surface believed to be largely composed of frozen water ice surface and having lakes/rivers of methane in a methane-rich, dense atmosphere?
If ever there was an environment suitable to refueling a methalox stage with in-situ produced propellants, that would be it.
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Ralph Lorenz is a serious guy who has done some great work. He has a lot of published papers. I think he just published one about the microphone recordings from the Mars rover. He has done a lot of work on Titan because he is supporting Dragonfly.
To add onto this, Ralph Lorenz has written several books, including on Titan and Cassini and Dragonfly, and he seems to be super knowledgeable.
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Abstract from LPSC 2022
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/2626.pdf
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Ralph Lorenz is a serious guy who has done some great work. He has a lot of published papers. I think he just published one about the microphone recordings from the Mars rover. He has done a lot of work on Titan because he is supporting Dragonfly.
To add onto this, Ralph Lorenz has written several books, including on Titan and Cassini and Dragonfly, and he seems to be super knowledgeable.
And to add more to Dr. Lorenz (who I've met), he is the husband of Dr. Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle, the Principal Investigator of the Dragonfly Titan rotorcraft. He and his wife may be the world's pre-eminent specialists on Titan science and have spent much of their life in that pursuit. Dr. Lorenz has, with others, developed other spacecraft concepts including Titan balloons, aircraft, and even submarines.
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"just refuel" always feels hand wavey.
Land on earth and just refuel too! What if there isn't water anywhere near where you land. How do you gather it, process it, clean it, store it?
This is like 5 flag ship level missions without having a science instrument.
Ralph Lorenz is a serious guy who has done some great work. He has a lot of published papers. I think he just published one about the microphone recordings from the Mars rover. He has done a lot of work on Titan because he is supporting Dragonfly.
I suspect that this is part of work done under NIAC--the AC stands for "advanced concepts." The purpose of that kind of research is to explore some concepts and technologies that are many decades away so that people can then develop technology roadmaps to achieving those goals. These are not near-term mission proposals in any way. Often people will take a really difficult mission and try to figure out how it might be done.
There have been a number of proposals for in situ propellant gathering by spacecraft. I've seen proposals for Mars hopper and Triton hopper landers that would use local resources to make enough fuel to enable the lander to hop to a new location. The Triton hopper was NIAC-funded research.
So think of this primarily as a thought experiment, not a mission proposal. This is the kind of thing that might be possible five decades from now, and the question is what technologies we need to develop to make it possible.
Ahhh, this makes alot more sense looking at it as a NIAC proposal, not a mission proposal. Thanks
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How pure are the lakes? Can you just drop a hose in and use the product straight up? Then all they'd need to do is zap some melted water ice (For a really long time)
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Ahhh, this makes alot more sense looking at it as a NIAC proposal, not a mission proposal. Thanks
I don't know the history of NIAC, but by the 2000s they were drifting, giving grants to study stuff that didn't make a lot of sense. My organization then did a study of NIAC and issued some recommendations on how it could be reformed:
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12702/fostering-visions-for-the-future-a-review-of-the-nasa
I was not involved in that study and don't know what it says because I have not read it. But I know that NIAC became more focused after that. They are still supposed to look farther out, but their research has to be based on reality.
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How pure are the lakes? Can you just drop a hose in and use the product straight up? Then all they'd need to do is zap some melted water ice (For a really long time.
Thats the sort of thing we need insitu measurements for. I don't believe dragonfly is planned to be near any of the seas. Its targeting an area full of dunes instead.
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Hi, this is my first post, and I have no background in this whatsoever. I'm just a space nerd, so I'm probably wrong.
That being said, I would imagine it's difficult to harvest enough ice on the surface to create a usable amount of LOX, since the water on Titan basically takes the form of rocks.
So what if we just brought along some water to separate into hydrogen and oxygen, and then combined it with nitrogen from the atmosphere to create dinitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine?
I saw an article somewhere (I forget where) that said they would freeze and couldn't be used, but couldn't we just store them near the RTG to keep them warm?
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So what if we just brought along some water to separate into hydrogen and oxygen
Calculate how much energy is required to do that.
Then figure out where you're going to get that energy.
(Hint: The answer to the first question is: "A lot." The answer to the second question is: "That will be difficult.")