This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?
This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?Scaled up engine, deep throttling with increased thrust and electric pumps versus pressure fed are the main feature changes I recall from various threads. Prop modes are the same supporting both monoprop and biprop in flight depending upon mission requirements.
This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?Scaled up engine, deep throttling with increased thrust and electric pumps versus pressure fed are the main feature changes I recall from various threads. Prop modes are the same supporting both monoprop and biprop in flight depending upon mission requirements.Batteries can be kept small as they only need to support largest burn which not that long. For earth escape does short burn every orbit then has hours to recharge battery.
Peter Beck talks about the Photon Lunar and how it is actually based on going to Venus as a private funded mission on The Orbital Mechanics Podcast. He's looking at doing a mission in 2023, even considering of doing multiple missions.
Episode 274 - Orbital Mechanics Podcast - Peter Beck
Pocketcast - https://pca.st/qry1td9o#t=45m55s
This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?
This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?
Were we not told that Curie is mono-propellant and HyperCurie is bi-propellant?
This has been hinted at for a while, with Beck mentioning the planet as a favourite of his and such subtle hints asQuoteHypercurie is our latest spacecraft engine... and It’s perfect to get payloads to the moon and..........Venus!https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1283635288133103616?s=20
What is the difference between the HyperCurie thruster and the Curie thruster, other than size?
Were we not told that Curie is mono-propellant and HyperCurie is bi-propellant?
Curie has mono- and biprop variants, both pressure fed. HyperCurie is biprop only, and uses electric pumps for significantly higher thrust and ISP.
This is from a Peter Beck tweet
The best part about electric pumped engines in spacecraft is that you can use solar to charge up the batteries in between burns. Much better than traditional pressure fed systems.
Another tweet mentions isp of hypercurie
310 sec baseline @ 200:1 exit ratio.
This is from a Peter Beck tweet
The best part about electric pumped engines in spacecraft is that you can use solar to charge up the batteries in between burns. Much better than traditional pressure fed systems.
Another tweet mentions isp of hypercurie
310 sec baseline @ 200:1 exit ratio.
This is from a Peter Beck tweet
The best part about electric pumped engines in spacecraft is that you can use solar to charge up the batteries in between burns. Much better than traditional pressure fed systems.
Another tweet mentions isp of hypercurie
310 sec baseline @ 200:1 exit ratio.Electric pumps are actually better suited to in space propulsion than for a LV because of this feature.
How does the ISP compare with a typical orbit raising engine on a geosynchronous satellite? That would be the closest match to what hypercurie is, yes?
This is from a Peter Beck tweet
The best part about electric pumped engines in spacecraft is that you can use solar to charge up the batteries in between burns. Much better than traditional pressure fed systems.
Another tweet mentions isp of hypercurie
310 sec baseline @ 200:1 exit ratio.Electric pumps are actually better suited to in space propulsion than for a LV because of this feature.That, and you can scale down an electrically driven pump WAY more (and more easily) than you can a turbine for a turbopump. Microturbines are by all accounts primarily driven by engineer migraines.
How does the ISP compare with a typical orbit raising engine on a geosynchronous satellite? That would be the closest match to what hypercurie is, yes?
How does the ISP compare with a typical orbit raising engine on a geosynchronous satellite? That would be the closest match to what hypercurie is, yes?
That's an interesting point, in so much that GEO sats until now mostly used solid kick stages after a GTO burn to circularize, or used slow orbit raising via various ion electric ion thrusters. A hypercurie would be an interesting middle ground between fast commissioning due to fast delivery via solid rocket motor, and late commissioning via ion thruster. The balance point here is a GEO sat typically has big solar arrays and batteries already which facilitate ion thruster orbit raising (with the expectation that the ion thrusters double as orbital maneuvering and orbit maintenance thrusters). How much revenue you could recover drives the balance points between fast delivery and slow delivery methods.
Hrm, could that work in reverse, in a way? Say, rather than a hypercurie equipped photon bus self powering the hypercurie, why not bleed additional power from the satellite to be delivered (if it already opened it's own solar arrays) during orbital raises? If you want to return the photon bus back down without propellant expenditure, you could use a passive drag electrodynamic tether (but that will be slow due to orbital altitude and weakened magnetic field to work against)
How does the ISP compare with a typical orbit raising engine on a geosynchronous satellite? That would be the closest match to what hypercurie is, yes?
Hypercurie is 310 s compared to 321 s for N2O4/MMH.
https://www.space-propulsion.com/spacecraft-propulsion/apogee-motors/index.html
I imagine after the rumours of a big announcement on Monday that the logic of this mission & possibly why it’s being funded will become very clear.