shiri , 1 year ago

@shortwavesurfer @InquisitiveApathy ion drives really don't solve any of these problems.

Orbital dynamics are weird and "more speed" isn't a solution. With orbital dynamics your relative position and speed are directly related, so moving faster basically means changing direction. Once you're in microgravity thrust power is more about how quickly you can steer and fuel quantity is how many maneuvers you can do. Ion drives can do a lot of maneuvers, but every maneuver is very slow (which also makes them more complicated because you need to account for the changes that happen over the course of the maneuver).

We don't travel to orbital bodies in a straight line because it goes beyond an absurd quantity of fuel to do so (ion drives don't even scratch the surface of the amount needed, let alone the complexity they add due to slow acceleration).

Right now we don't have much to improve the speed of getting places and not much on the horizon there either, so we're focusing on questions like how to survive getting there.