On A Representative Solar Sail Deep Space Flight Based at the Quay around L2 Point
Abstract
extensively used for the routine passengers and cargo transportation. In those flights, the space ship size will be several hundreds meters long or longer and the ships weigh heavy very much. The launch from the ground will never be feasible and the ships need to be constructed on orbit somewhere near the Earth. Just having the shipyard in space is not special and not the subject what this paper deals with. This paper discusses how the Anchoring, Setting sail, Returning and Parking at the quay again are performed. direct path is not applicable. Some past researches showed the pure sailing approach, in which the perihelion distance is taken so small that the high acceleration be extracted. In stead of those schemes, the paper applies the so-called EDVEGA (Electric Delta-V Earth Gravity Assist) strategy to provide the high delta-V to the space ship. It was developed for the electric propulsion and proposed by the author recently. The efficiency of it was analyzed in it and concluded just two times in comparison with the impulsive delta-V applied in infinite distance from the Earth. This technique contributes to reducing the sail area half and is advantageous over the pure sailing for most of smaller sails. The paper presents how the sail departs from the Earth and is accelerated in heliocentric trajectory to leave for the high-energy deep space flight via the Earth gravity assist. The reverse technique is applicable for capturing the ship to be parked at the quay again also through the Earth gravity assist. is spanned fully. The modified HALO orbit is attainable avoiding the Earth shadow and an illustration on the station keeping strategy is presented. the commercial or routine deep space transportation flight realized. The concept is accompanied with the barge traffic operated between the quay and the ground. The paper provides an idea about how those traffic infrastructures is drawn for the future deep space utilization.
- Publication:
-
IAF abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002iaf..confE..46K