Talk:Project Longshot
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[edit] Mass ambiguity
From the article:
- The baseline Longshot massed 6.4 metric tonnes, which includes a 3.4 tonne allocation for a large flyweel energy storage system. The rest of its mass was fuel.
Does this mean that there were 3.4 tonnes of flywheel and 3 tonnes of fuel (seems like a silly interpretation to me) or that there were 3.4 tonnes of flywheel, 3 tonnes of other equipment, and an undefined amount of fuel in addition to all that (which raises the question of what the spacecraft's full mass was)? Bryan 03:49, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
- I agree it is very unclear what the mass of the craft would be, it states in the article that the Longshot design is somewhat similar to Project Daedalus, well that one has a mass of 54,000 tons. So "6.4 metric tonnes" seems tiny in comparison, it needs to be clarified.
- -Hibernian 23:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
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- According to the PDF referenced at the end of the article, the mass of the probe inclusive of fuel is 396 metric tons. Which includes 264 tons of Helium3/Deuterium pellet fuel/propellent. the Active mission payload including fission reactor but minus main flight propulsion is 30 metric tons. - its somewhat unclear where the figure of 3.4 tons comes from to me. the instruments themselves (cameras etc) are listed as 3 tons, perhaps this is it. - the PDF is detailed and worth a read. it should be noted this design orbits within the target system unlike Daedalus which is a single flyby design. - Russell Dunwoody (17:48, 05 Sept 2006 GMT)
