Russell Wallace schrieb:
> John Schilling wrote:
>> There are probably no companies capable of putting a spacecraft in
>> orbit about Saturn in under ten years.
>
> Why not? Didn't Cassini take something like 7 years in flight? That
> leaves three years to build a small, simple robot spacecraft - not
> develop from scratch, not invent new technology, but build using
> existing technology.
Cassini needed Venus, Earth Jupiter and Saturn to be in the right
positions, you don't get that every day.
Recycling existing tech to be used as testbed for a new kind of engine
sounds shaky at best. Powerplant, sensors, software thats much more
autonomous then the one of current probes, each a challenge on its own,
not to talk about the mass constraints - available carriers can launch
only so much.
|
