Jan 132011
A mid 1960’s Convair artwork depicting a deep-space manned mission through the asteroid belt (to Jupiter or beyond) using Orion spacecraft. To provide protection during the obviously dangerous passage through the belt, the Orion craft are landed (docked?) on an asteroid of their own. Of course, for this to make any sort of sense, the asteroid itself would have to be on a pretty eccentric orbit, with a perisol somewhere near the orbit of Earth, and an aposol somewhere beyond the asteroid belt or the orbit of Jupiter. The existence of such an asteroid on a “cycler” orbit would prove occasionally useful, serving as a spacegoing hotel for part of the journey.
4 Responses to “Orion on an asteroid”
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It’s an Orion. Surely you land and then run the drive to modify the orbit appropriately?
You can see three Orion vehicles in the illustrations, two in hangars, one out in the open. Compare the size of them to the size of the asteroid. More importantly, compare the *volume* of the Orions to that of the asteroids. Then consider that even though the Orions are built like battleships… battleships nevertheless still manage to float, meaning their density is substantially less than water, while the asteroid could be made of nickel-iron, meaning a density maybe seven times that of water. So… how does the mass of the asteroid compare to the mass of an Orion? And therefore, how little influence does the Orion drive system have on the asteroid compared to the Orion vehicle itself?
When Orions are contemplated for deflecting asteroids or comets on an impact trajectory with Earth, the change in velocity imparted to the asteroid can be measured in centimeters per hour (the idea being to intercept the impactor early enough so that there are a whole lot of hours before impact). To make a meaningful course change in an asteroid to be useful in this sort of cycler, you’d need velocity changes measured in kilometers per second.
Now that’s my idea of a dream home! Thank you for posting the image. Do you have any other details on the source?
Best I can think of is the Orions have landed on a short period comet. The delta v required for rendezvous is so high Orion is one of the few propulsion systems that could do it.
I’m not sure approaching a comet while it was near the Earth is a good idea, as solid as Orions are they aren’t meant to fly into the hailstorm of sand , gravel, and rocks an active comet expels.
Comets are known to be rich in methane, ammonia, ice, and other volatiles. Perhaps part of the idea is to extract these and use them as propellant in the pulse units, that way you don’t need to launch that mass from Earth.