If we actually want to catch ’Oumuamua the electronics should be swapped for
rad hard but the rest of the design modified as little as possible; we don’t
have a lot of time to futz around qualifying hardware.
-George
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 28, 2021, at 9:29 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 26 Feb 2021, George Herbert wrote:
I had been working on this on and off; I need better software custom written
for tight Jupiter passes but a two-solid-motor stack with a Castor 30 and
Star 48BV and a copy of New Horizons, fired at close perijove in a oberth
maneuver gravity assist maneuver approximately worked.
Unfortunately, a New Horizons clone probably would not survive a close
perijove. NH would have liked a closer Jupiter gravity assist than the one
they actually used -- closest approach was 2.3Mkm! -- but couldn't handle the
radiation dose without specialized extra-rad-hard electronics, which were out
of reach for a cost-constrained mission. As it was, despite having an RTG
aboard (and not out on a long boom, either), most of the radiation dose to
the electronics was at Jupiter.
The radiation environment of a close perijove gets really ugly.
Henry
P.S. I do plan to respond in more detail to some of the other posts in this
thread, but didn't find time for it this weekend. Soon, I hope.