This is another reason that Enceladus may be an easier mission than
Europa, despite the higher velocity required.
On 3/3/21 1:18 AM, George Herbert wrote:
It's somewhat unfortunate that Jupiter is by far the most useful Oberth body, the Sun taking so many flybys to line up with currently that it's hard to use for these.
-george
On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 8:44 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
As someone who worked on JIMO, Jupiter is an extreme case,
compared to
the Kuiper Belt...
On 3/2/21 8:04 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Mar 2021, George Herbert wrote:
>>> ...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.
>>
>> 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.
>
> With the caveat that it's not something I've paid close
attention to,
> I fear you're badly underestimating what "swapped for rad hard"
> involves. As I understand it, for close encounters with Jupiter,
we're
> not talking ordinary off-the-shelf rad-hard. E.g., I would
expect the
> instruments to need major redesign -- and quite substantial mass
> growth -- to accommodate adequate shielding for their
detectors. (I
> was once told that the Galileo orbiter's imager CCD sat inside a
cube
> of tantalum, looking through an inch-thick window of special glass.)
>
> Henry
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx>