RE: starship-design: Re: Re: regarding fuel expenditures

[David Levine <david@actionworld.com>]

This is also somewhere on one of the LIT pages I believe.  TAU is meant
to travel 20 AU per year using a 150 kW fission reactor and xenon as
reaction mass for the ion stream.
------------------------------------------------------
David Levine                     david@actionworld.com
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> ----------
> From: 	kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu[SMTP:kuo@bit.csc.lsu.edu]
> >> However achieving this data will require probes like NASA's 1000AU
> >> proposal--relatively heavy probes packed with useful sensors.
> 
> >Which interestingly enough will probably use fusion thrusters...
> 
> No, it uses a fission reactor powering an ion rocket.  This is an
> actual _proposal_, which you can see on NASA's web page.  In other
> words, something they could actually build and fly, if given the
> funding.
> 
>