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Lunar Ion Freighter (1959)

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kodemunkey:



--- Quote ---Ernst Stuhlinger was one of Wernher von Braun’s compatriots at Nazi Germany’s Baltic Sea rocket base of Peenemünde. He worked on missile guidance systems. At the end of the Second World War, he became one of 126 German rocketeers spirited to New Mexico by the U.S. Army. He worked beside von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and helped to lead the team that launched the first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. In mid-1960, he transferred to NASA with the rest of von Braun’s group to form the nucleus of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.


Stuhlinger had worked in Hitler’s nuclear and missile programs, but ion propulsion was his first love. In a paper presented in Japan a year before his transfer to NASA, Stuhlinger proposed an innovative split lunar transportation system which would see passengers reach a moon base, 238,000 miles away, in from 40 to 60 hours on board high-thrust chemical-propulsion spacecraft. These would “pierce through the Van Allen radiation belts in a sufficiently short time to keep the passengers safe.” Cargo, meanwhile, would reach the moon on unmanned nuclear-powered ion freighters, which Stuhlinger dubbed “cargo ferries.” These low-thrust spacecraft would, Stuhlinger explained, “need several weeks for the one-way trip, but [would] offer a payload-to-weight ratio which is superior. . .to that of high-thrust vehicles.” In other words, an ion-propelled spacecraft could deliver a lot of cargo while expending minimal propellant. Both the fast chemical and slow ion spacecraft would depart for the moon from a space station in 600-kilometer-high Earth orbit.
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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/lunar-ion-freighter-1959/

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