All Questions
Tagged with design-alternativemission-design
7 questions
1vote
1answer
169views
Has anyone proposed a mission to catch an small asteroid?
The idea here is that you launch a platform into perhaps a medium earth orbit. That platform is equipped with a radar system and an interceptor missile. When the radar detects an asteroid of the ...
- 9,353
5votes
1answer
301views
Shuttle-era mission profile for a desperation moon mission
It is 1996. For reasons best left to Worldbuilding SE, it has become a matter of civilizational life and death to send humans to the moon and bring them back to earth as soon as possible. Everybody is ...
- 12.3k
18votes
5answers
5kviews
Exactly why does Starship need to be this big for interplanetary travel?
As discussed in several answers to Isn't Starship way too big? Starship's unusual size is due to it being intended for missions to the Red Planet. But why? Even a smaller ship could satisfy the ...
0votes
2answers
636views
Can we land on an asteroid and ride on it?
If we could land on an asteroid, not necessarily a human, we would save the fuel consumed for flying the spacecraft and we will benefit by having the systems on it running for a very long time.. If ...
- 177
7votes
2answers
682views
Was there any launch vehicle possible that could have been used for a heavier New Horizons with enough fuel to enter Pluto orbit? (adding ~10 years)
Answers to the Astronomy SE question Can New Horizons probe turn back and start orbiting Pluto are of course no, it would have to have been a different mission with a lot more fuel and a bigger launch ...
- 153k
7votes
2answers
275views
Is there an example of a classic space engineering moment where months of work had to be discarded due to the wrong approach?
Is there any classic aviation/space engineering moment where the engineers had been working on a concept for months and then realised that their approach to the problem wasn't quite right and so had ...
- 385
0votes
4answers
250views
Are crewed spacecraft missions that appear stationary from the ground possible?
I've looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft and the following question arose. For crewed spacecraft missions, can a spacecraft remain stationary in the sky i.e. not moving once launched ...
