[extropy-chat] SpaceDev Microsat to Travel InterPlanetary Superhighway to The Moon

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Tue Jul 12 21:32:23 UTC 2005


<http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050712005435&newsLang=en>

POWAY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 2005--SpaceDev (OTCBB: SPDV)
has been awarded a contract by Andrews Space of Seattle to design a
small spacecraft that will be the first ever to travel to the vicinity
of the Moon through a gravity tunnel that is part of the
InterPlanetary Superhighway (IPS), a route which requires
significantly less fuel than conventional trajectories. The overall
program is to design, develop, launch, and operate a small low-cost
spacecraft, called SmallTug, on a mission to the Lunar L1 point to
demonstrate key technologies and advanced orbital mechanics in support
of NASA's human and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars.

etc.....

For more info on the InterPlanetary Superhighway, see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Superhighway>

The Interplanetary Superhighway has come to denote a set of transfer
orbits between various planets and moons in the solar system. These
transfers have particularly low delta-v requirements, and appear to be
the lowest energy transfers, even lower than the common Hohmann
transfer orbit that has dominated orbital dynamics in the past.

etc.......


BillK



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