New nuclear engine concept could help realize 3-month trips to Mars

Re:New nuclear engine concept could help realize 3-month tri... by numpad0 on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:09AM (#24894473)

Say a ship in 1D is flying at 50km/s, exhaust velocity is -25km/s, relative to a static frame.

Last bit of departure burn or correction burns will fly at 25km/s towards the ship, so if the ship decelerated to below that, the plume could catch up. Meanwhile, plume from deceleration continues at 75km/s away from the ship.

I was thinking that high Isp engines generally have insane exhaust velocity, like hundreds of km/s or more, that problems like this is not an issue even for interplanetary transfers. But interstellar is a bit different, depending on other factors such as dispersion, I guess?

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Re:New nuclear engine concept could help realize 3-month tri... by colechristensen on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:26AM (#24894574)

A one dimensional rocket traveling from A to B: all of the exhaust emmitted after the rocket speed exceeds the exhaust nozzle speed will end up hitting B.

In three dimensions though in a hard vacuum, particles coming from a fluid with a bulk velocity of kilometers per second are clearly not going to be nearby the path of the rocket for very long at all

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