ESA’s Juice lifts off on quest to discover secrets of Jupiter’s icy moons

Re:ESA’s Juice lifts off on quest to discover secrets of Jup... by mpweiher on Saturday April 15, 2023 @04:21AM (#35578711)

A better propulsion system...or just more (reaction-)mass to play with?

Starship test hopefully this Monday. :-)

Let's see, Juice is 2.4t dry and 6t fuelled, so 3.6t fuel. Starship has a planned capacity of 150t to LEO, and there supposedly will be a tanker.

So a probe that's 60t fuelled instead of 6t seems not entirely unreasonable. Distribute between "go faster" and "even more science" to taste.

And/or add a Vasimir, once on station use the electricity to power the instruments. Nuclear power or humongous array of panels.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ESA’s Juice lifts off on quest to discover secrets of Jup... by raverbashing on Saturday April 15, 2023 @08:15AM (#35579912)

> So a probe that's 60t fuelled instead of 6t seems not entirely unreasonable

Or, even better, fly a science payload + 2nd stage and a 1st stage and have them dock in LEO and have a rocket with some 100t of propellant from LEO + some 20t of payload

Sounds fun

[ Parent | on HN ]