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lughnasadh OP t1_izt0dr3 wrote

Submission Statement

I expect we're going to hear a lot more about ballistic lunar transfer trajectories in years to come. They are a much cheaper way for materials to reach lunar and cislunar orbits. Their disadvantage is slowness, but three days versus three months doesn't really matter so much for uncrewed missions. Their big, big advantage is the Sun's gravity does most of the work for you in getting to the Moon. This way you don't need lots of fuel, and get a much cheaper launch from Earth. They are the preferred method for getting cargo to the Lunar Gateway space station.

Hakuto-R M1 is packing a lot into 340 kg (about the weight of 4 domestic washing machines) - including a lunar rover vehicle.

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[deleted] t1_iztlkax wrote

How much cheaper is cheaper? I didn’t see an answer in the article. Would this make it feasible to start mining on the moon? Assembling rockets for deeper space missions?

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lughnasadh OP t1_izub4ug wrote

>>How much cheaper is cheaper?

If they were trying to do this in 3 days like the Apollo missions, then doing it this way is a fraction of the cost. The issue is that a traditional Hohmann transfer orbit you need to use fuel to both accelerate the craft and deaccelerate it at the other end. This requires you to carry several times the payload weight in propellant.

By comparison Hakuto-R M1 needs only a tiny amount of propellant from ion thrusters, as the Sun's gravity is doing almost all the work.

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Muchaszewski t1_izt86b2 wrote

Wow, that's really exciting news! Congrats to SpaceX and iSpace on the successful launch of the Hakuto-R M1 moon lander. I can't wait to see it land on the Moon in April 2023. It's amazing to see how far we've come in terms of space exploration.

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2ArmsGoin3 t1_iztdrq6 wrote

Can someone ELI5 why it will take until April to reach the moon? Does the ‘low-energy transfer ballistic lunar transfer trajectory’ mean that it’s slowly drifting towards the moon? If so what was the reason behind this choice versus quickly going to the destination? Thanks in advance!

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seanbrockest t1_iztn2wp wrote

Kinda, yeah! Basically what they're doing is taking a lot less fuel, and utilizing various gravity transfers to get out to the moon without having to expend a bunch of fuel to speed up, and then expend that same amount of fuel to slow down again once they get there.

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2ArmsGoin3 t1_iztn8s7 wrote

Thank you for the explanation, that makes sense!

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FuturologyBot t1_izt5d4d wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:

Submission Statement

I expect we're going to hear a lot more about ballistic lunar transfer trajectories in years to come. They are a much cheaper way for materials to reach lunar and cislunar orbits. Their disadvantage is slowness, but three days versus three months doesn't really matter so much for uncrewed missions. Their big, big advantage is the Sun's gravity does most of the work for you in getting to the Moon. This way you don't need lots of fuel, and get a much cheaper launch from Earth. They are the preferred method for getting cargo to the Lunar Gateway space station.

Hakuto-R M1 is packing a lot into 340 kg (about the weight of 4 domestic washing machines) - including a lunar rover vehicle.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zj009z/spacex_has_successfully_launched_ispaces_hakutor/izt0dr3/

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LookAround-blog t1_izt9f3l wrote

such a long period of flight on a trajectory from the earth to the moon is due to the fact that an ion engine will be used for acceleration in outer space?

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TheSeekerOfSanity t1_iztorib wrote

Wish Musk had nothing to do with this so I could care about it.

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