论文标题

带有指向能力推进的星际飞行的最佳质量和速度

Optimal mass and speed for interstellar flyby with directed-energy propulsion

论文作者

Messerschmitt, David, Lubin, Philip, Morrison, Ian

论文摘要

解决了使用定向能量启动的探针对Flyby调查附近星系进行的任务方案的设计。通过固定的启动基础架构启动了多个探针,并且在目标相遇和数据收集后,会下载科学数据。假设主要目标是可靠地恢复具有较小数据延迟的大量收集的科学数据(从启动到完全恢复数据的时间),则表明有一个有效的边界,对于给定的延迟而言,对于给定的延迟而言,不能减少延迟,而对于给定的体积无法减少延迟。对于每个探针发射,通过增加探针质量来实现沿着边界的体积增加,从而降低了探针速度。因此,选择最高的可行探测速度通常无法实现有效的数量和延迟权衡。沿着这个边界,完成数据下载的总距离并没有很大差异,这意味着下载时间持续时间大约是启动到目标运输时间的固定部分。由于探针质量增加时的推进持续时间较长,因此增加数据量会导致总消耗的总发射能量成本,但具有良好的规模经济。任何探针技术的重要特征是将探针质量质量与传输数据速率相关的缩放定律,因为这会影响有效边界的细节。

The design of mission scenarios for the flyby investigation of nearby star systems by probes launched using directed energy is addressed. Multiple probes are launched with a fixed launch infrastructure, and download of scientific data occurs following target encounter and data collection. Assuming the primary goal is to reliably recover a larger volume of collected scientific data with a smaller data latency (elapsed time from launch to complete recovery of the data), it is shown that there is an efficient frontier where volume cannot be increased for a given latency and latency cannot be reduced for a given volume. For each probe launch, increasing the volume along this frontier is achieved by increasing the probe mass, which results in a reduced probe speed. Thus choosing the highest feasible probe speed generally does not achieve an efficient tradeoff of volume and latency. Along this frontier the total distance traveled to the completion of data download does not vary significantly, implying that the download time duration is approximately a fixed fraction of the launch-to-target transit time. Due to longer propulsion duration when probe mass is increased, increasing data volume incurs a cost in the total launch energy expended, but with favorable economies of scale. An important characteristic of any probe technology is the scaling law that relates probe mass to transmit data rate, as this affects details of the efficient frontier.

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