Asteroid Capture

On 04.10.2010 02:19, brooksn wrote:
> Also,
> > ion drives need a power source - solar panels or a nuclear reactor - to
> > produce the electricity needed to accelerate the ions to high
> > velocities.

Hi brooksn,

you might take a look onto the Solar Sail Power Station (SSPS) design.
It is a hybrid mothership spacecraft, - solar sail and SEP-propulsion,
and deploys solar sail foils covered or made of thin film solar cells
for energy production.

The point is, that this self deploying spacecraft could deploy solar
cell arrays in one single launch, which are larger than the arrays of
the ISS, mounted in years of construction works.
This size of solar cell arrays can be used to power a lot or very strong
solar electric thrusters.

Solar sailing in this case would be used for fuelless station keeping
and attitude control, while main propulsion would be rather provided by
SEP-thrusters.

Take a look onto the design at
http://www.solar-thruster-sailor.info/PresentationISSS2010V13.pdf

In this presentation the spacecraft is thought as a demonstrator for
space based solar power production which could be beamed back to Earth
but it could do other missions as well, especially satellite or asteroid
prospector missions.

Best wishes

Frank