this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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I had to read this a couple times to make sure i got it. Thanks for that. As far as i understand it at least orbits and courses are much easier with chemical fuel because its point and thrust and all over in a matter of a couple hours. Your fuel is mostly expended and you are on the correct track with very small adjustments possibly required. An ion drive while slow is an exponential curve because its speeding up on top of the speed it already has. So instead of going from 0, to 1, to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5 it would go from 0, to 1, to 2, to 4, to 16, to 256. If i am understanding correctly this would far outsrip a point and thrust craft quickly. A probe to mars takes 9 months during the transfer window but i have heard estimates of 3 months for an ion drive craft
@shortwavesurfer The propulsion is absolutely linear, the perk of an ion drive is that it's mostly electrical with minimal fuel consumption.
It's also something we're already using, the first one actually launched was in 1964, though for some reason we never stopped hyping it.
An ion engine would absolutely make the trip take *longer* as you'd have to wait for better transfer windows (9 months is the timeframe *after* we wait for a good transfer window), we'd have to wait even longer for one with an ion drive and it absolutely wouldn't be a shorter window.