ARGOSY - ARchitecture for Going to the Outer solar SYstem

摘要

All solar system objects that have been reached by robotic spacecraft, or can be reached, are, in principle, targets for human in situ exploration. The Moon and Mars have been the primary targets due to relative accessibility and relatively benign environments. ARGOSY - ARchitecture for Going to the Outer solar SYstem, addresses anew the problem of supporting human exploration to Jupiter and the other outer planets. The ARGOSY architecture approach is scalable in size and power, so that increasingly distant destinations, the systems of the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, can be reached with the same crew size and time requirements. One-way journeys (inbound or outbound) are required to last no more than two years, to limit exposure to galactic cosmic ray flux, and use no more than six crew members, to limit the mass of required expendables. To enable such visions, achievable technologies with appropriate margins must be used to construct a viable technical approach at the systems level. We focus on thermal neutron reactors for reasons of technical maturity, safety, and reliability. The power system, in turn, drives high-power plasma thrusters that can use water from the target systems for propellant. A new class of extremely heavy lift launch vehicles (EHLLVs), dubbed Supernova, is an integral part of the architecture required to place the ARGOSY vehicle in cis-lunar space. Crew transport to and from that vehicle relies upon Block III of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) as defined in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS), with transport capabilities to and from the Earth's surface of up to six astronauts. This approach aims to determine an achievable architecture that can be costed with confidence, even though that cost will be high, and potentially implemented before the close of the 21st century. ARGOSY thus takes the first conceptual step past Mars in addressing the implementation of the most difficult part of the Vision for Space Exploration: how to "extend human presence across the solar system."