{"id":193172,"date":"2024-07-19T08:22:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-19T13:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/slingshotting-around-the-sun-would-make-a-spacecraft-the-fastest-ever"},"modified":"2024-07-19T08:22:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T13:22:56","slug":"slingshotting-around-the-sun-would-make-a-spacecraft-the-fastest-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/slingshotting-around-the-sun-would-make-a-spacecraft-the-fastest-ever","title":{"rendered":"Slingshotting Around the Sun would make a Spacecraft the Fastest Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/slingshotting-around-the-sun-would-make-a-spacecraft-the-fastest-ever2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NASA is very interested in developing a propulsion method to allow spacecraft to go faster. We\u2019ve reported several times on different ideas to support that goal, and most of the more successful have utilized the sun\u2019s gravity well, typically by slingshotting around it, as is commonly done with Jupiter currently.<\/p>\n<p>But, there are still significant hurdles when doing so, not the least of which is the energy radiating from the sun simply vaporizing anything that gets close enough to utilize a gravity assist. That\u2019s the problem a project supported by NASA\u2019s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and run by Jason Benkoski, now of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is trying to solve.<\/p>\n<p>The project was awarded a NIAC Phase I grant in 2022, focused on combining two separate systems\u2014a heat shield and a thermal propellant system. According to the project\u2019s final report, combining those two technologies could allow a spacecraft to perform what is known as an Oberth maneuver around the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA is very interested in developing a propulsion method to allow spacecraft to go faster. We\u2019ve reported several times on different ideas to support that goal, and most of the more successful have utilized the sun\u2019s gravity well, typically by slingshotting around it, as is commonly done with Jupiter currently. But, there are still significant [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}