{"id":24705,"date":"2016-04-15T13:46:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T20:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/membrane-spacecraft-with-7-7-kwkg-power-to-weight-ratio-and-4000-isp"},"modified":"2017-06-04T10:30:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T17:30:07","slug":"membrane-spacecraft-with-7-7-kwkg-power-to-weight-ratio-and-4000-isp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/membrane-spacecraft-with-7-7-kwkg-power-to-weight-ratio-and-4000-isp","title":{"rendered":"Membrane spacecraft with 7.7 kW\/kg power-to-weight ratio and 4000 ISP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/membrane-spacecraft-with-7-7-kwkg-power-to-weight-ratio-and-4000-isp.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A \u2018brane\u2019 is a dynamical object that can propagate through spacetime. Flattening a spacecraft into a membrane, or 2-brane, can produce a low mass vehicle with ultra-high power-to-weight ratio (7.7 kW\/kg using thin film solar cells). If most of this power is used by an array of thinned, distributed electrospray thrusters with a specific impulse of 4000 s, a Brane Craft could start in low Earth orbit, land on Phobos, and return to low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Other possible targets include any near-Earth asteroid and most main belt asteroids. Propellant is stored as a liquid within a 10-micron wide gap between two Kapton sheets that form the main structure of the Brane Craft.<\/p>\n<p>This NASA NIAC project will study how to design an ultra-light dynamic membrane spacecraft, with 3-axis attitude determination and control plus navigation, that can significantly change both its shape and orbit. Conventional sensors like star trackers will have to be replaced by 2-dimensional alternatives. Estimated mass is about 35 grams for a 1 square meter Brane Craft.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/nextbigfuture.com\/2016\/04\/membrane-spacecraft-with-77-kwkg-power.html\">http:\/\/nextbigfuture.com\/2016\/04\/membrane-spacecraft-with-77-kwkg-power.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A \u2018brane\u2019 is a dynamical object that can propagate through spacetime. Flattening a spacecraft into a membrane, or 2-brane, can produce a low mass vehicle with ultra-high power-to-weight ratio (7.7 kW\/kg using thin film solar cells). If most of this power is used by an array of thinned, distributed electrospray thrusters with a specific impulse [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1633,1514,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-power","category-space-travel","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24705","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\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62030,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24705\/revisions\/62030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}