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Bipogram t1_j10wfr5 wrote

Reply to comment by ScrotiusRex in How would we get about traveling through deep space? by MysteryMystery305

Voyager 1 was the business end of a terribly large mass-fraction consisting mostly of a Titan Centaur combo.

Thus, it was able to leave cis-lunar space with a stupidly high C3, allowing the Grand Tour.

A generation ship will be orders of orders of magnitude more massive. And probably has to be built at L4/L5 (or similar).

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ScrotiusRex t1_j10yjyk wrote

That's a good point alright, though I would like to think if we did get to that stage we'd have advanced past current gen chemical rockets but would presumably also involve multiple gravity assists to send it on its way.

>And probably has to be built at L4/L5 (or similar).

The bulk of the easily attainable resources would be out in the asteroid belt so would that not be an ideal place to build?

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LoneSnark t1_j11cm4x wrote

We are already past chemical rockets. Ion Thrusters are a thing and can get you going 100 times the propellant velocity of a chemical rocket. I presume the ship would have a nuclear reactor rigged and sized to work for the journey with solar panels to power most of the propulsion. The ship will first thrust deeper into the solar system to get more solar power and set up gravity assists with Venus to reach Jupiter and then a grand alignment with multiple gravity assists on the final way out of the system to get itself going the right direction. As they leave the system and solar power falls off they'll have to throttle down. Maybe they'll have electro-static collectors to collect stray hydrogen on the way that they can feed into the Ion engines using whatever spare nuclear power they have each day. Then reverse the process upon arrival.

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