re mothership for flybys and cutting costs in may aurora alaska edu nsmca aurora alaska edu writes getting wierd again okay what about launching one probe with multiple parts kind of liek the old mirv principle of old cold war days basically what i mean is design a mother ship that has piggy backed probes for different missions namely different planets each probe would be tied in with the mother ship or earth as the case may be this is good when and if we go for mars the mars mission can act as either mother ship or relay point for the probes i can t see the need for a single big expensive heavy mothership except for voyager style flyby missions a few years ago i did some calculations on a grand tour space probe launched by a saturn v in at the time i felt that the idea of a big mother ship had some merit the voyagers had to be rather small lightweight craft due to the limitations imposed by using weak titan iii centaur launchers the concept i examined and michael s had a lot in common with the british interplanetary society s daedalus project for sending a probe to barnard s star i e a large bus spacecraft carrying several smaller probes to be dispatched when the ship arrives at its destination the saturn v supposedly would have been able to launch a ton payload towards jupiter and beyond the bus could have included far more powerful cameras telescopes scientific equipment and a heavier more powerful power source than the voyagers as there would be no limitations on weight anymore extremely important as the voyagers had to perform most of their measurements within a couple of weeks before and after planetary encounter and usually at a relatively great distance the smaller probes carried aboard might have been based on the real voyagers and an even smaller version like the one scheduled for launch towards pluto in the early st century and would have been released at various points during the mission the advantages are obvious the bus would have carried out the same basic jupiter saturn uranus neptune mission than voyager did but in addition two sub probes could have been relased at saturn examining that planet s south polar regions before moving on to pluto this would have enabled nasa to map both hemispheres of pluto charon by and several other probes could have examined parts of the jupiter saturn uranus neptune systems that weren t examined in great detail by the voyagers due to trajectory related factors a small swarm of camera equipped miniature space probes released a month before encounter would have been too costly for a small voyager type mission but entirely feasible if launched from a heavy well equipped spacecraft and would we have learned a lot more about the outer planets the reason why the grand tour was cancelled was lack of money of course marcu michael adams nsmca acad alaska edu i m not high just jacked
