“The Spider” 8 University IR rideshare telescopes mounted on the ACES or SLS forward Dome

“The Spider” 8 University IR rideshare telescopes mounted on the ACES or SLS forward Dome

This idea I have blogged about before but it was a part of the Cryogenic Neon expansion ratio battery series of posts, this will be a stand alone post and practice for submission to this years NIAC and Itech opportunities and if there is ever a second round of “cold tech”

40-k-liquid-neon-energy-storage-unit_icec251-publicado

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The above paper describes well the power of Neon expansion ratios and the device described by Bonfait, Gregoire, et al. “40 K Liquid Neon Energy Storage Unit.” Physics Procedia (2015): 1-6. I am sure this type of system could also be cooled by LH2 propellant and generate electrical power and cool the proposed university IR telescopes proposed here.This might like the most ideas here are shared with those who twitter such as the ULA folks.

The OPAG Feb 2017 conference gave me further impetus on the idea that small University IR telescopes might be possible with long live Cryogenic propellant upper stages and could be integrated into the upper stage IVF system.GNe could be vented into the LH2 tank and would not react in the IVF combustion engine and vent the H2O exhaust and GNe to the O2 tank poor humans easy method of liquefaction/Fractionation.The idea here is at some future Depot you freeze the water out onto the tank walls and scavenge the Neon back out and recover the water by reheating the tank walls.Then reuse the upper stage.

The image depicted represents the eight eyes of the spider or 8 university IR telescopes mounted on the forward endcap of an upper stage as rideshares.The Cryogenic Neon used to cool them is in a tank inside the LH2 propellant tank.The first suggested target is Lunar south pole shaded craters.More challenging would be to get this system landed in those craters or the second target would be Mercury polar craters.