Voyager 1 goes 17 km per hour and new horizons at about 15. If NASA spent time and money to make a very fast rocket how fast could it go hypothetically?
-
You say 'rocket', but I'm reading 'spacecraft', since those are the examples you used.
.
I don't think this is really an answerable question for conventional propulsion. There are too many variables. If money were no issue, we could lift a vast amount of fuel into orbit, but there comes a point of diminishing returns when all the combustion engine power is simply being used to propel the fuel mass, and not so much the spacecraft. I don't know where that limit lies, but obviously the smaller the spacecraft, the smaller that limit would be. Possibly, though, refueling tankers might be launched ahead of time, with their speeds tailored to match that of the spacecraft at certain points, so that the combustion engines could be used more. Again, very expensive.
.
Space craft can also accelerate by using planetary flybys to steal energy. Several recent craft have used this technique, flying by Venus and Earth, sometimes several times, trading mission time for momentum to increase their speed. How many times will we do this on your hypothetical ship?
.
A solar sail might also be used to power future craft, and we could build giant expensive lasers to add to the power of the sun. Again: how much of that would we do?
.
Even after the main chemical engines (oxygen-hydrogen, oxygen-kerosene) have done their job, efficient but low-thrust ion propulsion engines, using perhaps xenon or nitrogen, can incrementally add thrust over long time periods, but how long will we want to do this? A similar nuclear-powered propulsion might also be used, as long as there aren't humans nearby.
.
However, there may be another form of conventional propulsion I'm not thinking of in my present sleepy state, or a new for may be invented. We can't account for that at all.
.
I don't think this is really an answerable question for conventional propulsion. There are too many variables. If money were no issue, we could lift a vast amount of fuel into orbit, but there comes a point of diminishing returns when all the combustion engine power is simply being used to propel the fuel mass, and not so much the spacecraft. I don't know where that limit lies, but obviously the smaller the spacecraft, the smaller that limit would be. Possibly, though, refueling tankers might be launched ahead of time, with their speeds tailored to match that of the spacecraft at certain points, so that the combustion engines could be used more. Again, very expensive.
.
Space craft can also accelerate by using planetary flybys to steal energy. Several recent craft have used this technique, flying by Venus and Earth, sometimes several times, trading mission time for momentum to increase their speed. How many times will we do this on your hypothetical ship?
.
A solar sail might also be used to power future craft, and we could build giant expensive lasers to add to the power of the sun. Again: how much of that would we do?
.
Even after the main chemical engines (oxygen-hydrogen, oxygen-kerosene) have done their job, efficient but low-thrust ion propulsion engines, using perhaps xenon or nitrogen, can incrementally add thrust over long time periods, but how long will we want to do this? A similar nuclear-powered propulsion might also be used, as long as there aren't humans nearby.
.
However, there may be another form of conventional propulsion I'm not thinking of in my present sleepy state, or a new for may be invented. We can't account for that at all.
12
keywords: spacecraft,NASA,How,create,of,can,gast,How gast of a spacecraft can NASA create