Adam Hibberd
I have been working on various projects recently, and I hope now that I can remain focused on a particular project I'm engaged on with the assistance of some colleagues.
However I have put that aside for the moment and I would like to elaborate on some other work I'm doing on my own all to do with exploiting 'Edelbaum' to intercept the first interstellar object to be discovered passing through our Solar System, a part of an ongoing research project by i4is known as 'Project Lyra'.
Go here for an introduction into what I'm talking about here, in brief Edelbaum discovered that an optimal escape from the Solar System, of the kind neccessary for Project Lyra, can be achieved by 3 separate impulses (instantaneous changes of velocity), at 3 separate locations:
(1) First, one impulse at Earth to take the s/c far away from the Sun, ready for the second impulse (designated in the Figure below as Earth hyperbolic excess V∞).
(2) A second impulse at a large aphelion to remove the tangential velocity of the s/c allowing it to fall towards the Sun (ΔV Imp 2).
(3) Third, an impulse delivered at perihelion (a Solar Oberth), the optimal location for increasing the kinetic energy of the s/c and heading off rapidly towards the distant and steadily receding, 1I/'Oumuamua (ΔV Imp 3).
The key about these 3 impulses is that no Jupiter encounter is needed in this scenario, and so we are not tied to Jupiter's 11.9 year orbital period to wait for the next alignment, and therefore for the next feasible launch opportunity.
Well I have already conducted some research into Edelbaum, assuming a launch in 2035 (I chose this year because it is a year when a gravity assist of Jupiter to reach 'Oumuamua would be out-of-the-question), an overall 30 year flight duration and a Solar Oberth at 0.01 au (about 2 Solar Radii - SR). These are by no means the final parameters for the mission but it represents a start to what will be quite an extensive and laborious period of research for me.
So have a look at the Figure below for the results so far. For the default mission, which included Jupiter, and which I derived in this Project Lyra paper here, the SOM ΔV was at 7.2 km/s and the perihelion was at 6 SR from the Sun's centre, in the plot below that 7.2 km/s SOM corresponds to a Sun-distance for the second impulse of just over 9 au. When one adds up the 3 impulses to find the optimal distance of this second impulse, it turns out to be at 8 au.
Anyway, research is ongoing, all with my own software development, 'Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software' (OITS) with Intermediate Points.
