Here, in Icarus today...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6554
Abstract
Thank you for the link, getting to Uranus with a flight time of 6 years is a good deal indeed.
Herra Janhunen have a firm interest in space sails (solar wind electric / photonic solar) and have published such studies previously.
I can't find it with the search engine, but I'm sure someone posted a link to a document where the extended missions of Cassini toward Jupiter and Uranus were detailed. In particular, the trajectories and delta-V calculations were relatively clear.
If anyone has this document in mind, please don't hesitate to share.
BTW, is the actual possibilty for Cassini to escape the saturnian system seriously considered, on only noted for the beauty of utopic opportunities ?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_AV2wkDaDYbHV0U1RQQ1NSWGc/edit
Cassini Saturn-escape trajectories to Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune
Okutsu et al
Fly-bys were not considered a viable alternative to orbital science at Saturn, IIRC. Especially since the flight time was 26 and 41 years to Uranus and Neptune.
Thank you very much for your prompt reply. The paper I had in mind was another one, but this one contains a lot of valuable information. I guess it was this one: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.42893 (but I can't access the full PDF).
What was the main issue with the long flight time ? The decrease of RTG efficiency that would prevent the instrument from working properly ?
I seem to remember part of the issue/trade-off (and a easy decisive no) was the cost of keeping flight ops staff and DSN tracking time available to the mission for such a lengthy period.
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