How infeasible is a Kuiper Belt equivalent of Dawn Options

[Tom Womack]

I presume that it is completely infeasible without a very powerful nuclear reactor and many years' production of ion engines to do anything remotely like Dawn in the Kuiper belt - the distances are just too long.

Is it in fact feasible with current technology even to get a probe into orbit around Haumea or Makemake? I'd suspect not, that the speed you need to get it out to the Kuiper belt in a lifetime is much too great to cancel down to orbital velocity.

[Rob Pinnegar]

It's possible that it could be done with current technology. But it would be unbelievably expensive -- and yes, we'd be talking about decades before any science results came in.

I'm guessing that a Neptune flyby would pretty much be a prerequisite -- just to help get the thing into something resembling a desirable orbit. Unfortunately, it would also cut down the number of possible targets.

[xtruel]

What seems far more realistic to me is a fly-by mission (similar to NH) which should greatly cut down costs, risks, technology challenges and travel time to such distant objects. Another reason is that I don’t see how it will be possible, from the scarce data collected by near-earth based observations of these objects, to define scientific goals which would be achievable by an orbiting mission but not by a fly-by mission and critical enough to justify the (big) drawbacks listed above. The exception being Pluto (a very interesting KBO indeed) if for some reason NH discoveries scheduled for 2015 raise some kind of interest for further investigation. I guess that any orbital mission to objects at typical KB distances would require at least 30 years to complete the trip, whatever the propulsion technology / gravitational assists strategy used.

About technology, Dawn’s solution (ion thrusters + solar panels) seems not feasible at KB where the distance to the sun is too great. I don’t believe in a solution of powering ITs by RTGs (too much power required ?). Given the fact that KBOs orbital velocity is rather low, it might be possible to design a rendez-vous trajectory (maybe with Neptune gravitational assist) where the delta-V required to enter orbit is small enough to be handled with standard chemical thrusters.