Chuck
03-13-2006, 12:04 PM
Hear me out - this is not completely off topic.
I don't know all the hypermiling tricks, but my picture of a commute is a brisk acceleration, then put a much lighter touch on the accelerator cruising on the freeway, use the hills and other landscape to help in better fuel economy.
Present-day space travel gives us no choice but to coast most of the time. NASA has been hypermiling out of necessity from the outset. Take the Mars Reconninance Orbiter (MRO). Tons of fuel was consumed to speed it out of Earth's atmosphere so it could coast to Mars. To use the least amout of fuel braking, it barely gets into orbit around Mars. The next six months, it will graze the Martian atmosphere until it decends into a lower orbit ideal for observation. It can't aerobrake too much on the low part of the orbit or the instruments get cooked.
The previous month, a probe was launched to Pluto. In a year, it will pass just behind Jupiter for a gravity assist to speed it to that small icy planet. In hypermile talk - the probe was drafting behind a BIG RIG. :D
Until propulsion vagely resembling Star Trek is found, this is space travel.
I don't know all the hypermiling tricks, but my picture of a commute is a brisk acceleration, then put a much lighter touch on the accelerator cruising on the freeway, use the hills and other landscape to help in better fuel economy.
Present-day space travel gives us no choice but to coast most of the time. NASA has been hypermiling out of necessity from the outset. Take the Mars Reconninance Orbiter (MRO). Tons of fuel was consumed to speed it out of Earth's atmosphere so it could coast to Mars. To use the least amout of fuel braking, it barely gets into orbit around Mars. The next six months, it will graze the Martian atmosphere until it decends into a lower orbit ideal for observation. It can't aerobrake too much on the low part of the orbit or the instruments get cooked.
The previous month, a probe was launched to Pluto. In a year, it will pass just behind Jupiter for a gravity assist to speed it to that small icy planet. In hypermile talk - the probe was drafting behind a BIG RIG. :D
Until propulsion vagely resembling Star Trek is found, this is space travel.