Idea Bank (Free to use, but please reference widgetblender.com)
Orbital Arc
A notion for a standard orbits with close spacing to enable travel between orbital space stations in the future.
- Many space stations are expected to be launched starting around 2025 and will co-exist with the ISS until 2030.
- There will be a lower cost to service multiple space stations with a single vehicle.
- The lowest possible delta-v (DV) is required for manned transport between space stations, which means closer stations result in faster transit times.
- This orbit creates the possibility of on-orbit rapid rescue.
- Using the ISS's proven 51-degree orbit will allow the lowest fuel requirements to reach this orbit from most of the world. This will make Axiom's space station the new center-point. Precise launch windows into this orbit occur daily.
MAPRAC
Mars Aerocapture Phobos Recon Analysis Cubesat (MAPRAC):
Considered for some time now, no mission has used aerocapture to enter Mars orbit, saving the fuel needed for a DV of 3 - 4 km/s. This cubesat attempts to validate it.
16U 32 kg cubesat with Ion Engine ~ $2M
$300K LEO Deployment (SpaceX)
Year-long Ion Engine Spiral to MTO
Mars Aerocapture: The first test of aerocapture theories
Additional science: Long term image survey of Phobos
Ion engine can compensate for ballute underperformance if needed
Occasional comm with MRO needed
SLuCE
Although I can find something in the 1 km/s range using Green Monopropellant (see Vacco) I don't see 2 km/s as a non-custom job for a single thruster. While the high ISP ion thrusters are there with 1000s+ ISPs to get you from LEO, LTI, GTO ... they apply a little thrust over very long time periods (days, weeks). But to hit the breaks about a landing target on the moon that won't work. So, the other option is to put 4 of these on a face and create a 4x2 or 4x3 cubesat, you have a lot of engine mass vs payload mass, but that is the cost of breaking hard from speeds many times that of a bullet. So this probably needs to be a pricy 12U cubesat. Bonus is that you have room for a lot of solar and sensors.
Note that the Japanese tried using a solid rocket for the stop DV above the skylight, but it failed.
Create a tiny Aldrin cycler cubesat just to prototype the orbit
UPDATE: Submitted a form of this to the Taiwan Space Agency for consideration
Perhaps some 10 GB type data retrieval since bandwidth is very limited to Mars.
The Lunar surface is covered in a dust of fine volcanic glass
We submitted a proposal for a active surface that could electronically remove dust called Lunar Smart Surface (LSS). We also included a proposal for testing device (LASSIE) that could be attached to a CLPS lander to validate LSS concepts.
Vestal Lunar proposes modifying a Crew Starship to enable LEO -> Lunar Surface -> LEO round trips
By using the Starship tanks and engines as an OTV to NRHO and just taking the lander down to the Lunar surface and back to NRHO, you can do round trips from LEO to the Lunar surface on one fill-up in LEO. They system is highly reusable. The presentation is based on a HeroX.com challenge we sponsored.
Laser Ramjet Engine
A powerful space based laser can power an aircraft engine
Red Moon
A HyrdroLOX spacecraft based on Blue Moon Mk2. In order to minimize radiation, the crew travels to Phobos mostly inside the LH2 and LOX tanks.
Phobos station
Potential HydroLOX hub for exploring Mars and the solar system
MarsLink based on Starlink
Mars needs better communications. MarsLink is a radiation hardened vs of Starlink 1.5 with additional Mars Observations sensors but with radio crosslinks (laser is overkill given the limitations on sending into back to Earth. MarsLink MPS is a PNT system tuned for Mars. Finally MarsBridge is laser comms satellite based on the Psyche probe laser comm experiment (a big success so far).
Shackleton Development Corporation (SDC)
An notional exploration of how a large human colony at the Lunar South Pole might happen in the 2020s
Low Cost Mars Sample Return mission
Just saying there are existing components that could make this happen at a low cost.
L4AP
This concept is based on recent news of the second Earth Trojan being found. Some has speculated that there are thousands of objects in similar orbits here. The key is to find those that are in a very similar plane to Earth and closer to the center of L4 or L5 the better. More specifics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_XL5
Related: The Case for a Deep Search for Earth’s Trojan Asteroids: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.01922.pdf
https://space.nss.org/l5-news-harvesting-the-asteroids/
It just seems like L4 is begging to have high res and optical sensors give it a flyby to see it there are a bunch of good object there. I chose L4 over L5 since you can drift "under" L4 and get great lighting from the sun (from Earth we see it pretty much from the side).
NOTE: Later we found out that during its cruise phase, OSIRIS-REx was used to search for a class of near-Earth objects known as Earth-Trojan asteroids as it passed through Sun–Earth L4 Lagrange point. Between 9–20 February 2017, the OSIRIS-REx team used the spacecraft's MapCam camera to search for the objects, taking about 135 survey images each day for processing by scientists at the University of Arizona. The search was beneficial even though no new trojans were found. So this notion is probably OBE.