Lighter and Tanker Callisto Orbit

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Concept art based on The Resources of the Solar System by Dr. R. C. Parkinson.

Image featured on Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rockets site,Lighter and Tanker page. Artwork also featured in the Advanced Design section under Tanker.

Image is part of a series on Dr. Parkinson’s 1975 space fleet.

3D model is my interpretation of diagrams on Winchell Chung’s Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rockets page Lighter and Tanker.

From Atomic Rockets: The Lighter ferries tanks of liquid hydrogen from an electrolyzing station on Callisto into orbit where waits the Tanker. Once the Tanker has a full load of tanks it transports them to LEO. All the ships are drones or robot controlled, there are no humans aboard. The paper makes a good case that shipping hydrogen from Callisto to LEO would eventually be more economically effective than shipping from the surface of Terra to LEO, with the break-even point occurring at 7.8 years. Please note that this study was done in 1975, before the Lunar polar ice was discovered, and probably before the ice of Deimos was suspected.

The Lighter is a chemical hydrogen/oxygen rocket. The Tanker is an Open-Cycle Gas-Core nuclear thermal rocket.

For more detail see my Lighter and Tanker diagram image.

Images of Jupiter and Callisto courtesy NASA/JPL.