NASA sls maximum range?

>>9140703
F=ma

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16KB, 252x185px

>>9140703
Infinity, and beyond.

Take advantages of some "slingshot effect" and go forever.

>>9140736
this tbqh
The concept of range doesn't really apply to spacecraft, instead you would use the delta-v of a specific payload.

>>9140748
I found something delta v is 9000 something almost 10000 m/s

>>9140703
Probably the upper limit is around 50,000 light years, the same as can be achieved with any heavy-lift rocket.

It's relatively easy to reach escape velocity from the solar system, since under 17 km/s of delta-v is needed after Earth escape, and with carefully planning, the slingshot effect can be used to get nearly all of it. Voyager 1, the current farthest manmade object has well above escape velocity, and launched on a mere Titan III (about the capability of today's Falcon 9 or Atlas V). Using SLS might give some more schedule freedom.

However, much larger delta-v is needed to escape the galaxy. The sun's orbiting the galactic center at about 220 km/s, and the galactic escape velocity at our current location is about 500 km/s, so delta-v of over 200 km/s would be needed. While the slingshot effect could be used in theory, that would require active maneuvering at timescales well beyond the plausible active lifespans of our probes. So about the farthest distance which might reasonably be reached (over hundreds of millions of years, or possibly billions) without any special luck is approximately our current distance from the galactic center (~25 kly), but opposite the sun's location (so ~50 kly from us).

>>9140784

You're forgetting that anything we send away from us will eventually be on the opposite side of the galactic core as things orbit around.

>>9140703

Range is irrelevant with a payload that small on a rocket that big, because it can achieve escape velocity but cannot go fast enough to make it to any other solar system on a relevant time scale.

It would be more useful to know the maximum payload the SLS can push directly onto an escape trajectory, as well as the maximum payload to any of the major solar system bodies.

If maximum speed is your goal then what you need to do is incorporate a balloon-tank nuclear thermal rocket stage into your payload that weighs the maximum amount that SLS can put into low Earth orbit. Because of the burn profile the SLS can't actually put as much mass into orbit as advertised, those numbers are a function of finding the heaviest payload that can be sent to the Moon then working backwards. If we assume the biggest version of SLS can put 100 metric tons into low Earth orbit, then that's how much our payload can weigh, and we want the vast majority of that mass to be liquid hydrogen.

The nuclear thermal rocket would be about 2 to 2.5 times as efficient as a hydrogen-oxygen chemical engine, and therefore would be able to get the final dry mass of the stage up to a much higher speed than would be possible with the SLS' unladen second stage alone.

>>9141321
No, that's the exact thing I based my estimate on.
>>approximately our current distance from the galactic center (~25 kly), but opposite the sun's location (so ~50 kly from us).

>>9141334
Nuclear thermal rockets aren't great for accelerating a small mass to a very high speed. The stage would have considerably more dry mass than a chemical rocket would. When you're aiming for a very large delta-v, stage mass becomes extremely important.