Prospecting Callisto

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Artwork featured on Beyond Earthly Skies Blog Link: Concept for a Human Mission to Callisto in the 2040's

Artwork featured in Issue 34 of 3D Art Direct Magazine Link here

On arrival in parking orbit about Callisto the ten thousand ton Crew Vehicle un-docks from its Orion interplanetary stage (which remains in orbit) and lands on its eight Gas-Core Nuclear Light-Bulb main engines.

Here crews take ice-core samples and set up test well-heads prior to establishing a full scale ammonia production on the surface of Callisto.

Image is part of a future historical setting, see my journal entry Orion’s Arm Future History, A Synopsis.

On my Orion's Arm timeline the image would fall during the Outer Solar System Frontier Era.

A Timeline Graph is to be found here: Timeline.

During the year long crossing from Mars the Crew Vehicle houses the fifty man mission crew; the habitat portion of the spacecraft is comprised of zero-g and a rotating drum centrifuge arrangement for artificial gravity – located along the central spine, and shielded by the vehicles hull and hydrogen and water tanks, it protects the crew during deep penetration of Jupiter's lethal radiation belt. The food preparation area and cafeteria, mission briefing rooms and gym are all located in the rotating segment; crew sleeping quarters and other work spaces are in a non-rotational zero-g ring.

The habitat section of the vehicle is contained deep within the uppermost portion of the cylindrical main-body of the spacecraft. Below it are gear and tool storage decks, logistical supply, life-support and cryogenic systems, along with all the pumps and reactor control systems for the main engines. The lowermost deck is the EVA prep area. The command and control module, protected by a separate integral water-shield, with its retractable radar and communications masts, tops the 250' vehicle.

Callisto is the third-largest moon in the Solar System and the second largest in the Jovian system, after Ganymede. Callisto has about 99% the diameter of the planet Mercury but only about a third of its mass. It is the fourth Galilean moon of Jupiter by distance, with an orbital radius of about 1,168,177.8 miles --due to this relatively distant orbit Callisto is not subjected to tidal resonance and heating and orbits outside Jupiter’s intense radiation belt. Because of this isolation, Callisto has remained relatively undifferentiated since its formation in the low-density Jovian subnebula -- this may make it an ideal source of ammonia ice for the Martian terraforming program.

Journal Entries:

For contextual information on the purpose of the Callisto Resource Recovery missions see my essay on Terraforming Mars.

An essay on Nuclear Pulse Propulsion is available here: Orion: Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

A note of thanks is extended to RobCaswell who reciently featured this work in his journal entry It's 2014 Ready or Not.

Callisto Mission Images:

Callisto Mission Crew Vehicle Launch

Outward Bound

Falling Toward Periapsis

Discarding Stages

Callisto-Mission Spacecraft Flight Control Station

Callisto Mission Spacecraft Command Deck Overhead

Callisto Mission Spacecraft Crew Quarters

Prospecting Callisto

Mining The Ice

Periapsis: Racing the Clouds of Jove

Climb