This is so cool. A symbolic achievement in addition to the amazing-ness of the actual science we will get out of this trip. This is a big chapter in the human history of space exploration. What a great time to be alive!
New Horizons: Pluto and Beyond
- Thread starter Bozo Erectus
- Start date
This is so cool. A symbolic achievement in addition to the amazing-ness of the actual science we will get out of this trip. This is a big chapter in the human history of space exploration. What a great time to be alive!
Only 310 more AU before we can use the Sun as a gravity lens!
aelf
Ashen One
Did they find the Gamilas
That pic wins.
$720M to take it, though...IDK. As much as I'm fascinated by the early solar system and what the probe may reveal of its formation, I have to wonder if it's worth the expense.
I also have to wonder just how much stock should be put in the claim that the probe will potentially identify objects capable of triggering an extinction event on Earth, not just in terms of mass but also in terms of trajectory. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of the fastest, if not the fastest probe, we've ever sent out, so it probably won't have a long window in which to scan the Kuiper Belt, and there isn't much light out there illuminating objects to be discovered.
Yeah, and there's a face in the landscape of Mars.
Until you look at it from a different angle.
Might as well look at clouds.
There are some costs that should be looked at using dollars. Others that should be looked at using percentages.
Research and exploration (and insurance) are best spent using a defined portion of the budget. i.e., spend 2% on research. Then, as you get richer you can do more exploring. This allows you to consistently push the boundaries.
OTOH, fixing a problem should be done using dollars as an estimate. You list the problems that need fixing, and then you prioritize within that budget.
If it's any consolation, the bang-for-the-buck of New Horizons was thousands of times more data for about 20% the cost of the Voyagers.
Research and exploration (and insurance) are best spent using a defined portion of the budget. i.e., spend 2% on research. Then, as you get richer you can do more exploring. This allows you to consistently push the boundaries.
OTOH, fixing a problem should be done using dollars as an estimate. You list the problems that need fixing, and then you prioritize within that budget.
If it's any consolation, the bang-for-the-buck of New Horizons was thousands of times more data for about 20% the cost of the Voyagers.
Serutan
Eatibus Anythingibus
New Horizons is more limited in the variety of data it collects although as you say there
is a lot more of it.
is a lot more of it.
Narz
keeping it real
Ooh, that'd be cool, a new moon!
It seems like old news, but this website on asteroid mining (permanent.com) really influence me when I was younger.
Now that Planetary Resources is actually launching spacecraft, it seems less and less impossible.
And last night I was mulling the idea of using New Horizons to test out the gravity lens idea. I wonder if it's possible? At least as a cheap proof-of-concept?
Now that Planetary Resources is actually launching spacecraft, it seems less and less impossible.
And last night I was mulling the idea of using New Horizons to test out the gravity lens idea. I wonder if it's possible? At least as a cheap proof-of-concept?
Perfection
The Great Head.
The Plutonium RTG power supply would peter out long before you got anywhere near that distance
Originally posted in the cool pics thread, also relevant here:
Cool / funny gif relevant to current news.
Another:
I made this a few days ago, over on the Cheezburger.com site. "Ohai" is lolspeak for "hi" or "hello."
Yeah my back of the napkin calculation puts that at taking roughly 200 years... assuming a travel speed of 30,000 miles/hour. I think I read that power source could, at best, last another 20 years.
Still exciting possibilities for Kuiper belt studies!
Now I'm wondering about something. Pu-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years. Why do probes go silent well before that? Do they have no instruments that can operate with half of the old power output, or do their components slowly break down or become less efficient for some reason?
I'm pretty stoked about this. I know a person working on the data analysis for the mission, and apparently they are working 12 hour days.
I was surprised by the color of Pluto. I've seen so many greyscale artist interpretations that I just assumed it was grey.
I was surprised by the color of Pluto. I've seen so many greyscale artist interpretations that I just assumed it was grey.
Perfection
The Great Head.
RTG work by converting energy from nuclear decay to heat which is then converted to electricity. As the heat output decreases the temperature difference across the heat engine (it's still a heat engine despite no moving parts) decreases which tanks the efficiency of electric generation.
Ah, that makes sense. The falling temperature difference drives the efficiency down, so power falls faster than you'd get from the decay rate alone.
I don't know if the idea has gone anywhere, but I remember reading a while back that the Europeans were considering using Am-241 (half-life 433 years) instead of Pu-238 because of a shortage of the latter. If they were to make an americium RTG, with a larger mass in order to get the same power as the Pu-238 RTGs produce, could they make a probe that would be functional for 100-200 years or so?
I don't know if the idea has gone anywhere, but I remember reading a while back that the Europeans were considering using Am-241 (half-life 433 years) instead of Pu-238 because of a shortage of the latter. If they were to make an americium RTG, with a larger mass in order to get the same power as the Pu-238 RTGs produce, could they make a probe that would be functional for 100-200 years or so?
Yes, in principle at least. But it would be a bit of a challenge to rate all components for 200 years of operations, when we have had integrated circuits for much less than that.
Communication would get much more difficult. The received power scales with the inverse of the distance squared. So if the probe is 10 times further away than Pluto, you would just get 1% of the signal we are getting now from New Horizons - and the latter is already quite weak. You could increase the power of the transmitter, but then you would need even more power, adding even more weight.
But I think currently the hardest part would be the economics of it: By the time such a probe has reached anything 100 or 200 years out. By that time anyone involved in planning or construction is long dead and does not benefit from it. That means there is little incentive in doing such a thing and you would have to keep the mission alive for a very long time without getting results.
You could plan to let it fly by interesting objects and then just keep on going. But specifying a lifetime of 200 years is going to cost a lot more and might be hard to justify. The most probable mission would be to equip it for its primary target(s) and then just hope it keeps running and sending interesting data for as long as possible.
Yeah, the FOCAL telescope will have to be much faster
