More on the Pluto-Kuiper Express

addie writes "Scientific American has a great, extensive article about Pluto and the possibilities of exploring it in the near future. Neat descriptions of Kuiper Belt and what we can learn about solar system birth and growth from the tiny planet."

Comments

Thank goodness

[RoguePsion]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I personaly was really disapointed when I found out that Bush yanked the funding for this. It's good to see that it might still happen.

Pluto important because:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the last planetary body not yet visited by at least a flyby spacecraft.

It is a double planet where the relative masses are such that both bodies are tidally locked and this is true of no other planet although the Moon is tidally locked to us.

The atmosphere is freezing out and will be only snow in less than two decades, and won't unfreeze until the 23rd century.

We've never seen a Kuiper Belt object close up, although a lot of stars appear to have them, giving us clues about other star systems, the origin of planets and our early solar system.

Most importantly, if we don't look now, we in this generation will be the ones that got a look at everything except Pluto instead of everything. I won't live to see other star systems close up, but I would like to finish seeing this one.

Re:Don't go there

[Tim Colgate]

From the article:

Now--or Never?

... the potential for discovery will be lost if the mission is not launched in 2006. Because of the changing alignment of the planets, after 2006 the spacecraft will no longer be able to accelerate toward Pluto by swinging past Jupiter. If this window is missed, NASA would have to wait until 2018...

By that time ... much of the planet's southern hemisphere--will by then be covered in a dark polar shadow, thereby preventing it from being observed. Also, it is likely that virtually all the planet's atmosphere will have condensed by then, closing off any opportunity to study it until the 23rd century ...

So, yes there are closer objects to study, but not ones where now is the last chance for two centuries.

Re:Don't go there

[stevelinton]

Compare budgets. Manned Mars missions are currently being placed in the 20-50 billion $ range, relatively unambitious shuttle replacements at 10 bn, and space elevators are still at the "let's do some possibly related basic science and see if anything interesting drops out" stage. PKE is budgetted at US$500m. It's not making any real dent in the budgets for the kind of programs you like.