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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."
Pluto has been fairly bitter about our attitude toward it in times past. The Brunching Shuttlecocks have interviewed Pluto on two previous occasions [ first interview, second interview ], on the second of which it complained about the lack of attention we've been giving it, and also claimed to support life. I wonder whether these latest developments will change its tune at all.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
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.
It's all find and nice of them to have ideas about exploring Pluto now but its too late for the fun stuff. If they had launched a craft 5 years ago we would have gotten there in time to witness the changing of the seasons.
Now its going to be another 250 years before we get to see both the summer and winter time on the planet. And what a seasonal change it is. In the summer it has a liquid nitrogen atmosphere and in the winter it freezes and falls to the ground.
If only they had gotten off their but sooner.
Ascii artist &
Now--or Never?
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.
48 gigabits of radiation-hardened memory must cost a fortune...I seem to remember that Flash ram is not suited to this kind of thing since its especially susceptible to energetic particles (alpha, gamma rays) dislogding the charge trapped in the gate dielectric (which holds the information.) Anyone know how data storage is usually carried out on these things? I can't imagine using anything with moving parts, and since the craft is supposed to be powered down for most of the time while it drifts, I'd think you'd want something non-volatile. I would hate to think what would happen if there was a brief power shortage or something and all the readings from the entire mission that were queued up to be sent were lost.
As to the 770 bits/s, I'm amazed it's even that fast. Consider that the RF power decreases as 1/r^2, where r is about 7.5 billion km. They are using a directional 2.5m antenna, lets say that's 100 dBi gain. Still, even if they managed to transmit 10W at the satellite (which is a lot for radio), we'd receive about a picowatt (1e-12) of it here on earth. I've heard that number thrown around before as a typical power level that we receive from deep space, and it boggles the mind that we can detech such faint signals... guess that's why it takes arrays of gigantic dishes with supercooled LNAs to do it. And it's great example of how power and bandwidth are related in communications. The more power your signal has at the receiver, the more information you can convey (bandwidth.)
they told him they were going to see Pluto the disney character. His eyes lit up and he jumped up and down saying "oh boy oh boy".
We're waiting for diamondoid remember?
One day someone in a lab will figure out how to grow the stuff, and the very "next day" we'll be building more efficient rockets to launch/find-and-tow carbon to geosync orbit where it can be strewn in both directions (since you can't build it like a beanstalk)...
--
Power to the Peaceful
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.
There are several good reasons to study Pluto ASAP, not the least of which is the changing of the seasons. It's not really a Pluto mission as much as it's a Kuiper Belt mission. Among other things:
And anyway, how much would scuttling this mission help to explore Mars, which compared to this tiny mission already has a massive armada of effort and funding going into it? Maybe we'd get there a couple of months faster.. except we wouldn't anyway because the optimal launch window would stay where it was.
I certainly hope he gains interest in science. He wants the US to play World Cop. Well, if we are gonna be a world leader, why should our science lag? Technology was one field that helped us get where we're at today. Being at the forefront of the tech industry places us in a very good position. I think that this mission could easily be done, and for even less than a cool $500M.
How, you say?
NASA wants relatively few scientific measurements taken. There's a whole basket full of stuff they aren't doing. This project could easily be subsidized by foreign countries. Don't you think there are a few European countries that would pay $50 or even $100 million to get onboard with one or two of their own scientific devices onboard? That's a *really* good deal for them, considering where it's going and how cheap that is.
I really hate to see productive science budgets dwindle.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
To me this quote represents some of the best ideals of the so-called western civilization. There's a deep-rooted sense of purpose in pushing the barriers of scientific knowledge and understanding. Despite the fact that military is also interested in any advances stemming from such exploration the ultimate aim is to have this knowledge advance the whole of humanity.
So how does terrorism - as demonstrated by the relatively recent islamic jihad against the western world - fit into this picture? Well, for a long time while "The Old World" was suffering under the Dark Ages (imposed by religion, the Church) the islamic empire had a thriving scientific culture. That fine and rather benevolent islamic culture was eventually suffocated by increasing religious dogmatism so it is highly ironic that those same forces are now attempting to destroy the West where the evolution of the State and Religion followed the opposite route.
I don't think I'm much off the mark by saying that the driving force, or motive, behind the actions of the "ultra-islamic" terrorists is simple envy and the desire to pull the West down to the same level of stagnation and religious revival that they themselves are under. If the western governments, and especially the US, decrease their scientific commitments in favour of military spending the religious terrorists have gained a victory of sorts.
PS. Would it not be ironic if scientific missions such as this one to study the Kuiper Belt would help us (the humanity) to better understand dangerous asteroids and help us learn how to repel them. Suppose just one, say 10 miles across, was on a collision course with Earth and was calculated to strike the Middle East in the 2030's. Would the Mid-East populations still support the destruction of the West? Of course, if the object was calculated to hit North America or even Europe there would probably be much rejoicing in God punishing the infidels...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
They don't get it at first, but they figure it out because in some part, the maps they find obviously display the solar system, but some things are very different, and they come to the conclusion that the original contractor screwed up the original job.
Who knows what we'll find.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Christine Lavin wrote the definitive song on the subject. Whenever I hear about the possibility of exploration to Pluto, I hear Christine singing its praises, and intoning the URL "http colon slash slash dosxx dot colorado dot edu slash plutohome dot html".
Fight for your right to read books!
'Construction Shack'
by Clifford Simak (Short story, 1973)
A manned expedition discovers that Pluto is an artificial world, built by alien engineers billions of years ago. But if the 'construction shack' was the size of a world, how big was the entire project?
And I came across this bit which is also interesting, although slightly off topic.
One Thousand years in Space Travel
some of the author's notes are interesting:
All in all a longer read, but interesting in it's own right"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Given that $500 million will buy you approximately 1 shuttle launch at current rates, and that the ISS is already getting around $5 billion annually, $500 million for a mission to explore a heretofore unexplored part of our solar system isn't so much, is it? In fact, it's a vertiable bargin, given how much more good science will come out of this than the ISS (which has been almost totally gutted of scientific worth).
(* I can't imagine why they would only put in 48GB of diskspace.....Can't be the weight, can't *possibly* be the price. *)
Like somebody else said, those devices have to withstand lots of space radiation. It is hard to find off-the-shelf equipment to do that.
Table-ized A.I.
That's a *really* good deal for them, considering where it's going and how cheap that is.
the whole $500,000,000 shebang is somewhere in the region of about 15 cents a mile, about the same as I pay for petrol in the UK.
sweet jesus.
I'm paying 6.5 cents per mile on average and I have a fairly heavy right foot.
ouch...
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.