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Funding Approved for Pluto/Kuiper Probe
azpenguin writes "While we discuss the acheivements of the now-silent Pioneer 10, Congress has apporved funding for the "New Horizons" mission to send a probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Space.com has the story here. NASA had actually fought the idea, but Congress approved the money anyway. Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft."
In related news, dalewj writes "Seems the team at JPL will
discontinue operations on
the Galileo Space probe to Jupiter after
extended the mission
three times. Galileo has been in space since 1989 and has some amazing
findings and pictures available on the
JPL website. Truly NASA and JPL's best effort to date."
Did Congress have to force money on NASA? It must be the last sign. I'm going to the bomb shelter.
Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft."
;)
Then again, the public might already be bored with the pics from the probe sent to Pluto in 10 years, with a vastly superior propulsion system which gets it there in one year
.: Max Romantschuk
NASA _fought_ this? WTF?!
Although I certainly won't have first post (having broken the unwritten "don't read the article first" rule), I would like to state that this seems like a good idea to me. I hope they put communications systems in it that will work for another 30 years, as a gift to the future $people_like_me that weren't alive while Pioneer 10 completed its stated mission, yet enjoyed reading about the communications with the spacecraft.
I don't understand the line "Though NASA fought the concept, Congress wrote the money into the space agency's 2003 budget" however. Can someone explain this?
The emperor is naked.
Personally, I'd rather see more money spent on human spaceflight, such as the necessary refitting/redesigning of the shuttles. Probes are great, but Pluto just isn't that exciting to me. It's a small, cold rock. Then again, I guess we don't know for sure until we get a better look at it.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
What really strikes me is the money needed to do this...
Total mission under $504 Mil.
That really isn't bad, there are F1 teams that spend that type of money in one season, and most F1 teams will spend that type of money in two seasons.
You really can't fight any war for that kind of money.
Compared to other things this is quite cheap, if only more people would realise that the prices of space exploration aren't that bad...
Unfortunately, the problems haven't even started yet for this mission.
Pretty much anything going to the outer system must have a radiothermoisotopic battery aboard, which powers the craft by using the warmth of decaying radioactive isotopes. It's too dark for solar cells out there.
And to get out there, probes must use slingshot trajectories around inner system planets, usually including Earth. It is conceivable, if highly improbable, that a navigation error (insert unit conversion joke) would cause the probe to impact Earth instead of passing it by.
In sum, be prepared for a repeat of the Cassini craze.
Featuring a long lost outer solar system probe calling itself "Ne zon"...Due to budget cut backs arising from failing public interests, this film will be funded by automobile company "Nissan" in exchange for exclusive rights of the Star Trek logo which will replace the Nissan logos on all 2005+ vehicles.
well...It couldn't be any worse than Star Trek V.
Nasa's revenge for getting funding forced for the mission.
They'll crash the probe into the planet before getting pictures.
Hmmm, maybe there is some sorta secret Nasa installation on Pluto, maybe that's why Nasa doesn't want the funding for the mission.
Going places where we have not been before. It makes more sense (and is more cost effective) than man marking time in the space station.
The have to do this mission soon while Pluto is in the "warm" part of of its' orbit.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I happen to think I look quite nice in green
the article did't state any objection of nasa other than "the timing is not right".
taking that statment and adding some speculation, i take it to mean that maybe something might be in the path of pluto, or maybe Nasa can't get the flight path presise enough (some little factor might put the probe on a wacky non-plutonian path). I think that the pioneer satelite just left the solar system, so i dont think that is a prolem (nothing like an atmostere on earth to slow you down, unless you belive that weird theory that photons can slow an object.)
A poll I was just reading on AOL. Remember this is voted on by AOL members. The results might surprise you.
Should manned flights into space be halted?
88% No, its our duty to explore space 2,152
12% Yes, the risk of loss of life is too great 285
Total votes: 2,437
Should the funding Nasa gets (currently $14bn per year) be increased?
82% Yes, the benefits space exploration bring are massive 1,964
18% No, far too much money is spent for too little benefit 445
Total votes: 2,409
NOTE: Poll results are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those users who chose to participate.
That, and Bush talked about Project Prometheus in his State of the Union Address. It seems like Bush wants to be remembered for something more than just Iraq.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Because we're not running a nuclear reactor, we don't need any fancy machinery around the radioactive core, and so it can be embedded in extremely tough materials. This stuff makes a black-box recorder look flimsy. The worst damage the plutonium core could do to someone if the rocket exploded on launch would be to land on their head.
Furthermore, plutonium is not the deadliest substance known. While a dangerous alpha-emitter if ingested, and an undeniably toxic heavy-metal, there are far more lethal substances. That honour AFAIK goes to VX nerve gas.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I do wonder if there will be humans left by that time, or humans who arn't fighting against nuclear winter to actually care.
It would be a great shame if the probe goes out there and send back pictures, only to have noone there to recieve them - especially considering that this will be the best chance to observe pluto in gosh knows how many centuries.
Seriously though, why can't Bush just chill out? Warning N. Korea that he may use a pre-emptive nuclear strike? wtf is he THINKING?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
What do politicians care about exploring Pluto?
This is just another superiority assertion by the US government. The fact that NASA was against the mission shows how much the government cares about the opinions of those who will be actually performing the mission.
WTF are we going to find on Pluto? How about that moon that may have a liquid ocean beneath it's surface? (can't remember it's name) It's closer, it will cost lest and happen faster. There's far more potential of finding something interesting.
If you study the engineering behind the radiation sources that the spacecraft use you would see that the darkest of scenarios have been accounted for. Even if the launch vehicle were to explode high in the atmosphere, nothing would happen to the power supply.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
This mission should be shut down through peaceful protests before we all end up glowing green.
This concern is understandable, but uninformed. Refer to this page for a technical explanation of the problem and its solution. There is also a wealth of information here.
I, personally, am more concerned about nuclear-powered Cold War-era spy satellites still orbiting Earth than I am about a 21th-century-technology vehicle to be launched far, far away.
Hello , troll :-)
I was going to go into a long-winded rebuttal of your arguments, but then just did a quick search and copied and pasted the results here.
(And I would have thought that a "CHERNOBYL in space!" would have been the best place to have one, seeing as there's nobody there.)
Seeya!
"The ceramic-form plutonium fuel is heat resistant, thus making it more difficult to be vaporized in case of fire or reentry environmental exposure. The fuel is also very insoluble. It has a low chemical reactivity and breaks in large pieces, not small parts that can be inhaled or ingested. Unlike in nuclear accidents, RTGs cannot explode because no fusion or fission processes are occurring. Hence, the acute radiation sickness associated with nuclear explosions wont be witnessed in an RTG accident."
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
... to go look for small rocks orbiting a bigger rock on the edge of the solar system.
...
The New Horizons spacecraft would be able to detect Pluto satellites down to 0.62 miles (1 kilometer)
Other satellites might have gone unnoticed and, if there, should tell a great deal about planet and comet formation in the outer solar system.
I'd rather see the money used in general R&D on the space ladder or a plane that can make low orbit. Lets get a better and cheaper system for getting things into space first. Then we can send out 1000's of _cheap_ probes to look for this worthless^H^H^H^Hfull information.
That money may not get us a space ladder, but it will get us 500 million dollars closer to it.
Oh the horror: nuclear atoms in space! Probably those nasty hadron-based ones to boot! The entire space can be polluted forever!
This is as serious as those huge deadly pools of dihydrogen monoxide!
We must act now! Help save space! No muclear atoms in space!
Take a look at what Voyager 2 found out about Triton, which it only passed by default.
Pluto is very contrasty, it would be good to find out why that is, too.
I am all for space exploration, and sending probes out on new fact finding missions. Why do we need to send one all the way to Pluto? Is it that much of a concern to us? We know it is a barren icy wasteland, what more do we need? Not to mention it will take it 12 yeaars to get there! I am sure there is much more closer objects and items we could explore that would be more cost effective.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
On NPR a scientist was saying that space station funding and cooperation with Russia was at a standstill because they are helping Iran work towards a nuclear powerplant. So congress wont give them money, then they force money on NASA. That aside, I hate space exploration. I want our problems solved first. Why go out there when we are so busy trying to kill ourselves here? I do not understand the point of exploring space at all, its such a waste of money, time, and resources. I am a geek, and that makes me realize the folly all the more. Until we develop the tech to do it right, Blow it off.
Apparently the idea of the mission is not just ot go where no man has gone before , but
1) Find out about the planet since telescopic pictures are not good enuff..
2)Look out from the near-zero atmosphere of pluto out into space, unhindered but particles of the solar system
Some links here and here about these..... (Rudimentary googling, I am no expert)
It seems is not to go where no man has gone before but
....
1) To get proper pictures of pluto (it seems telescopes are not good enuff
and 2) to get a view of outer space unhindered by the space dust of the solar system
Some links
here and here
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
VX vs. Plutonium.
Yeah, VX wins, but it doesn't hang around for 26,000 years. now if you excuse me, I just did a google search for "plutonium" so I have to go wait for a knock on my door. I'll send you all a postcard from cuba.
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
No need to compare plutonium with nerve gas. A better comparison would be caffeine. Yup, caffeine is more deadly than plutonium.
Ralph Nader made the claim that plutonium was the most toxic substance known. As the page linked to above says, "Dr. Bernard Cohen, went so far as to volunteer to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would caffeine in an attempt to demonstrate the folly of the severe toxicity claims. Mr. Nader refused the challenge."
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
nothing would happen to the power supply
Until it falls to earth, gets picked up by you average shmuck, who then cuts it up and sells the fragemts on eBay as alien spacecraft bits.
There is absolutely *nothing* going on on the ISS that could in any way be considered important (or at least remotely worth the expenses). And Pluto/Kuiper Belt space exploration seems to be pretty pointless, too, I agree with you here.
On the other side, we *have* to make some progress and the only way we know how is "learning by doing". Research should not always be about instant gratification and sometimes solutions to our problems come from unexpected discoveries. There is a very real need to know as much about our universe as we possibly can figure out.
So, we got to remain active on the space thing or else we won't evolve technologically in that area when it would be rewarding in the long run. Now, why that doesn't mean we establish a Moon and/or Mars colony and do some actual space faring instead of sending countless billion-dollar-probes on suicide missions to return almost no useful data - THAT escapes my limited understanding completely.
Can someone enlighten me on that one?
Let's at least build an automated assembly station on the moon (or something like that) so we can launch "mass produced" probes in a more efficient manner. That's because the cost of getting something in space is still a very huge expense because we're way in the stone ages when it comes to propulsion. And in addition, custom-designing and custom-manufacturing of probes is very expensive. Let's just make more, general purpose probes and send have them start from a low gravity place! Let's go to space using a collection of standardized off-the-shelf components! Why not? (This is normally the point where pseudo-experts jump in and rant about complexity of space missions, but keep in mind that the *actual* reason may be because there is a huge industry that has nothing to gain and everything to loose if space exploration would be made cheaper and more efficient. Our civilization is paralyzed by it's inherent corruption, sometimes it seems like we can almost never get anything actually done.)
Not to mention that we've already had an RTG hit the atmosphere at 25,000 mph when the Apollo 13 LEM re-entered, resulting in millions of deaths and global radioactive contamination. Oh sorry, I forgot, it didn't, did it?
How do we develop the tech to 'do it right' without trial and experimentation?
Oh right. So the Wright brothers shouldn't have bothered with that 'Wright Flyer' shit, they should have waited until they could build a 747.
You, sir, are a blithering idiot.
"Information wants to be paid"
Mrraymer, I can totally agree with your point about manned spaceflight, which more than likely explains why NASA was a bit irked about this mission. As another poster stated, they did want the money, but not on a Kuiper belt mission, but on more manned/ISS missions that will boost NASA's prestige and restore public confidence. Then again, there is nothing wrong with a probe exploring a region of our solar system we know next to nothing about. We really haven't had a good look at Pluto or Charon, and if the probe is servicable for years (An improvement on Voyager) it is also likely that such a probe can explore other Kuiper belt objects, like Chiron or Quaoar. Believe me, when NASA beams back photos of stellar objects in our solar system that nobody has ever seen before, it will generate Voyager-esque excitement, in my opinion. So I think it like this: It's a good long term investment for Congress and for NASA. True, NASA is down right now, but it also shows that Congress is willing to back NASA for a 12-20 year mission, and having new exciting studies of Kuiper planetoids will boost not only scientific but public confidence in NASA as well. It's the best you can do aside from a Manned Mission to Mars, and at least if the Kuiper probe fails it won't make the headlines. Remember, Congress needs NASA to stay alive, especially if they want to implement any sort of SDI Missile Defense system. Which also leads me to ponder something else... With Congress throwing money at NASA like this, and with the general scientific and military paranoia concerning Kuiper-belt objects colliding with earth (Ala Armageddon), how much of this mission was based on misguided concern? Well, science IS science, so I won't complain.
Kennedy Kennedy said that we choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Not that I disagree with you about priorities. President Bush Sr. set the Kennedyesque goal of landing humans on Mars by 2019, the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing. I'd say that's on the back burner until we master putting people in Earth orbit and returning them safely to the ground.
Well, I'll just answer your first question: "What do politicians care about exploring Pluto?" For starters, I just want to say that this is not another "superiority assertion" (What!?) by the US Government. Sorry, but the US National Team beating Portugal in the World Cup was more of a "superiority assertion" than taking photographs of Pluto. I don't see how this asserts any superiority aside from scientific knowledge, knowlege that will be shared by the world. My theory on why this mission got the green light is as follows: As I said elsewhere in the forum, there IS a sense of paranoia over Kuiper-belt objects hitting the Earth someday. I know "Armageddon" was an atrociously bad film (How can it get any worse than "Meteor", and it took TWELVE people to write that screenplay!?), but it did give a lot of astromical merit into finding out more about the Kuiper belt. I mean, if it wasn't for that enthusiasm, maybe Quaoar and 2002AW197 would not have been found. Secondly, this is a high-return low-risk venture for NASA. NASA is suffering a bit right now post-Columbia, so a long term 12-20 year mission is a good way to show that Congress is willing to support NASA for the long haul. Furthermore, when you have photos of space objects that people have never seen before, I think it will generate Voyager and Pathfinder levels of excitement and public interest. This will certainly boost the public's confidence with the American public. Finally, and by far the most important reason, is our esteemed President. NASA provides a lot of JOBS to well...You guessed it: Texas and Florida. I think you can do the rest of the math without your calculator now, children.
Consider what is going on, we may be 1/2 dead in 12 years from some moron releasing small pox or something..
That aside, it sounds like a cool endeavor. And while we wont learn much that is practical, expirements just for the sake of science are still good.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Besides the funding issue, the other main problem with New Horizons is the fact that neither of the two launch platforms (Titan 4, Atlas 5) have been certified. They both, however, did launch successfully last fall.
Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects are made out of the stuff that the entire Solar System was formed of. Personally, I find the 'archaeology' of our home star system to be quite interesting, and this could indeed turn up some exciting results.
If we have learned anything from past probes, it's that we'll always learn something we never expected. That prospect is not exciting?
The eternal quest for knowledge and to understand our history is one of the things that makes us what we are.
Anyone out there interested in these figures who still use miles and ciceros?
I don't see value in the shuttle. Its too heavy, too complex for the tiny amount of payload it carries.
We need to explore the solar system, if for nothing else to remind us that research for its own sake is worth doing.
I think this money should be used for, oh I don't know, problems here on *Earth*?? People do not care of pictures from planets which they do not even know where they are. Landed on the moon? So what. Mars? Big deal. People are not as hyped about space as they once were. We need to understand our own planet more.
What the US did in Afghanistan was a *good* thing.
Those people have moved from the 9th century back to the 17th century. If the warlords can be contained, they'll be in the 20th century within 10 years.
"I want our problems solved first."
You seem to be more of a problem than anything.
Oh. Not your personally, but your attitude. With your attitude men would still be living in trees in the indian subcontinent.
The solutions you seek are not where you want them to be.
People move away and let people with courage and vision move ahead.
Unless you're a British general in the first world war, in which case a lot of people get hurt by your optimism.
The space ladder is an engaging idea, but it really is a pipe dream, almost in the Ringworld class. When it's still a massive struggle to build a 400 ft weightless framework, how can you seriously consider building something whose length is three times the diameter of the Earth itself? Not to mention that while we can understand how a space ladder will keep itself aloft, we haven't the beginnings of an idea to fulfill these two big blocks.
1, Grounding the ladder in the first place.
2. What kind of material we can use that can hold the thing together.
Space Ladders today are almost as much of the product of fiction as Ringworld. Maybe, someday, our distant ancestors will figure out ways we can't even think of right now. But that is far enough into the future that a Kuiper Express project isn't going to put a significant delay on it. Spending such money on space ladder research will do nothing but throw money down an unproductive hole.
Thats right, I'm here to give Pitr a run for his money.
evilmoe
It strikes me kind of odd that NASA fought congress about the Pluto/Kuiper Probe. Science is science, space is space, Their giving NASA the money, what's the problem?
The only conclusion i can come up with is that
NASA wanted money for something else. That and perhaps congress wanted to get a signal to NASA. "Hey NASA, try building something that'll last for a while, something that you don't have to strip and rebuild every time. It'll give you practice, and with that practice you can put that experience into making better, more reliable shuttles."
I read that Bush signed off on nuclear engines a bit ago, basically paving the way for a missle defense system or some such. (memory's sketchy, but i believe that's the case) I'm surprised that NASA wouldn't try to develop those engines and incorperate them into the pluto probe. It'd make the journey faster and it'd be a good way to test-drive them.
In any case, NASA needs a project like this. No doubt, the pioneer 10 misson was very exciting to see. Old tech still kicking and doing it's job way longer then it was expected to. That tells me that NASA really knew how to build things that l-a-s-t back in the day.
There's hardly any info on Pluto to begin with, and the only pictures we have are fuzzy distant images or artists' conceptions. I'd really like to see actual pictures of pluto up-close-and-personal myself.
All in all, if NASA works on this hard, and there's no hangups, this probe should last a good long time.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Slipshod research has come up with lots of claims on both sides, and statements about blood pressure, radioactive urinem and eye abnormality are compared to healthy US citizens, not healthy russian citizens.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
And in addition, custom-designing and custom-manufacturing of probes is very expensive. Let's just make more, general purpose probes and send have them start from a low gravity place! Let's go to space using a collection of standardized off-the-shelf components! Why not?
Because even though the cost of the probes is high, much of the costs are in the launch and the people manning the uplink to the probe make up the lions share of the costs (just launching can be more than half the entire budget). Since the launches are so expensive any probe launched which doesn't perform is a waste of the money spent to get it into orbit.
I don't think simply making numerous cheap probes and spending many millions of dollars to throw them into an orbit to often fail would be better on the budget than the current method.
One way to overcome this is to have NASA focus on reducing the cost/kg of launch systems by pursuing alternate launch methods. Doing this could have a significant effect on both scientific and commercial use of LEO and beyond.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
Assuming that wasn't a troll:
:-)
Yes, it's very expensive to loft stuff into earth orbit, and even more expensive to get it to cislunar space. But unless we can find our raw materials on the moon, we're still going to have to lift the same mass out of earth's gravity. In fact, we'll have to lift more, to allow for manufacturing waste, mistakes, spares and so on.
Plus we'll have to loft the manufacturing equipment itself, which is likely to be very heavy (even more so once you include the power supply, comms gear for remote control, material handling gear, etc). Even if you can mine all your raw materials right there on the moon (so add mining gear, smelting and refining apparatus and so on), you're going to have to launch thousands of probes before you start to make a weight saving.
So all in all, it seems best to do the work on earth, where we can take our time making sure that we loft the absolute minimum weight we can get away with.
Of course, once we have a manned station on Titan...
Let's do it!
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
So, is this like a trick question or what?
-Styopa
They made fools of the US, and a threat in general, they should be punished severely or other pinhead countries will see it as open season on this country, and others.
There is a difference in being a bully, and protecting your turf.
Oil resources is a factor I admit, but its down low on the list.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nader talking out of his rear?
Never!
There needs to be a mod for nonexpert-blowing-posteriorized-smoke!
Having seen the goop that was modded way up as I scanned this, I feel compelled to reply to several messages at once:
Change that to "we suspect..." and please read/internalize a quote from Werner Von Braun: "Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." Go grab a copy of Heinlein's remarks on receiving heart surgery that was a byproduct of the space age. Research incidental discoveries of every planetary fly-by we've done (every one taught us something noteworthy). Try to find the tenuous links between exploration and discoveries. And stop spouting off opinions with the wrong verb. (I deleted an extensive flame, questioning westyvw's parentage and marvelling at his ability to exist without the brains normally needed for autonomic activity)If I'm not mistaken, there aren't a lot of Al Qaeda space launches. In fact, I see a pretty strong link between hateful regimes and the utter lack of money spent on basic research in any humanitarian or scientific field. A lot has been learned in pursuit of warlike activities, admittedly, but just because we can't bend these backwaters' worldthink to our enlightened ways, doesn't mean we should sit around and wait for them to agree with us before we continue advancing.
Still, by your logic, I'd at least prioritize. TV, Brittney Spears, novels, the arts, all sports, all cuisine and restaurants, and a few dozen other pursuits are a greater waste of time than scientific research. Live an ascetic life and then come back telling me that the money can be better spent elsewhere. Oh, and your 'net connection... no, make that anything electronic you own... are all forfeit unless needed in a specific mission to combat death and despotism worldwide.
I hope the above paragraph is the stupidest, scariest thing you've ever read. Your belief has an underlying kernel of truth that can best be laid bare by just thinking of the absurdity of self-denial until everyone else in the world stops being so wrong-headed. Like communism, it's a nobel (a freudian typo?... I meant noble) idea that so far fails in every implementation.
Developing the 'tech to do it right' without practice is impossible and absurd. Heck, even in modern times, new boat designs have sunk fresh out of the drydock. We explore, we learn, and we stretch into the most unfamiliar areas first because they sometimes reveal deeper questions we didn't even know we should ask. Also we spend years dissecting the failures for lessons and improvements.
Who the FSCK modded this up (as insightful) to a 5??
--------
In a followup, thasmudyan suggests we skip the unmanned cheap exploration and instead set up a mars colony, then contradicts him/herself by suggesting that the space station is worthless in paragraph one and then suggesting that we set up a probe assembly and launch point on the moon. The space station has a shallower gravity well and a more forgiving landing/linkup point than the moon. In other words, it is an attempt to build a staging point for space research. That having been said, if it costs thousands per pound just for fuel to get away from the earth (and about half as much for fuel to land on the moon and relaunch it), how inexpensive will it be to build a semiconductor fab, ship pig-iron, build a machinist shop, have a full suite of materials testing and QA devices, etc etc etc lofted into space? For a long time to come, the most we can hope for is reusability and assembling things prebuilt and tested down here where everything's available and shipping costs are 1e5 cheaper.
As for thasmudyan's belief that there's potentially a conspiracy to keep space travel expensive, I find all the kennedy-assassination theories more plausible. The cost of escaping earth's gravity is so high, you can pay an engineer for ten years and spend less than lofting him into space. There isn't a techie alive that wouldn't love to see those numbers brought down to a level that makes a week in space affordable. It matters to most of us much more than mere money ever could. Getting thousands of geeks to remain silent about ways to drop those costs would be impossible. Space travel remains expensive not out of a conspiracy, but simply because it is that hard, that iffy, that expensive.
If you don't believe me, you don't understand the technical extremes we're talking about here. Check again the ongoing postmortem of Columbia's failed reentry, and imagine building any device (no matter how simple) that performs well under these extremes of heat and cold. If it seemed easy, find any 1 thing that performs well both immersed in liquid nitrogen and exposed to a blowtorch. Last of all, imagine building something complex enough to support life for days and still withstand those two thermal extremes, plus a thousand other issues like extreme acceleration forces, radiation, hard vacuum, repeated hot/cold cycling for anything going in/out of unfiltered sunlight, etc., etc., etc. This complexity is why we have the phrase "It isn't rocket science."
-----
Thankfully, the anti-nuke protest was modded down low enough I only saw responses. Hospitals and highway departments have nastier stuff than the 'nuclear batteries' used to power probes. If I were Roblimo, anyone saying 'chernyobl in space' without a new argument would immediately have all karma stripped. If I were king, they'd get flogged.
That aside, I hate space exploration. I want our problems solved first.
Yeah, because nothing useful
has ever come
from space research. Jesus man, science for the sake of science is what got our civilization to the advanced state is in today. You don't know the impact space technology has had on your and my life.
Until we develop the tech to do it right, Blow it off.
Yeah, Nasa oughta just sit on their asses until one day the one true idea strikes them and they figure out how to do it right. This is how they figure out how to do it.
.
"Take this funding and stick it in Uranus"
simply because:
.02
(a) the public in general isn't too fascinated in astronomy to begin with
-and-
(b) the public has come to expect those beautiful Hubble space images, when looking at images from space.
The stuff coming back from Pluto and the belt are gonna be quite boring to anyone but the most astute planetary observer (amateur and professional).
Not that there isnt scientific merit, but I just don't see the public being interested. When the first images of Saturn and Jupiter came back way back when, no one had ever seen images from space like that, and those planets are amazing to look at, even in tiny backyard telescopes. Plus science didn't allow for much analsysis beyond what was visual. Now, scientists know far more about Pluto than they new about those other planets when visual images were so important.
Its just a different time.
just my
jeff
The whole point of PFF/PKE (Pluto Fast Flyby, renamed Pluto/Kuiper Express, and now renamed again) was to launch early enough and travel fast enough to get there before Pluto's atmosphere freezes. It's fairly likely this has already happened, and almost a certainty by the time the probe gets there. Shame this project got overlooked and delayed so many times, since next chance will be in about two hundred years.
...who thought that 'Kuiper' was just a horrible way to spell 'Jupiter'?
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Better bring a flash. It's tough to tell the Sun from the other stars at that distance.
Thanks for losing CONTOUR, APL.
>I am a geek
Then you've just shattered the stereotype.
>I hate space exploration. I want our problems solved first
I can't think of a better way to do an objective analysis than to stand back a few million miles...
Our problems, in no order...
Starvation, disease, poverty, environment, war...
To those I offer, genetically modified organisms to feed people in the otherwise dried up holes of the earth....Vaxines to keep -too many- people from dying at once (death is necessary, however).... Environmental destruction and war are a by-product of the wealthy aquiring and maintaining their wealth...which is a social problem, not a technical one.....
So how exactly would YOU fix "our problems"?
It may be a surprise to people, but a Pluto mission is not a high priority for a lot of planetary scientists. There are many other targets that they would like to focus their attention on. The resurrection of the Pluto mission has been largely due to constituents telling their representatives that they consider it a high priority!
(Also, a lot of people in NASA and the community would rather do the mission using nuclear electric propulsion, since the mission would arrive at Pluto much more quickly. But, that technology is not expected to be mature until the end of the decade.)
Last year planetary scientists drew up their "Decadal Survey" which is basically a list of planetary exploration priorities for the next decade. (Congress wanted the list, and will probably consider it a "checklist" of what they should fund for the next ten years.) It's subject to changes based on new findings, but it gives a good idea of what scientists want to focus on. They did eventually decide to include this mission on the list. But, they didn't name it the "Pluto-Kuiper Belt Explorer;" they named it the "Kuiper Belt-Pluto Explorer." Kuiper Belt objects in general are considered important, and Pluto stands out merely because it's the largest of that population of objects.
If you'd like to get a feeling for what planetary scientists want to fly over the next few years, skim that documents. There's some very cool plans in there.
- A friendly neighborhood astrophysicist
You are an idiot.
"Plutonium is the deadliest substance known to man -- and it could be vaporized in the atmosphere, resulting in dangerously high radiation exposures and irradiating the planet."
ahh no it is not the deadliest substance know to man. It is not even the most toxic. The deadlliest substance know to man is man. Plutonium is a not all that radioactive. It is an alpha emmiter. You can sheild your self from it with cardboard. It is a heavy metal like lead. You do not really want to inhale it or breath it in.
"This mission, if gone awry, could mean YOU could have mutant kids much like parents in Belarus and Ukraine do now. This mission should be shut down through peaceful protests before we all end up glowing green."
I think there are 2 year olds that have a better understanding of science than you do. The US, Russia, France, China, and the UK have tested nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. These tests have generated many many many times the radioactive fall out that the RTG could in a worse case failure. While those tests did rate 9 on the bad idea meter. The did not cause the issues that you are claiming. Nor did Cherynobel.
You are a fool, ill informed, panic prone fool. Please go back to worring about chem trails or trying to figure out how the US faked going to the moon.
for new fast propultion systems that will one day propel comercial spacecraft to jupitor in less than a year.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You want a car with a genuine manufacturer-installed star trek logo?
Buy an acura.
The acura "A" looks mighty similar...
There are so many other completely uninformed spaceflight comments on this article and others that its not even funny. Many of them are rated +4 or +5.
To anybody reading this, please be extremely careful interpretting what is written about spaceflight on Slashdot. Most of the highly-rated comments are deeply, deeply flawed, and usually made by clearly uninformed people. The problem is that the moderators see things that look intelligent, but they don't have sufficient background to realize that the comments are bogus. Most of the responses to these comments are really poor, too, even though they look like insightful or informed rebuttals.
There are so many that I've given up and stopped replying to them. Most of the other people I know who are involved with space exploration have, also.
NASA's not saying don't give them money. They are however saying given the relative frequency of getting people into near orbit as aposed to say exploratory missions, they feel it'd be nixing the issue to get money for but not both. Sorta like getting money to fix your house and due repairs and what have you as aposed to getting a new car but not both.
That being said, NASA would much rather spend this money on something that will show direct results quickly. The Pluto mission will not have any results until 2015 when the probe finally reaches the planet. I'm sure that scientifically NASA doesn't mind going forward with a Pluto mission but from a budget standpoint they would rather have used the money for something else.
-- Find the Truth...
The prime value of manned space flight currently is in engaging young imaginations. I'm sure we do get more scientific value, more cheaply, from unmanned probes. But kids want to be astronauts when they grow up, not mission monitors for unmanned probes. Obviously most such kids don't become astronauts, but at least some stay in the field, and end up working on unmanned scientific missions.
The astronauts are a bait for luring kids into the science and engineering professions.
As they mature, the unmanned missions will become more interesting and motivation. Within my memory, only Sputnik and Sojourner grabbed attention near that of astronauts, with Laika and Voyager (and possibly a Lunar surveyer) following right behind.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft.
Well, the public was fascinated by Pioneer way back in the day, then they were fascinated by Voyager in the 80s and then in the '90s we were fascinated by Sojourner/Pathfinder, so yeah, we probably will be fascinated by PFF/PKE/whatever they're calling this thing right now. There's always a large portion of the populace that thinks space pictures are cool. Especially kids and nerds, and those will always be a large segment of the populace.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Incidentially, it was also found to be impossible to keep the s/c powered without nuclear power (batteries would weigh too much -- on the order of thousands of tons -- as would fly wheels; fuel cells also weighed many tons; the sun would be too far away to use solar panels past Jupiter).
Amen to that. Individual satellites are expensive, as a friend in the Canadian Space Agency told me, mainly due to the R&D and construction of one-shot fabrication equipment. Imagine introducing assembly-line style mass production and modular designs to satellite construction. Sure, each individual satellite may be less effective than the current idea of custom-building, but a thousand less-effective mass production satellites may be more effective than a single custom satellite. I'm certain the idea has crossed the minds of others, I'm not claiming it to be original. :)
And as for launches, what about Earth-based mass drivers? A google search turns up tons of concept art sketches and PhD-level papers. Does anyone have anything easier to understand for someone with a liberal-arts-undergrad level of physics knowledge, with regard to current research on them?
Offtopic, but it would be nice if there were a dumbing-down checkbox on Google. "I want searches in the range of: 1) Grade school 2) High school 3) College 4) Richard Feynman."
Congress forced NASA to take money from other programs and spend it on PKE... PKE didn't add any money to the budget. PKE is a pork barrel project for a certain lab in Maryland from a certain senator in Maryland.... That's not to say that a certain other lab in California wouldn't take pork barrel projects if they could get one, but California's senators are anti-space.... PKE is NASA's Osprey or Seawolf submarine.
You bet. Surely mankind can only spend money on one space mission at a time.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
It's also unbelievably unlikely that a s/c would re-enter the earth's atmosphere on a gravity assist as many people would be tracking it as it approached and be able to correct any orbit errors with time to spare.
Thats right!
I insist we send cease and desist letters to the Sun IMMEDAITELY! The sun's nuclear program cannot be allowed to continue in space. ALERT THE UN. PASS A TREATY! DO SOMETHING NOW! It contains more radiation than all our nuclear weapons COMBINED! MAKE IT STOP!
NO NUKES IN SPACE!
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go tilt with a windmill--er dragon
Cthulhu for president!
Oh, and the link you gave is little more than some half-wit's pro-atomic power website. It provides no independent references to the validity of it's claims or to the supposed challenge given to Ralph Nader. Tell you what, I'll take this "Dr." Cohen's challenge and ingest twice the amount of caffeine as his ingested plutonium. Doubt he'll take me up on the offer though.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I was on the verge of losing my lunch over the sheer absurdity and small-mindedness of responses in this thread. Thank you for your post.
He will join Stephen King and FreeBSD.
still interested is... I think that if NASA can manage to actually NOT fuck everything up then that would be a personal triumph for them... what a bunch of overpaid fuckups
The real danger is from inhalation; that's why they wear hazmat suits and use waldoes when machining plutonium.
:)
LD_50 for caffeine is 10 grams. Pu is about 20 grams per cc. A 20 gram chunk of caffeine has a 75% chance of dropping you dead; a solid chunk of Pu the size of a marble would be through you in a day. Swallow it with a full stomach and some Ex-Lax. You might get some burns in your GI tract.
Doubling the dose of caffeine cuts in half the probability of survival; doubling the dose of Pu increases the surface area of the Pu by less than 2, so Pu scales better. At least until critical mass is reached.
If someone put a gun to my head and made me choose, I'd go with the plutonium. As long as it's a solid chunk, and the mass is more than 20 grams (someone has survived a dose of 24 grams of caffeine, but people have died from less than 4 grams).
There are two reasons why the Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission team wants to reach Pluto and Charon as soon as possible. The first has to do with Pluto's atmosphere: Since 1989, Pluto has been moving farther from the Sun, getting less heat every year. As Pluto gets colder we expect its atmosphere will "freeze out," so we want to arrive while there is a chance to "see" a thicker atmosphere.
The second reason is to map as much of Pluto and Charon as possible. On Earth, the North Pole and other areas above the Arctic Circle have half a year of night and half a year of daylight. In the same way, parts of Pluto or Charon never see the Sun. The longer we wait, the more of Pluto and Charon are shadowed in the "arctic night," impeding the spacecraft's ability to take pictures in reflected sunlight.
An opportunity to launch to Pluto by way of Jupiter occurs in January 2006. From Earth, the spacecraft will head to Jupiter, arriving just over a year later. The spacecraft will pass through the Jupiter system at 50,000 mph, ending up on a path that will arrive at Pluto and Charon as early as 2015.
I hate to sound like one of those "all this money could be better spent on...." folks, but from a practical perspective, we really need a moonbase. It's an investment in future space exploration, like ISS is supposed to be, but with a purpose. Once we have a decent moonbase we should be able to launch planetary explorations much more frequently and for lower cost. Or so I've been told.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft."
This is coming from my astronomy professor at Cornell (who is a major NASA player, directing the Rover missions, etc). He says that Pioneer, while amazingly sucessful in terms of science, was never veyr sucessful to the public because it's camera were pretty crappy. They produced pictures that were not much better than the best ground-based telescopes of the day. Voyager capitalized on this and was given high-def cameras.
Pictures are among the less important tools on those spacecraft (again, according to a prof), where the radiation scopes, temperature, etc are much more important.
For a good example of this, look at the first probe to make it to Mars - Mariner 9 (9, right?). It finally reached Mars after years of failures, only to arrive during a global dust storm! The public interest was quickly wanned.
The ORION project from the dark ages would have put *humans* that far out in not much more than a year.
If the US actually goes through with building the new small nukes, ORION might be feasible.
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
"This complexity is why we have the phrase "It isn't rocket science.""
Rocket science is easy. It's rocket engineering that's a bitch. ;)
From ApolloSaturn.com "The five F-1 engines [Saturn V] equal 160,000,000 horsepower, about double the amount of potential hydroelectric power that would be available at any given moment if all the moving waters of North America were channeled through turbines." That's an engineering problem.
Sure, that's why everyone who handles plutonium either does so wearing hazmat suits or remotely via robotic arms. 'Cause it so harmless. You are a brainless twit.
Actually, you are the brainless twit. Plutonium mostly emits alpha particles, big, heavy particles. They are blocked by most anything, including the epidermis. Therefore, holding a piece of plutonium won't do much of anything to you, unless you keep it on your person for a long time. Uranium is even less radioactive. (Uranium is less radioactive than uranium ore, which is used in fiestaware plates.)
It provides no independent references to the validity of it's claims or to the supposed challenge given to Ralph Nader. Tell you what, I'll take this "Dr." Cohen's challenge and ingest twice the amount of caffeine as his ingested plutonium. Doubt he'll take me up on the offer though.
Wow, somebody didn't check his facts before he went off. Here is the link to a web page with Dr. Cohen's Eco-Fuck Challenge. And it's a University of Wisconsin site, as well, so don't try saying it's "a half wit's pro-atomic power website."
In addition, it talks about the exposure of several workers in the 1940's to doses of Pu that are now considered above the lethal dose.
Ok, how do you explain that? These workers had cancer rates lower than average despite ingesting larger than lethal quantities of plutonium Now how exactly is it the most lethal substance in existence?
There we go, another anti-nuclear unscientific crazy debunked. Only 500 million to go.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
VX [ilpi.com] vs. Plutonium.
Yeah, VX wins, but it doesn't hang around for 26,000 years. now if you excuse me, I just did a google search for "plutonium" so I have to go wait for a knock on my door. I'll send you all a postcard from cuba.
Hmm. I was under the impression that chemically stable compounds lasted forever. I thought that plutonium was pretty good just because it decayed. In 26000 years, the VX will still be there.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Ouch! I am an order of magnitude off. One of the other posters mentioned Oprah Winfrey's 50M house.. that's probably what I recall seeing on the supermarket tabloid. I only remembered it seemed insane to me, but then, when I see the Forbes list of people worth billions, I see my resources about like a flea on the rump end of a horse. For a guy who first "came online" when really nice houses were going for $20,000, but you could pick up an average one for under $10,000, *all* real estate today seems to me to be priced insanely high. I see those tabloids at the supermarket detailing how much money people have to spend on something like a house, and it frightens me to no end, as I, as an engineer, do not have near the amount of currency to compete with that. Those figures are astronomical, as far as I am concerned.
But still, I should have researched that one before posting.. I do not take pride in being an order of magnitude off.
This is a little off-topic, but when I first got into engineering, it was my hope that through the efforts of applied science, we could better the situation for the people at large, by eliminating drudgery ( keeping things clean, building things, etc. ) and put an end once and for all to this insane 40 hour weeks where humans toil from dawn to dusk, most of us doing nothing really useful.
So, now we live in a day where our clothes are mass-manufactured and washed for us, our meals are pre-prepared and microwaved at the precise moment our delivered entertainment arrives, all of this at a rock-bottom price made possible through mass replication. But did this help us? Much to my dismay, it did not seem like it did... we just find more ways to entrap ourselves in busywork so we can come up with more and more money to support the non-producers in exhorbitant lifestyles.
We still work those 40 hour weeks... By my estimate, this should have been knocked down to 8-hour weeks by now. Earth is a paradise - we should be enjoying life - not working from dawn to dusk doing something we would rather not be doing every day. We have our needs taken care of. But now we have insane prices for taxes and just somewhere to live. I keep seeing individuals aggregating billions of dollars in the tabloids, yet seeing how difficult it is for me to even generate an retirement account because every time I earn anything at all, it gets reported to the government and taxed away. The government has shown me time and time again that its futile to try to earn anything over a certain subsistence level.
Please excuse the rant, if it taken as such, this is just the musings of an old disappointed engineer who thought the way to make life better for all was through design. One who is very disappointed with how we are filling the landfills of earth with junk that never was supposed to have been, only in the name of ever increasing consumption designed in the name of economics - and keeping the populace busy buying the same stuff over and over and over.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
All these worlds are yours
except Europa.
Attempt NO landings there.
Use them together,
use them in peace.
Maybe this is only significant because we all grew up believing there were nine.
Damn, if I didn't have one of my rare modded-to-5 posts directed at this nimrod, I'd sure like to burn my own modpoints giving you a prop for this one.
That's one of the cleverest/funniest and most short-n-to-the-point things I've read lately. And, I tend to be a big proponent of spaceflight just because I hate to think we're too at-risk for extinction if we all sit on this one rock and get on each others nerves waiting for a big asteroid. Either way, we are the old cliche: 'all our eggs in one basket'.
Again, thanks!
(anyone out there got modpoints to burn? Read my msg's parent #5395267)
To build a planetary probe you need to be able to build/extract/refine...
Until the cost of getting off Earth gets much lower, the capital cost of launching all the equipment and personnel necessary to run the kind of moon base you're talking about is going to be so massive as to be beyond the discretionary resources of even the US government for a while.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
While I appreciate that keeping the engineering teams trained is a good thing and I'm in no way against this particular mission, I was wondering if you could please clarify what you're saying here.
Specifically, is there any reason why the engineering teams need to be trained up on a mission going to the Kuiper belt? There's hardly a lack of current and future JPL missions that involve sending probes to other bodies in the Solar System.
Wow! Even a blind STUPID FUCK can find a corn now and then.
You had one bright innsight and then you had to prove how STUPID you are again.
Look, the RTGs of the ALSEP unit from Apollo 13 were still in the LEM when the ship came back. The ALSEP, and its RTGs, came screaming in at the Pacific ocean at about 420 miles a minute; that is fast enough to go through the sensible atmosphere in about 6 seconds. Though sensors were looking out for it, no trace of the Pu-238 from the RTGs was ever detected; the cores of the units went to the bottom of the ocean, intact.
You could not make those units any safer if you tried.
Yeah, a unit made of solid oxide ceramic with multiple refractory coatings on top of it, and encased in solid-state thermoelectric converters and finally enclosed in a radiator, is going to blow up due to a bad weld. Somehow, it will do this despite having no source of stress and no internal pressure. Right. Sure. Uh-huh.Dammit, Slashdot needs a "-1, Clueless" moderation.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Bigger F1 teams probably generate more money than those movies yes...
F1 in in no way comparable to NASCAR.
More money, real technological competition, more money spent...
The Stock you refer to does not cover the whole McLaren F1 organisation.
Maybe you should read up on this industry..
genetically modified organisms? Are you serious? The history so far of this is to kill off important species that are needed to keep the plants growing! We find genetic drift that kills the polinators. Hows that help? We discover that plants grow better with the heavy use of synthetic fertalizers that we later discover robs the soil of nutrients we need. If anything we need to reduce our population. Not try and reengineer our science for how to grow more food. It has not worked and probably will never work.