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Messenger Spacecraft Prepared for Mercury
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's first orbiter to the planet Mercury is shown today in cut-away, revealing the parasol design that will protect it from intense heat. Twenty layers of aluminized Kapton will be its sunshade. Curiously since the innermost planet is so close to the Sun, the Mercury mission itself will look for (cometary) water-ice preserved on the less baked north pole."
This image beautifully illustrates the multilayered approach the team devised to fend off the excess heat while the spacecraft is near Mercury
Are we looking a the same picture?
This is not an informative image.
It could just as well be Fruit Fucker Prime with a tarp over it.
Impressive technology. Abysmal photography.
The rover would have to move continuously to stay in the correct temperature zone. So you would need to know in advance that you could travel round a significant part of the circumference without encountering obstacles.
It would obviously have to stay in the dark because any level of sunshine would overheat it. So it would never see a sunrise or sunset. It would just crawl sadly around staying in the zone that current electronics and motors can handle (say -25 to 70C) until the batteries ran down (no solar power, you see.)
Who modded this interesting?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
(Just proof that any dumb @$$ can get elected in America...ooooh, pretty shiney!)
Yup. And Clinton got elected twice!
I'm really surprised at the Slashdot crowd. Understandably some are upset at the decision to stop funding Hubble. Others are upset that Bush wants a moon shot before a Mars shot. Still others are quite upset about the lack of tech jobs. But I figured that any president that was for NASA spending would be supported here. Sure, Bush isn't the greatest president - he should have gotten out of NAFTA and tried to reverse the trend for the one-world economy to help save American jobs. But Clinton was the one that signed on to NAFTA.
Complaining about gas prices? No one wanted Bush to drill for oil in the Alaskan refuge. I don't know that we would have been self-sufficient for oil (mostly because we have few refineries and we don't know how much oil is there). However, we're now owned by OPEC. Not to mention the environmentalists that force us to have many different varieties of gasoline manufactured and imported to meet the environmental laws. We did it to ourselves, folks. Bush was smart to shy away from the Kyoto treaty. Environmental devices to reduce air pollution are expensive - so companies are either going to pass the cost along to you or look for cheaper labor that, again, may affect you. Capitalism should drive a market - good old supply and demand. Unions drive up the cost of labor which sometimes drives those industries out of the country. (Look at the coal and steel industries that are all but defunct now. They were thriving up until the '80s and '90s, respectively.)
There will NEVER be a day when there is a utopian heaven on Earth. There will always be corruption, war, famine, greed and every other problem that is born from human failings. Earth's persistant failure to become a paradise is not a valid reason to postpone space exploration. And in 200 years, your great-great-great-great grandchildren will be saying "There is no reason to explore the Oort clouds until all problems on Earth have been solved....." With that attitude, we needn't have even bothered climbing out of the ocean. "There is no use exploring the land until there is enough plankton for everybody...." And it isn't as though vast amounts of money are being spent on space exploration. We spend a hell of a lot more on porkbarrel projects and foreign misadventures that won't have any sort of meaningful return at all. At least we get some knowledge and wonderment out of the deal.
You're absolutely right, thanks for correcting me!