Atlas 5 Rocket Set to Launch Pluto Probe

tmerrill writes "An unprecedented mission to the outer edges of our solar system is set to launch in 4 days, despite a launch delay. From the article: 'NASA's first spacecraft to visit the planet Pluto is set to launch no earlier than Jan. 17 atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a decade-long trip to the fringe of the Solar System ... In order to reach Pluto by 2015, the $650 million New Horizons mission must lift off this month in order to swing by Jupiter for a gravity boost. The probe's 35-day launch window, however, stretches until Feb. 14. The launch window opens on Jan. 11. Inspections of the probe's Atlas 5 booster prompted mission managers to push their launch target to no earlier than Jan. 17, NASA officials said.'" The New York Times has details as well.

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[eldavojohn]

I should start by saying that there's a wealth of information out online about Lockheed Martin's Atlas V.

The article gave a link to www.space.com but if you want the source of this information, you should go to Spaceflight Now for their informative diagrams. You can get an idea of how the vehicle actually breaks apart to deliver its payload. You can read about how they plan to retrieve the boosters from the ocean, the simulated views of onboard cameras, or previous Atlas launches. This site contains for more information than the one listed in the article.

If you're interested in payload sizes, check out Wikipedia's entries on this topic or the International Launch Service's documentation of preparation for Atlas V launches.

and my name is on it!

[moabsoftware]

My name is on some medium again (DVD ?).
I hope they get this one right, because last time my name was on a CD, they messed up Metres/Miles.

Pluto Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

John: Pluto? Who gives a shit about Pluto? Who the fuck is this?
George: This is US President George W. Bush, and I am in charge here.
John: Oh you're in charge? Well I got news for you *George*, from up here it doesn't look like you're in charge of jack shit.
George: You listen to me you little asshole--!
John: Asshole? I'm not the one who just got butt-fucked on national TV, George!

ObFuturama

[Cally]

Have a good one!

The mission

[Bad D.N.A.]

Info on the mission can be found at:
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Where's the obvious reply?

[No2Gates]

How come no one posted about visiting Uranus?

Re:Where's the obvious reply?

[Anonymous Coward]

Atlas 5 Rocket Set to Probe Uranus.

Re:Where's the obvious reply?

[Scarletdown]

That joke works a little better if it is worded, "How come no one posted about probing Uranus?"

And bring on the Futurama quotes now...

Re:Where's the obvious reply?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time they get around to probing Uranus it will be called Urectum!

Is that what you were looking for?

Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[spineboy]

Atlas V generates a peak 4 meganewton thrust. The old Saturn V(apollo booster) generated up to 35MN, and could deliver up to 120,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.

Sigh... were the Moon landings a technological feat, never to be duplicated?

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[flyingsquid]

Atlas V generates a peak 4 meganewton thrust. The old Saturn V(apollo booster) generated up to 35MN, and could deliver up to 120,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. Sigh... were the Moon landings a technological feat, never to be duplicated?

The moon landings were primarily a result of a Cold War need to upstage the Soviets, and not some great fascination with technology and engineering on the part of the White House. Now that the USSR is history, there's no longer that same justification for moon shots or similar stunts.

And who cares how big the rocket is? Apollo did make some important discoveries about the geology of the moon. But I think sending people back to the moon for a photo op is vastly less interesting than strapping a tiny rover atop of a small booster and sending it to look for life on Mars. These modest, unmanned missions are where all the real science is.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[LurkerXXX]

And who cares how big the rocket is?

With a SaturnV you coud send a rover big enough that it wouldn't get hung up in 6" of sand like one of the Mars Rovers did. You could send a lot more instrumentation up to examine more aspects of whatever you are looking at.

There are other uses for big rockets than just sending humans into space.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[pallmall1]

But I think sending people back to the moon for a photo op is vastly less interesting than strapping a tiny rover atop of a small booster and sending it to look for life on Mars.

Maybe, but what if we launched the rover from the moon, like the Chinese will be doing by the time the New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto? It would be interesting to see how big a payload an Atlas launched from the lunar surface could carry.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[4D6963]

Mod parent up

It is to be regretted that 40 years ago we had a rocket more powerful than any of the ones we got now. Actually I've been quite surprised to hear that we had nothing as powerful as a Saturn V, it's like, going technologically backwards, although if you look at the problem from close, we were lucky not to have any problem with Saturn V's and the context was much different (and allowed such gigantic rockets to be invested in).

And yeah as you said, big rockets like Saturn V ain't all about manned missions, they could be about sending much bigger probes. Who knows, if we had tried to develop really more powerful rockets, maybe we could have sent a probe to Pluto with some much energy in it to slow down enough to get in orbit around Pluto, but you can imagine anything that you could send to space with bigger rockets.

Btw, as for Bush's plan to return to the Moon, are we going to have to make rockets as powerful as the Saturn V?

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[r00t]

Life on Mars? Damn, we sure do pour money into that fantasy. Meanwhile, we neglect all sorts of interesting things that could be explored.

We did Viking 1 and Viking 2 ages ago. Then, we go back with something modern, and we try out a neat new landing system. Cool. We crash a polar lander.

Then what? Do we try the polar lander again? No. We wimp out. We send two more rovers (been there, done that...) and plan to send many more. Arrrgh!!!! Elsewhere in our Solar system...

• All we have from the surface of Venus is some super-crappy pictures the USSR took. Radar images and chemistry point to the possibility of rain made from bismuth or maybe lead. Wouldn't it be great to research that a bit?
• Mercury lander
• Pluto lander
• Charon lander
• Martian moon lander -- there are two moons BTW.
• the many moons of Jupiter, Saturn, etc.

But hey, we can't let the Chinese or Indians set foot on our Martian land before we do!

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[sconeu]

A Saturn V launched Skylab in one piece.

What's the biggest launcher out of Russia? Doesn't Energia have something close to the capability of an S-V?

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[m50d]

Sigh... were the Moon landings a technological feat, never to be duplicated?

There was no great technological achievement. The saturn V is a demonstration that if you throw enough money at it, you can usually do what you want. Price/performance the atlas has it beat by probably an order of magnitude.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[corngrower]

From what I understand, you are correct. The Atlas is very lightwieght for the amount of payload it sends up. This is because the design is based on the fact that a pressurized pop can can support far more weight than an unpressurized pop can. The fuel & oxidizer tanks of the Atlas are pressurized, allowing the booster to be very light weight but still be able to support a substantial payload. Saturn V didn't use this design.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[corngrower]

... were the Moon landings a technological feat, never to be duplicated?

Yeah, 'cause we all know that in order for something to be more technically advanced, it has to be bigger. That's how come modern computers are so much more primitive than the ENIAC.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[rubycodez]

are you suggesting a lander on venus or mercury? It likely is way beyond our technological means to make machinery that could operate under such conditions.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Waffle Iron]

This is because the design is based on the fact that a pressurized pop can can support far more weight than an unpressurized pop can.

The balloon tanks were cool, but they're not used on the Atlas V:

The newest version of Atlas, the Atlas V, is an Atlas in name alone as it contains little Atlas technology. It no longer uses balloon tanks nor 1.5 staging, but incorporates a rigid framework for its first stage booster much like the Titan family of vehicles.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[ianguy]

These modest, unmanned missions are where all the real science is.

Yes, for now, but we must always be pushing towards the goal of manned space exploration, since the human race could theoreticaly outlive Earth if we are able to leave.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[sploxx]

...deliver up to 120,000 pounds into low Earth orbit

I'm a SI units guy, but isn't a pound about 0.5kg?

According to the Wikipedia entry, it could lift more like 120 tons (metric) to orbit, i.e. the double amount(!)

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[corngrower]

My bad. I see where it uses a Russian designed engine as well.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Zen Punk]

Uhhh....the same exact amount? I think you'll find that the moon is in the same solar orbit as we are, so you aren't really gaining anything by launching from the moon.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Zen Punk]

Uhhh, what? There was a lander on Venus thirty years ago, and Mercury isn't nearly as hot as Venus.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Wyatt Earp]

There have been a number of landers on Venus

http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[4D6963]

Yup. "[Energia] had the capacity to place around 100 metric tons in Low Earth orbit (LEO), although it could have been (but never was) upgraded for heavier payloads comparable to (or even greater than) the LEO capacity of the Saturn V". Saturn V could place up to 118 metric tons in LEO.

Comparatively, Atlas V at the maximum only could place up to 25 metric tons to LEO

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[masklinn]

kind of depends of the place where you land, Mercury's surface temperature vary between 90K (-183C) and 700K (+426C). Venus' surface is much hotter (surface temperature never drops under 700K), but has much less variations.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[masklinn]

It's around 0.454kg (0.45359237kg precisely)

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[TheOrquithVagrant]

Yes. The shuttle-derived HLV will be able to put more in orbit than the Sat-V. It will be able to take 125 Metric tons to LEO.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[pallmall1]

Obiously you don't know about the gravity well.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Anonymous Coward]

How does having a 4-wheel drive car compare to having a 2-wheel drive car? A 4-wheel drive car means you get stuck in more remote places. A bigger rover could avoid 6" dune problems more effectively, and cover more ground, however we'd probably still get it stuck somewhere, in, say, a 24" dune. I'm all for the rovers though -- I think giving up manned flight for now and putting those resources into a bunch of orbital and ground probes is well worth considering.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Zen Punk]

What gravity well? Earth's? I hate to tell you this, buddy, but anything launched from the moon is going to have to be put there by Earthlings, so it'll have to be lifted from Earth first.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[rubycodez]

quite true, but none that lasted even 2 hours. I was thinking of exploration like the mar's rovers, would be cool but way beyond current technology.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[rubycodez]

I meant a lander/rover type vehicle for exploration, the Russian probes lasted from minutes to almost 2 hours before they fried (the best that could be hoped/designed for).

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[Zen Punk]

Well yeah, that would be hard ;) I think the pressure on Venus's surface is more significant than the temperature - 60 bars!(60x Earth atmosphere at sea level) I think that with careful study drawing on submarine technology, we could engineer a lander that would last longer on the surface of Venus - the trouble is the thing would be so frikkin' heavy I don't think we have a launcher that could get it there.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[r00t]

It's 91 atmospheres of pressure, hot as a furnace, and there appears to be some sulpheric acid. :-)

Well, the USSR made something work. Just cloning that with a better radio and better imager would be wonderful. Landing in some other places, like the high areas that are highly radar reflective, would be very useful.

For long-term survival, might I suggest a nuclear-powered air conditioner?

Having an astronaut walk around should even be doable, using phase-change materials to keep him cool for trips away from the lander, but I don't see a way to get back to Earth. Oh well. Robots are cheaper anyway.

Re:Atlas V is a p*ssy rocket

[LurkerXXX]

So exactly what part of mars isn't remote?

Is there a part where it's easy to call AAA or someone to tow you out? No. Kinda dumb complaining that it might still get stuck somewhere. That's obvious. It could still go many many many places a smaller rover could not.

You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[PoconoPCDoctor]

While an impressive vehicle, it's size is dwarfed by the Saturn V.

I called in sick to my job and flew down to Cape Kennedy to see the last launch of this monster. The last launch was used to put Skylab in orbit.

I got no closer than about Titusville, (I think this was about 10 miles from the launch pad) but when that sucker was lifting off, I felt a sonic impact that felt like someone slammed my chest!

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[Anonymous Coward]

While your desktop PC is impressive, its size is dwarfed by the ENIAC. The noise that sucker produced felt like a sonic impact.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Saturn V could carry more than 4 times more cargo.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about the speed that cargo can reach? From the NYT article:

"The three-stage Atlas will hurl the spacecraft away from Earth at a record 36,000 miles per hour, fast enough to pass the Moon in nine hours - compared with two and a half days for an Apollo mission"

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[pnewhook]

The simple answer is that the Saturn V was manned and there is only so fast you can accelerate before killing everyone onboard.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[Waffle Iron]

The simple answer is that the Saturn V was manned and there is only so fast you can accelerate before killing everyone onboard.

Simple, but wrong. The real answer is because they had to slow down again to enter the moon's orbit. Building up excess speed would just require a longer braking maneuver and more fuel mass to do it. The food and breathing oxygen for a couple of extra days weighed less than that fuel would have. This Pluto probe is not going to be making any kind of stop at the the earth's moon, so it can go full out for velocity.

And high speed and high acceleration aren't necessarily related. With a gentle enough acceleration, people could survive moving up to near lightspeed just fine.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[pnewhook]

I agree with what you said, but you missed my point. The Saturn could go a lot faster but was limited to about 4-5 Gs. To go any faster would have probably killed the astronauts.

And high speed and high acceleration aren't necessarily related. With a gentle enough acceleration, people could survive moving up to near lightspeed just fine

Sure but we were taking about getting to the moon in 9 hours. To do that, with the two burns the Atlas was doing would mean exceeding 17 6's during launch. Definitely fatal.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't take calculus.

speed is position's first derivative
acceleration is position's second derivative

They are two different things.

Doing 1g for time t/2 and -1g for time t/2, you can gently travel the distance d=g*t^2/4 arriving with speed zero. Let d=384,400,000 m (Moon) g=9.8 m/s^2, solve for t, you get t = 3.5h.

So in 3.5h you can have a gentle cruise to the Moon. Adding the effect of gravity, you'd experience 2G during takeoff, 1G during the cruise, and 1.2G while landing on the Moon. Definitely NON fatal.

Re:You call THAT a rocket, Gringo?

[pnewhook]

Moron. Show me a rocket that can sustain a burn for 7 hours. Obviously you didn't take a course in reality.

Probe lucky to be. Race against time.

[Tablizer]

This probe was cancelled and reinstated multiple times. One congress committe would cancel it and the next one would reinstate it. One reason it finally went thru is that Pluto's atmosphere will soon freeze into nitrogen snow when it gets further from the sun because of Pluto's lopsided orbit. There will not be an opportunity to see the snow turn (melt) back into an atmosphere for something like 250 years from now. Thus, it is now or never. Other planets and moons can wait, but Pluto's atmosphere cannot.

Re:Probe lucky to be. Race against time.

[99luftballon]

Nothing concentrates the mind like the thought of a useless mission. Missing this opportunity would be crime. The Pluto may also provide an opportunity to solve a question that's been vexing many; should Pluto even be counted as a planet or just a small body as part of the Kuiper belt.

Re:Probe lucky to be. Race against time.

[Tablizer]

may also provide an opportunity to solve a question that's been vexing many; should Pluto even be counted as a planet or just a small body as part of the Kuiper belt.

Frankly, spending 800 million USD to figure out how to classify a body is probably not worth it by iself. However, knowing if and why there is a difference between Pluto and other Kuiper objects is definitely a worthy goal.

Here is more info on the probe's problematic political history:

http://space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_041004.h tml

http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/advocac y_and_education/pluto/pluto_campaign_timeline.html

The stolen "nuke tape" fiasco at the Los Alamos National Laboraty almost delayed or reduced the delivery of the radioactive power cell. I've read later that they met their goal eventually.

Why Pluto?

[jcaldwel]

Shouldn't we be spending our limited budget on something more interesting, like Europa, Ganymede or Titan? They should be easier to get to, from their distance.

Re:Why Pluto?

[chris411]

Because a planet we've never seen up close is more interesting than some random moon, that's why. Besides, if they are going to send a probe to Pluto, the time is now. Pluto will be too far away if we wait too long. We can send a probe to those moons anytime we want.

Re:Why Pluto?

[SB5]

Those moons would be nice, but Pluto is at an ideal distance. That and the fact that in space distance matters squat, if you travel 100 million miles at 20,000 miles per hour, according to what I know of basic physics without ever taking a physics class is that the probe 100 million miles later will still be travelling 20,000 miles per hour. Europa, Ganymede and Titan, we can get to probably in a shorter time but missions for those are probably on the drawing board with the problems we have learned from visiting Mars.

But I am not a rocket scientist, and I don't think you are either. All the planets in the solar system are pretty damn interesting if you look at each one individually.

Re:Why Pluto?

[darkmeridian]

How do you know it's not interesting unless you look?

Re:Why Pluto?

[yeremein]

Shouldn't we be spending our limited budget on something more interesting, like Europa, Ganymede or Titan? They should be easier to get to, from their distance.

Those moons have been visited by a handful of probes already (The two Pioneers, the two Voyagers, Galileo (to Jupiter's moons), and Cassini. The Huygens probe even landed on Titan. That's not to say there's not a lot more to learn about those moons, but no spacecraft has ever flown by Pluto.

Re:Why Pluto?

[Tablizer]

Shouldn't we be spending our limited budget on something more interesting, like Europa, Ganymede or Titan? They should be easier to get to, from their distance.

1. Pluto's atmosphere is going to freeze into ground snow pretty soon due to its odd orbit and we won't get another chance for 200 or so years to study the atmosphere. Europa won't be different any time soon.

2. We've never had a probe explore pluto before, unlike the moons you mentioned.

3. The probe is planned to explore other Kuiper-belt objects after pluto. The Kuiper-belt objects are generally a mystery. (Some inner moons may be captured Kuiper-belt objects, but we won't know for sure until we compare them to the real deal.)

You mean you weren't sick?!?!

[bohemian72]

You're Fired!

Re:You mean you weren't sick?!?!

[Tablizer]

You're Fired!

The rocket? That's how they light them, you know.

Re:You mean you weren't sick?!?!

[PoconoPCDoctor]

Please don't go back in time and tell my boss! That would mess up the entire space-time continuum!

$650M to go to Pluto?

[Robert Heinich]

Can anyone provide what the costs of other probes have been? (Even know the cost of putting up a weather satellite would help.) The New Horizon probe is costing $634,146 a pound which seems to me a tad expensive.

Re:$650M to go to Pluto?

[Tablizer]

Can anyone provide what the costs of other probes have been?

Examples:

Cassini/Hyugens - About 3 billion USD, some of it by Europe.

MER Mars rovers - $850 million total

Viking landers - 2 billion total, probably 4 billion adjusted for inflation.

It is generally on the low-end of probe costs. However, NASA has cut back of late and most planetary missions are between about $400 million to $800 million these days. The reasoning given is that technology and experience has allowed for less expensive probes.

Re:$650M to go to Pluto?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this amount is amortized over the life of the project, which is ~15 years. It includes the cost of the probe, the (very expensive) launch vehicle, the environmental impact study, and project staff for the entire time of the mission. Thats why they said the main mission of the Mars Rovers would only be a few months; that way they didn't have to include staffing costs for the expected life of the project in their initial budgets. Since the flight time to Pluto is pretty obvious, these guys couldn't fake that.

I don't want to start a holy war here, but

[sgladfelter]

what is the deal with you Atlas V fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of an Atlas V for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to lift a 17k lb. payload off the ground and into low earth orbit. 20 minutes. At home, on my Saturn V, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this rocket, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that. In addition, during this launch, the flight control system will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this. I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various atlas rockets, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Lockheed Martin ICBM that has run faster than its Marshall Center counterpart, despite the atlas' faster propellant system architecture. My 4.44 caliber potato gun with 8 kPa of pressure runs faster than this rocket at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Atlas V is a superior machine. Atlas addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an atlas over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:I don't want to start a holy war here, but

[tengwar]

Well, it's a matter of usability. Studies have show that the dual-engined concept of the Atlas is easier to use for the first-time rocket scientist. The five-engine (five!) of the Saturn F1 is intrinsically confusing in those "which engine did tech support say to shut down?" moments in the control centre. Contrary to propaganda, there's native support for strapping on additional boosters if the experienced user absolutely insists, although I would argue that this still detracts from the basic usability.

Handling of exceptional conditions is less intrusive than the Saturn V: instead of an escape tower distractingly popping up over your work, you get a graceful pogoing on the launch pad. Yes, there are a few payloads that aren't yet available for the Altas V, but that's only real retro-gear dating back as far as the 60's!

Here's a gigabuck. Get yourself a real rocket, kid.

RTG on-board - just got final approval from WH

[Hulkster]

Solar power ain't too strong when you get out to Pluto, so New Horizons carries a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) which contains 24 pounds of plutonium dioxide. No, it's not going to "blow-up" like a Nuke, but super-duper poisonous stuff. This requires White House approval which was recently granted ... although one wonders if how much of a formality that was this late in the game.

Outer Solar system exploration

[lobotomir]

Apart from being a part of the nuclear spring, is it possible that this particular New Horizons mission gets funding in order to gather information about the Pioneer anomaly?

Re:Outer Solar system exploration

[Tablizer]

Apart from being a part of the nuclear spring, is it possible that this particular New Horizons mission gets funding in order to gather information about the Pioneer anomaly?

My understanding is that the design of the craft has to be carefully tailored to detect the anomaly. The Pioneer crafts just happened to be that way. I doubt New Horizons is. For one, the Pioneers did not rely heavily on thrusters for instrument positioning while newer craft do, and thrusters muck up calculations.

ESA is tentatively planning a detection mission I believe.

Great idea boss! ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...hopefully they will also send a rocket to youranus.

won't orbit Pluto?

[multi io]

I take it that this will only be a fly-by of Pluto, i.e. it won't enter an orbit. So I guess you have just one or two days for close-up observation tasks, and you can only watch/map a narrow strip of the surface as you pass over it. Why do they do this? Is the atmosphere unsuitable for aerobraking? Or are the observations of the outer solar system/Kuiper Belt that important, despite the fact that the are already a couple of probes there, with the possibility to send more if desired?

Re:won't orbit Pluto?

[filboroonie]

You are right that the prime mission will be pretty short. But the satellite will be taking some measurments along the way. Every year the instruments will be turned on to make sure everything still work when we get to Pluto. It takes lot of energy to get going fast enough to get to pluto in "only" nine years. To go into orbit, it would take a lot of energy to slow back down. If you had enough fuel to slow back down, it is still pretty complicated to put an object into orbit. Take a look at the expensive hardware lob page for an idea on how good we are at that. http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/

Re:won't orbit Pluto?

[Tablizer]

It takes lot of energy to get going fast enough to get to pluto in "only" nine years. To go into orbit, it would take a lot of energy to slow back down.

Indeed. You have to use more fuel to *launch* the weight of the slow-down fuel. Most orbiters take a slow path so that they don't have to spend as much time or fuel to slow down. This probe will be one of the fastest ever. It may take something like 30 years instead of 9 if it was to be an orbiter.

Pluto's atmosphere is not thick enough to be very useful for aerobreaking. Plus, we don't know the characteristics of the atmosphere being that we never probed it before. You have to know the atmosphere well to use it for such.

Further, not being an orbiter allows it to visit other planetoids out there.

$650 million? What a waste!

[Jafafa Hots]

Why, with all that money we could have afforded over a three-thousandth of an Iraq war!

One word:

[kadathseeker]

Ow.

Space Shuttles?

[Whiteox]

Naah! Stick the probe into a space shuttle and send that, equiped with a cargo of food, water and oxygen. Get it to orbit Pluto and it will stay there as an emergency lifepod just in case future human spacepeople need it!

Re:Space Shuttles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better hope that stuff will last at least a hundred years...

Plutonium isn't really poisonous

[HermanAB]

The toxicity is propaganda. Plutonium has a half life in the order of 25000 years. It radiates about as much as mild steel made from normal, slightly radio-active anthracite. Some scientist actually swallowed some plutonium once just to prove the point. So, yeah, eating heavy metals is not recommended, but the toxicity and radiation danger is way overblown.