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Pluto Probe Launches
Artem S. Tashkinov writes "The US space agency, Nasa, has successfully launched its New Horizons mission to Pluto. The $700m probe will gather information on Pluto and its moons before - it is hoped - pressing on to explore other objects in the outer Solar System. Pluto is the only remaining planet that has never been visited by a spacecraft."
Around the year 2000 there was a website that was setup by a teenager who wanted to see NASA send a space probe to Pluto. The website was www.plutomission.com, and it helped start an online petition that gained well over 50,000 signatures. It also started a huge upsurge of public support for a Pluto mission, and in the end helped persuade NASA into making a real mission out of it. Amazing what a simple website can do.
From this CNN article, and my buddy Pete at JHAPL, "The New Horizons spacecraft will be the fastest ever launched, more than 10 times faster than a speeding bullet.". That is faster then superman.
Any comment from the "OMG! Plutonium powered space probes are evil!" people that were hanging little origami birds on a fence outside the launch site? They seemed certain that launching this craft was going to be a disaster. Damn! Now they're going to have to wait for the next one, since neither Cassini nor this new launch have obliged them by crashing into an old growth redwood grove or a daycare center.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How is it news 9 hours later?
Actually, I LIKE the 9-hour window. That's exactly how long this thing has taken to pass the moon. That's really, really fast.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Here's to New Horizons, indeed!
[Drains glass, turns over on top of bar...]
One wonders if NH might contribute some data to finally solve the Pioneer anomaly.
You have to wonder why, with such a long journey, they didn't try out an ion engine. Sure, it would have cost more, but it would have been able to get there a lot faster. The ion engine has a much higher specific impulse than conventional rockets but are only effective over long range where the engines can be fired continuously. What longer range than Pluto? Plus, include a larger Plutonium core and run several of these.
Sure, it is the fastest probe to escape from the earth, but why not strap on an extra stage and get that baby really cookin!
No, a bunch of "hippies" should apologize for trying to stop good science with FUD based on totally erroneous assumptions about the nature of plutonium power slugs.
Since a space probe's plutonium slug would not actually bring harm in the event of a catastrophic failure, those of us who understand this would have nothing to apologize for even in the event of a catastrophic failure.
Summary: Stupid people should apologize for trying to influence policy according to their stupidity. Smart people should not apologize for trying to influence policy according to their smartitude.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
In fact, NASA recently finalized the specifications and issued contracts (to Boeing, among others) for the next generation of orbital work vehicles. NASA has stated explicitly that these vehicles will be the testbeds and prototypes for the Lunar and Martian manned mission programs planned over the next ten years or so.
So not only is everything proceeding as planned, but actual physical artifacts are being built at this very moment in direct support of the Mars program.
Some of us think this is very cool, really neat, etc.
Apparently, others prefer ignorance, if it makes it easier to make cheap political shots.
This is exciting science-type stuff! Give the political asshattery a rest, why don't you?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
You forgot one: The Space Shuttle travels at Mach 25. In orbit. In a vacuum. With, like, no air. No sound. No speed of sound to multiply by. Mach 25.
Would someone like to explain that one to me?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Of the fifty odd launches of reactors or RTG's - no fewer than nine have resulted in the radioactive material being returned to earth. This article lists eight failures, but misses a ninth. It's not a pretty record - and it's only by luck that major contamination has been avoided.
A lemming in this instance is someone who blindly repeats something without understanding it. Consider the carefully the walls of your house before casting stones.Wikipedia: Principal investigator Alan Stern confirmed that some ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh were aboard the spacecraft.
Table-ized A.I.
LEO's hardly a vaccuum. That's why orbits decay. You better darn well believe that fluid properties the sparse atmosphere in LEO is important to engineers.
The speed of sound is a lot more important than just for the rate at which sound propagates. Transsonic speeds are extremely turbulent because you have some parts of the craft getting shocks and others not, leaving the flow very irregular (regionally and temporally). Subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic speeds require different profiles for optimal performance (for example, a plane-shaped subsonic craft has the least resistance if the fuselage continues on straight at the wings. A supersonic or hypersonic craft has the least resistance if the fuselage pinches inwards at the wings in order to keep a constant cross section). Shocks can cause regional stresses (tensile, thermal) on parts of the craft. Etc.
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...
Part of the reason must be cost. It boggles my mind how many Pioneer, Mariner, Ranger, and Explorer missions that NASA used to launch. Sometimes even with RTGs. They would be launched cheaply and frequently. Feel free to count how many space probes we used to launch (say from 1960 to 1980) to how many we launched in the following years. Sad.
Now we are so focused on making the spacecraft perfect that we ignore the possibility of sending 3 cheaper spacecraft using each as a engineering springboard for the next (the Mariner program is a good example of how that worked). While we have launched some beautiful spacecraft (Viking, Galileo, Cassini, Voyager, and the MERs), nothing has really filled the quick response build and launch activities. It used to be that we could have a spacecraft from the drawing board to interplanetary space within 2 years. Now we are *lucky* if we can do it in 5 years.
It uses Mongoose-V MIPS R3000 Rad-Hard Processor.
Well, its all semantics. Pluto, Sedna, and a bunch of others are all a new species of critter - several have been discovered, and many more will be. We probably won't call them planets. Pluto will either be demoted from planethood like the first asteroid Ceres was, or it will retain its title only because of tradition.
This space available.
The problem is that stereotypes stick. Sure, intelligent people can recognize them, but many people can't. If Christianity continually gets associated with opposing science, then people will start to believe. Perhaps not you, but many people will. I realize that the fundamentalist Christians that vocally oppose many sciences contribute, but that's not an excuse for others to perpetuate the stereotype. If that stereotype gets fully established, it's only going to cause problems.
Funny thing. I was working on the Atlas V av010 launch and up until last week I had not connected av010 with the New Horizons pluto mission. I read on CNN that "New Horizons" was on an Atlas at the cape waiting for launch. I figured that had to be "our" Atlas which was at the cape getting ready to be launched. I work with the telemetry from the Atlas V. I guess I'm like a truck driver. When you ask him what's he hauling he says "A trailor, what else?" Then you ask what's in the trailor and he says "a bunch of boxes I guess, I never look.". I guess if you'd ask one of the people who work on the science instruments on the payload about what was used to launch the spacecraft they say "A rocket of some kind I assume." and they wouldn't even know that the RD180 main engine on the Altas V 1st stage is made in Russia by NPO Energomash in Khimky.