NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #138

bdamm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 seconds of video from Titan would change the world. It's shame we don't have this from Mars already. So it would take a few weeks to transmit - we got time. Now figuring out which 10 seconds to select and send to earth... that'll be interesting. An on-board cache of x GB data storage, with key frames taken every 30 minutes, would probably be able to select some pretty compelling 10 second segments.

What about the world would be different after getting a 10 second video from Titan?

Post by swypych » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #17

rzimmerman wrote: post #4

A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons: * The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth's (1.5 atm) * Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g) * We don't know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge * Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that's also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose) I…

In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost,…

Post by Robotbeat » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #72

LordLotherak wrote: post #46

NASA is really good at planning future missions. Implementing them? I've heard hundreds of fantastical half-baked ideas and very few of them materialize over the course of my 46 years on earth.

Eh, almost every NASA robotic mission that has gotten this far in the design and selection process has also flown. They're way past the "fantastical half-baked idea" stage. The financial reality is that NASA can only finance one or two billion-dollar missions per decade, and the competition is rather fierce. To be selected as the New Frontiers class mission of the late 2020s is a big deal, and you can be sure that at…

Post by nradov » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 4:41 AM UTC

dev_tty01 wrote: post #122

binarymax wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one test on earth, a drone for a different atmospheric and gravitational environment? Some great drone simulation techniques are going to come out of this project.

No problem. Large atmospheric chamber or controlled wind tunnel. Pump the pressure up or down, change the gas mixtures, whatever. Gravity, partially support the drone's weight. NASA is good at this stuff.

Post by pfarnsworth » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #60

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I love this mission. From a science point of view it’s probably good to send similar and well tested rovers to Mars. But to me it gets boring. I think NASA used to get a lot of fascination from doing the seemingly impossible like flying to the moon. So I think a mission like this will be fascinating for a lot of people. Also it may spawn off a lot of technology. I hope for a submarine mission to Europa.

I think a flying mission is actually superior to a rover as it can cover far more ground and reach some sites that wouldn't be feasible for a rover. And Titan is uniquely suited to using flight to explore as its gravity is a factor 7.25 lower and its atmosphere a factor of 4.4x denser. That means it's about 30 times easier to hover and covering the same distance is at least 7 times as efficient as on Earth, besides h…