301–310 of 330 posts
Note that dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun at ~3 AU, is larger (⌀ = 939 km) than this one (⌀ = 100–200 km). There are ~25 other known asteroids with diameters over 200 km in the asteroid belt ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids#... ).
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A thread of people discussing pronunciations without saying where they are from or using IPA is a pointless waste of time. You may as well be talking about what time it is by posting “well, it’s dark here!”
It doesn’t really matter where you’re from. If you pronounce Uranus as your-anus you are pronouncing it wrong.
I say we catch that sucker, tow it into our neck of the woods as a second moon, and use it as a space port. Are there a million problems with this proposal? Yes. But would it be totally rad to do this? Also yes.
Love the creativity! That said, the moon stabilized earth’s rotation angle, giving us the seasons, and it also drives huge chunks of life ecosystems and weather with the tides. So adding a second body in rotation to Earth with such superpowers would muck with a lot of stuff along the way. Maybe put it around Mars instead?
Note that dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun at ~3 AU, is larger (⌀ = 939 km) than this one (⌀ = 100–200 km). There are ~25 other known asteroids with diameters over 200 km in the asteroid belt ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids#... ).
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What sort of propulsion mechanisms (even those that are currently physically plausible but entirely outside our technology, so, for example, solar sails or nuclear torchships, but not, say, warp drive) could possibly be used to achieve such a task?
Just for fun, I did some ballpark calculations. Let's consider the simpler problem of just putting 2014 UN271 into a circular orbit around the sun at its periapsis of 11 AU. Calculating the exact path of an orbiting body under thrust is difficult. But the object will be within 1% of the desired orbital radius for roughly a 22-degree arc of its orbit centered on the periapsis, during which time its path will be closel…
For reference 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is about 150 million km. Saturn ranges from being about 7 to 11 AU away from Earth. Voyager 1 is 152 AU away. This object is excitingly close and will be fun to study.
Is it possible to get a probe out that far in time to make a good intercept? I imagine with this (relatively) short notice this is cutting it a bit close to orchestrate a proper orbital insertion by a designed, manufactured and tested program?
All our normal expectations for probe arrival times and such are based on one-shot launches, straight out of Earth's gravity well into escape velocity in one shot. It's not like launching with fuel suddenly makes it a two-day trip or anything, but it can do quite a bit of shortening and allow for quite a lot more maneuvering.
This is one of the next touchstones in space progress I've been looking for. A lot of previously impractical things become practical if we can routinely do multilaunches.
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Slowing it down would take way more energy than just nudging in a different direction. You might be better off trying to break it up into smaller pieces.
how would we aerobreak it in mars's atmosphere into a decaying orbit, so instead of slamming into mars, it breaks up and rains down on mars? What can we tell about the composition - a solid rock or icy rubble?
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> In a two-body system it doesn’t matter what you do; Two-body systems do not exist in reality. Energy is also conserved in 3 body problems. When you utilize the slingshot effect, some of the energy of the orbit of the body you are swinging around orbiting is transfered to you. The transfer of this energy does not depend on the closeness of the sun, but rather on how deeply you descend into the gravity well of the ob…
Saturn's captured satellites might also be the result of incidental aerobraking or whatever you want to call smashing into a bunch of very tiny satellites during a close periapsis, no?