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Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease its orbital perihelion to achieve a final altitude (above the surface) of approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
> 6×106 km Please... 6×10^6 km
Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease its orbital perihelion to achieve a final altitude (above the surface) of approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
> 6×106 km Please... 6×10^6 km
Please tell me this mission ends with the Venera/Cassini treatment of "let's drop the sucker into the atmosphere and see how long it lasts"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't NASA have some sort of educational duty? Surely they should be using SI units always so as to avoid exactly this kind of confusion.
I'd rather have them always use both units, so that people would eventually learn intuitively, by example, what a km is relayed to a mile, or a kg to a pound, etc.
Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease its orbital perihelion to achieve a final altitude (above the surface) of approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
> 6×106 km Please... 6×10^6 km
If you’re curious why it won’t melt: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/traveling-to-the-s...
Relevant part: the capturing cups are of metals with high melting points, plus > The corona through which Parker Solar Probe flies, for example, has an extremely high temperature but very low density. Think of the difference between putting your hand in a hot oven versus putting it in a pot of boiling water And for the rest of the craft there is a highly reflective heat shield.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting your head in a hot oven continuously will probably prevent you from dying of the coronavirus indeed.
As does flying to the sun, for that matter. Can't catch corona if you're ~150 million kilometers away from the nearest other person.