101–110 of 125 posts
Can we send faster better equipped craft to move past solar system in a year or two ?
The planetary alignment that allowed the Voyager probes to move so fast only occurs every 175 years. Even with this advantage it took them 12 years to get to Neptune. So the short answer is no.
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Exoplanet closeups? You can use the sun as a gravitational lens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens You need to be about 550 au out.
Veeger is currently less that 200 AU, and it's dying. For us to build a craft that could stay alive long enough to make it to 550AU and still be functioning would take an incredible leap in technology. This plan also has a fatal flaw in that you can only ever hope to look at one thing. You can't just slew that craft to be able to line up the next target.
It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Brea…
Totally agree with you. What a shame. But when I look at the national debt that seems even more out of reach, I do tend to consider that maybe the stars should wait till we have our s..tuff together here on earth. Privately funded, no issues, go for it at warp speed!
Of course, I would like to note, you have just spent 20 times the NASA annual budget, in a 3 week war of choice...
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It's the same notion that has us going "back to the moon" right now. The US did something impressive and interesting several times. In the absence of anything else impressive and interesting now, we're trying to pull the same trick again. As if we're going to arrive on the Moon's surface and suddenly discover it isn't a barren sphere with a rocky surface, no atmosphere & tiny amounts of water on it. There's a reason…
We've been building race cars for a long time, but every time a new one is built they give it some test/practice laps before actually entering it into a race. That's all Artemis is doing is working out the kinks of the new space craft. There are larger plans now, and you can't go from ideation of plan to completion of plan in one attempt. Each Artemis mission is testing and moving towards the next step. The people in…
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Unfortunately the lifetime of the plutonium RTG is very very predictable (due to the half life of the isotope they use). They are constantly shutting down parts of the probe exactly because the RTG is providing less and less power, and at some point it won't even be enough to heat the probe and run the computers.
Around 2030–2036, the power will likely drop below the level needed to run even a single instrument. At that point, Voyager 1 will officially "die" as a scientific mission. But Voyager will keep going forever. Because there is no air resistance or friction in the vacuum of space, Voyager 1 doesn't need "fuel" to keep moving. According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted u…
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7589524/
Without the benefit of large special effects budgets, I found it incredibly effective, and left me nostalgic and reflective for days.
It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Brea…
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Maybe that was Parker? Parker and new horizons often get lumped together for some reason
By who? The Parker is doing everything it can to get closer to the sun by dipping into the sun's atmosphere while New Horizons went to Pluto and is getting further and further away from the sun. I don't think you could have a more opposite mission than these two.
Horizons has been fastest when it left Earth
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Isn't a big part of the problem that the voyager slingshot is one of the best you can get, and it's a once in multiple-lifetimes event? Even if we launch a new deep space probe as best we can they're gonna be real slow?
For Voyager 1, Jupiter's gravity assist was the only one that increased velocity, the flybys ultimately sapped velocity.
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What else are you looking to see from such deep space? Nothing we launch will ever reach anything anything interesting in probably the life of humanity. Just to get to Pluto in our life times meant going so fast that it could only fly by. Maybe flying around in the Oort cloud might, unlikely though, be interesting.
It's the same notion that has us going "back to the moon" right now. The US did something impressive and interesting several times. In the absence of anything else impressive and interesting now, we're trying to pull the same trick again. As if we're going to arrive on the Moon's surface and suddenly discover it isn't a barren sphere with a rocky surface, no atmosphere & tiny amounts of water on it. There's a reason…