New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto • Hacker News Board

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#171

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #160

kartikkumar wrote: post #89

Quote from a friend of mine on the team: "After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of schedule." Amazing! The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt. Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the vol…

Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go: If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data. Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly into the surface of the planet. Is it simply that we have no way to buil…

[deleted]

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#172

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

grinich wrote: post #166

chasing wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go: If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data. Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly into the surface of the planet. Is it simply that we have no way to buil…

A bullet travels about 1,700 MPH. New Horizons is going about 36,300 MPH. The probe weighs 480 kilograms, so it's kinetic energy is approximately 63.2 Gigajoules. For reference, this is like 15 tonnes of TNT released on impact. Hard to make something that survives those kind of conditions.

Plus, probes that far out have worse-than-dialup transmission rates. It takes 42 minutes to return a single photo from the LORRI camera. Bursting large amounts of data out in a short period of time before impact isn't feasible.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/0130080...

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#173

Post by artur_makly » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

So this got me thinking... is there a way to forecast our space-travel capacity into the far future?

Could we conceivably create a formula that takes into account all of humanity's previous milestones of technological breakthrough's and the distances they have achieved for us.. and project where we could be 100, 500, 1000 yrs from now?

Perhaps there is a vague velocity pattern we can derive from a plethora of historic data?

*apologies for not being very articulate today..im still in awe!

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#174

Post by arc_of_descent » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

lmorris84 wrote: post #59

Does anyone know how they colour correct these images? I'm guessing there isn't a robotic arm holding up a test card in front of the camera :-)

Does it really matter? I remember reading about this in one of Richard Dawkins' book (I think its Unweaving the rainbow). Now you can complain about the Crab Nebula, whether its color correction, or you are lucky enough to view it up close with a naked eye.

The colors you observe are just models of the different frequencies which our brain has evolved into to label as "red", "violet", or "#782". :)

A much less/more evolved brain (be it alien or terrestrial) will observer it much differently.

Sorry to bring biology into this :)

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#175

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #160

kartikkumar wrote: post #89

Quote from a friend of mine on the team: "After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of schedule." Amazing! The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt. Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the vol…

Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go: If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data. Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly into the surface of the planet. Is it simply that we have no way to buil…

It's theoretically possible, it'd just require a lot of fuel to slow the craft down enough to survive a landing.

source: I've played Kerbal Space Program. If you speak maths (I don't), you could probably do them; the calculations are relatively simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#176

Post by chatterbeak » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

Wikipedia says the data rate from Pluto is effectively about 1 KBit/second. That's why it takes so long to get the photos....

I'd like to find more detailed information about the hardware and software on this thing. It's amazing that it was launched back in 2006. My 2006 Mac Pro is basically useless now....

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#177

Post by dangerboysteve » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

kartikkumar wrote: post #89

Quote from a friend of mine on the team: "After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of schedule." Amazing! The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt. Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the vol…

I watched the Nat Geo special on this the other day. Apart from the fact that Nat Geo is a piece of cp, I was amazed about the challenges and engineering behind this project. Even more amazing is the fact it captured images of Pluto. The show explained there was a chance the cameras could have faced the wrong direction.

And the note about the probe also carrying the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh was touching.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#178

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

artur_makly wrote: post #173

So this got me thinking... is there a way to forecast our space-travel capacity into the far future? Could we conceivably create a formula that takes into account all of humanity's previous milestones of technological breakthrough's and the distances they have achieved for us.. and project where we could be 100, 500, 1000 yrs from now? Perhaps there is a vague velocity pattern we can derive from a plethora of histori…

A formula? No, probably not; the thing with space exploration is that it depends on the one hand on money, i.e. government funding or commercial exploitation, and on the other on physics - getting something into space, let alone propel it far away, is a very costly process when it comes to fuel and whatnot required - which increases exponentially the more you want to achieve out there.

Although companies like Virgin Intergalactic and SpaceX are working hard on making it more affordable, thanks to some advancements. Still though, practically speaking, getting anything into orbit is hard enough.

We'll probably see a manned Mars mission in our lifetime, but for anything beyond that you'll probably have to read science fiction.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#179

Post by mturmon » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

buyx wrote: post #143

Plutos "demotion" from being a fully-fledged planet makes me wonder if it would have been politically feasible to start the New Horizons project if the redefinition had happened a few years earlier. Still, I am pleasantly surprised by the excitement this mission is garnering.

It is well-known that the New Horizons PI, Alan Stern, had a strong distaste for the "demotion" of Pluto. (An extreme example, this interview: http://www.space.com/12710-pluto-defender-alan-stern-dwarf-p..., which is rather ... over the top in terms of its arguments.)

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#180

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

kartikkumar wrote: post #147

japhyr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love HN for things like this - personal accounts of people associated with groundbreaking projects. Thanks for sharing. Most of your post is about visiting planets and exploring the solar system, but you close witha comment about disrupting science communication. What aspects of science communication are you referring to?

I realise that I made an unexplained logical leap to get to the last comment. Basically, based on my professional experience as a planetary scientist, it's my belief that the reason we don't have more satellites cruising through the Solar System is that we (and I mean scientists, engineers, administrators etc.) continue to fail in communicating their true value to the average person on the street. I think that media…

Right now, companies like Facebook and Google are working on bringing the internet to countries that don't have good access to it yet; if it wasn't for the lag (and cost), I'm sure they would've invested heavily into a sattelite internet network.

I see a small / niche market in space tourism; Virgin Intergalactic is probably going to get on there. But it'll be limited to those that can shell out 100K for it.

There was some talk about a company a few years back that wanted to mine asteroids; I personally think that's science fiction and won't be a profitable endeavour, but, if I'm wrong, it'll unleash a new kind of corporate space race.

I think it can go very fast if there's enough money to be made. As it stands though, besides satellites, there is nothing to be had.