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

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#201

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #175

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…

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 .

No, it is much much harder. Especially the survival part

Delta-v is literally Physics 101

Landing on Mars is hard, but feasible. Because it has a thick atmosphere to help with the braking

Sure, it adds a lot of complications as well, but it is a very good way of slowing your craft enough for other braking systems to work (like rockets, parachutes, etc)

Of course, bodies with little atmosphere also have a small gravity, so that makes things easier as well (like landing on the Moon)

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#202

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #4

That flag-waving and chanting of U-S-A U-S-A at the point of closest approach was one of the most appalling, jingoistic, alienating spectacles I've ever seen. You'd think they had just planted the flag in the soil ( ice? ) and claimed Pluto for God and America. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Space Race is over. Grow up. You're doing this for all humanity.

Please don't start flamewars on HN. Perhaps you didn't mean to, but threads are sensitive to initial conditions and vulnerable to being derailed, and the trainwrecks that result are not at all what HN is for.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#203

Post by mynameisvlad » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #127

user_0001 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is still a young country. They are currently in their (perhaps declining) outward expanding imperial militaristic stage. For this, excessive patriotism is required, is absolutely necessary. It has been the same for any outwardly expanding empire, from the British, French, Spanish, German in more recent times back to the Roman / Greek days. The first rule for near constant warfare, get the flags out, get the cr…

How is Germany older than the US? Unless you mean the Holy Roman Empire and its various entities that made it up.

Why is this even downvoted? He's correct. Germany, as a country, was first established in 1815 with the German Confederation. The US confederation predates it by 34 years. The parent comment already mentions Romans, so you can't count the various Roman tribes collectively known as Germania under "Germany".

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#204

Post by stox » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #129

tgcordell wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition breeds innovation. Yes, we are one planet and one species, but our species is Human and we have an innate nature to compete!

Competition may breed innovation, but surely it's not the truism you suggest. Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not lead to useful innovation - http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inter... (It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.) Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate. Also, the concept o…

There is such a thing as constructive competition vs destructive competition. Sadly, some do not know the difference.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#205

Post by zkhalique » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

Why didn't it stop to look around? Smell the proverbial roses? Wasn't that its main mission? Or is it now going to check out other Kuiper belt objects?

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#206

Post by prewett » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:26 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 :-)

I think they usually have a black and white camera with filters of specific wavelengths, some of which roughly correspond to red, green, blue, and they combine them. The color pictures I've seen from Mars and Cassini usually say "approximate true color."

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#207

Post by mFixman » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

Mahn wrote: post #106

Apparently it snows on Pluto: Pluto has an atmosphere. It snows on Pluto and the snow sublimates back into the atmosphere. https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/620932748824285184

I find it absolutely amazing that nobody knew this 12 hours ago.

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#208

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:29 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #129

tgcordell wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition breeds innovation. Yes, we are one planet and one species, but our species is Human and we have an innate nature to compete!

Competition may breed innovation, but surely it's not the truism you suggest. Sears is an example of how the introduction of internal competition does not lead to useful innovation - http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inter... (It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.) Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate. Also, the concept o…

That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense of national identity.

I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#209

Post by eastbayjake » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:33 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…

A few months ago someone posted on HN about "ballistic capture" to enter a Martian orbit with far less fuel, and I've spent the last few months wondering if you could do that to mosey into a Plutonian orbit:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-way-to-reach...

Re: New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto

#210

Post by ramidarigaz » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

zkhalique wrote: post #205

Why didn't it stop to look around? Smell the proverbial roses? Wasn't that its main mission? Or is it now going to check out other Kuiper belt objects?

It was going much too fast to stop (given the available propellant). Also, that would have extended the transit time significantly. On the upside, it's sounding like the Kuiper belt is a really interesting place, so we'll get to see much more!