This is great news. When Huygens landed on Titan, the images sparked my interest in physics and planetary science, and eventually I went on to do research in solar physics.
NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
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Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#32Venus and Titan have in common that probes landing there tend to only operate a few minutes before failing due to the extreme conditions.
A helicopter sounds great, but perhaps it would make sense to try to simply make a probe that can stay alive there long enough to do anything other than send a couple pictures back.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#33A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons: * The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth's (1.5 atm) * Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g) * We don't know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge * Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that's also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose) I…
Will this be the first-ever instance of nuclear-powered flight?
No.
>> The Pentagon is aware of a Russian test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile but the system is still under development and had crashed in the Arctic in 2017.[17][18][19] A RAND Corporation researcher specializing in Russia said "My guess is they're not bluffing, that they've flight-tested this thing. But that's incredible."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft#Russi...
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#34It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
Even spaceX's starship/BFR with LEO refuel wouldn't work?
Maybe answering my own question with some further thought. I guess even if it could get there, it likely couldnt return which would be a big waste of a reusable starship.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#35Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#36It's interesting that there is no existing (or planned) launch vehicle that could perform a direct injection for this mission. Getting to Saturn is really, really hard, and without multiple gravity assists from the inner solar system it would be simply impossible. Too bad it results in an 11 year transit time though! Flying direct would save almost 8 years of that...
Gravity is a b..ch :-)
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#37A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons: * The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth's (1.5 atm) * Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g) * We don't know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge * Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that's also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose) I…
In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost,…
Why do you think they launched a deep space reviving network at re:invent last year?
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#38Venus and Titan have in common that probes landing there tend to only operate a few minutes before failing due to the extreme conditions. A helicopter sounds great, but perhaps it would make sense to try to simply make a probe that can stay alive there long enough to do anything other than send a couple pictures back.
That's what this is. It's much easier to heat something in the cold of Titan than to cool something in the heat of Venus.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even spaceX's starship/BFR with LEO refuel wouldn't work?
Maybe answering my own question with some further thought. I guess even if it could get there, it likely couldnt return which would be a big waste of a reusable starship.
Why do you think it would be unable to return? I'm curious.
Re: NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan
#40A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons: * The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth's (1.5 atm) * Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g) * We don't know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge * Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that's also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose) I…
In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly. Conversely, on Titan, we won't need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane. Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS's most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan's methane sea. High spin up cost,…
Might be suitable for quantum computing ... Re. thin atmosphere and low gravity, humans could probable be able to fly wearing wings. So if we put a base there it would not be boring.