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Is this something we could plan and manage to launch an orbiter/lander to in time? Has anyone thought about the possibility of slapping something like a telesco
by Meerax 5y ago
Is this something we could plan and manage to launch an orbiter/lander to in time? Has anyone thought about the possibility of slapping something like a telescope on that and letting it beam back data and images from veryyyyy far out eventually?
- anfilt 5y agoLike till it gets closer we dont even know if it would be suitable to put something like that on it. Although it does seem like interesting idea. However, we have sent probes much further than this object (aka the voyager missions). So it would mainly be useful for studying this object. So a telescope would be less than ideal since we could always in theory deploy a telescope much deeper into space if we wanted.
- floatrock 5y agoInterestingly, the voyager missions were also timed-events -- they were launched when they were because JPL realized it was a 1-in-175-year alignment of the outer planets that made it feasible to launch just a few crafts to visit the outer planets all in one go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program
- f6v 5y agoAFAIK many launches are timed to make the flight shorter. Although not on 1 in 175 years, but shorter windows.
- jessriedel 5y agoIf you launch your telescope on a spacecraft and get it to match speed with the dwarf planet (which is necessary for a soft landing), there's not much point in actually attaching it to the dwarf planet. That just blocks the view of half the sky. Also, there will be nothing to see out there other than the dwarf planet itself.
- vmception 5y agoand frozen aliens
- seaman1921 5y agoperhaps the sun's heat exposes them :)
- egman_ekki 5y ago...that must be the delivery of ufoporno I ordered in good'ol devonian times :)
- tonmoy 5y agoIs that really true? If we manage to get a spacecraft get captured by the dwarf planet's gravity and orbit it, would that not be a lot less delta-V compared to if we made the spacecraft achieve the dwarf planet's orbit around the sun just by itself?
- isoprophlex 5y agoIt's a dwarf planet of ~ 200 km diameter. The thing has a miniscule gravity well, it won't matter much compared to launching from earth and matching orbits with it, i think...
- bewaretheirs 5y agoJust launch a deep-space telescope; it would be easier. Soft-landing the telescope on an airless body would be harder (in delta-V terms) than just launching it into an equivalent solar orbit. And the body would block about half your view of the sky at any one time.
- jbay808 5y agoCould you get a nice gravity boost away from the sun by just following it for as long as possible?
- jstanley 5y agoI think the point is that in order to follow it, you need to (at some point in time) be at the same place and with the same velocity. Then you'll follow it. But the energy required to do that is almost the same as what it would be if the dwarf planet wasn't there. You could get onto exactly the same orbit for roughly the same amount of energy, and if you relax the requirement that there be a dwarf planet nearby, you can choose superior orbits.
- lamontcg 5y agoNo, that's not how gravity boosts work. If you match speeds with an object you actually get zero boost. The point of a gravity boost is to come in pretty hot (relative to the body you're boosting off of) and then go out pretty hot in a different direction. So you take your relative velocity vector at the point of the encounter and twist it around. By doing that you change your orbital energy around your central body (the sun) by a lot, and the other object will lose a similar amount to keep the bookkeeping equal. If you have zero relative velocity compared to the thing you want a gravity assist off of you can't get an assist. It isn't like drafting a semi.
- geenew 5y agoCould there be some energy advantage to being in orbit around it? I'm thinking of a scenario where you spend a large amount of energy once get into orbit around the object, but then gain a small amount of energy continuously through something like tidal forces.
- c3534l 5y agoApparently no one likes this idea. Here's mine: we nuke the planet and collect its smitherines for SCIENCE!
- 015a 5y agoLet's send some boosters out there, redirect it to earth, and make a second moon. Come on people, what ever happened to doing shit cause its fuckin' rad, do you know how cool another moon would be?!
- f6v 5y agoLet’s just blow the moon up and give rise to 7 new genetically engineered races, man-fishes, and dwarves.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- beckingz 5y agoIf it worked in SevenEves I don't see why not?
- hirundo 5y agoConstructive interference from multiple tidal waves could flood huge coastal areas, killing or displacing millions. Uncool.
- dylan604 5y agoOr very cool if you're an evil villain in a movie/comic. Give me one milllllion dollars, or I will bring in a second moon!
- 015a 5y agoThen again, global warming is going to flood huge coastal areas, killing or displacing millions, which is a pretty uncool thing we're doing to ourselves, so maybe Second Moon will counter-act that? There's literally no way of knowing until we try. And worst case scenario, we ruin a bunch of earth and we've got a second moon to move to. Its a win-win.
- z3t4 5y agoToo far out from the sun and it wouldn't be able to re-charge using solar panels. Could put some kind of nuclear power plant on it though. And as others has pointed out, you would need to match the speed, so you could just as well use that power plus gravity assists to get far out. Landing on such a body would be really interesting though.
- ianai 5y agoProbably the reason to orbit such a planet would be to help comms from a ground station on it. 11 AU though seems like quite the stretch right now but maybe if there were a fleet of Spacex Starships in operation…
- mrandish 5y ago> slapping something like a telescope on that and letting it beam back data and images from veryyyyy far out eventually? While this object will eventually orbit pretty far away in a solar system context, I suspect that additional distance may not be vast enough to make a meaningful improvement in observations of targets at interstellar distances. I'd love to learn if I'm incorrect but I've always assumed for interstellar observation, larger sensors and more sensors has better ROI than a more distant sensor, at least short of some substantial fraction of a light year. If we're going to dedicate a 100 ton Starship payload to interstellar observing I imagine going much farther out than the Moon's shadow may not be a good trade (eg fuel mass vs payload mass).
- elihu 5y agoIt's probably more interesting to study the object itself. I assume its orbital period is long enough that it won't be back near the central solar system for a very long time. But similar objects could have interesting uses. One thought experiment is to consider what it would take to be able to live on such an object, perhaps even a rogue planet just floating between the stars. It would be very cold. Presumably you'd be reliant on nuclear fission or fusion for power, so you'd need a significant fuel supply that could effectively last indefinitely. And you'd want to have a ready supply of all the basic elements you need. Which seems more realistic the bigger the object is. Like, an Earth or Mars-sized rogue planet might be ideal.
- mikeytown2 5y agoLanding a telescope on it would only make sense if orbits around it are highly unstable (like our moon) and if the dwarf planet was geothermally active so energy on the surface would be "easy" to extract (which comes with it's own set of headaches). Orbiting it with a "big for space probes" camera would most likely give us more interesting data. Using the plant as a Coronagraph if orbiting far out is another interesting idea, but using a near earth astroid would be a better idea as the telescope could be powered by solar panels they.
- uCantCauseUCant 5y agoIt is a great opportunity for a interstellar slingshot though..