6 ms·
I wish more robotic missions like that were sent. Not necessarily the most expensive ones, just one that can use only gravity assists and plutonium power genera
by xvilka 1mo ago
I wish more robotic missions like that were sent. Not necessarily the most expensive ones, just one that can use only gravity assists and plutonium power generators. They could be relatively small ones. Maybe even trying to ride some of the small rocks/asteroids, now that we have a better catalogues of such.
- dmurray 1mo agoIf by "ride" you mean hitch a lift to somewhere you couldn't get to otherwise, space doesn't work like that. If you want to land on an asteroid/rock, either you match speed with it, in which case you already had enough speed to go wherever it's going, or you intercept it at a different speed, in which case you get smashed to dust if your speed was any more than a few m/s different. Maybe you didn't mean this, but it's a common enough misconception. People even on HN were suggesting a spacecraft could hitch a ride on ʻOumuamua to get a quick way to a different solar system.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- nephihaha 1mo agoI've always thought asteroids could be used as automated "weather stations" with probes not just as mission targets in themselves. These could be updated or maintained occasionally.