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NASA to Make Announcement About First Mission to Touch Sun

L

louiedog

Member
This could be good. The human mind is not unlike cookie dough.

giphy.gif
 
S

Sephzilla

Member
DiipuSurotu said:
It doesn't need a return trip to transmit the data (it's not like it's going to collect rocks on the surface or anything lol). I'm pretty sure the plan is to crash it spectacularly, after we have received all the data.
Click to expand...

Icarus never actually touches the sun.

This would be the equivalent of naming the first FTL spaceship "Titanic"
 
D

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Sephzilla said:
Icarus never actually touches the sun.

This would be the equivalent of naming the first FTL spaceship "Titanic"
Click to expand...

This probe isn't meant to touch the sun either.

And the first FTL spaceship would presumably be meant to come back from wherever it goes, unlike this one-time use probe.
 
T

TheBryanJZX90

Member
Lister said:
A fair few I'd imagine. I don't think we have viable engine tech to cancel out a large enough amount of Earth's Orbital velocity of 30 km/s (I think you'd need to target around 21 km/s). So you'd have to do some maneuvering out to Jupiter and back to get to the sun.

EDIT: According to the mission report it's going to take about 6 years, going out to Jupiter, then using Venus to increase the eccentricity of the orbit around the sun until it gets to within 4 million miles.

It's supposed then become the fastest moving man-made object, traveling at 200 km/s. Wow!
Click to expand...

Wait woah hold on, can you explain more about why we can't go "in" directly towards the sun and instead have to go "out" to Jupiter first?
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
Lister said:
A fair few I'd imagine. I don't think we have viable engine tech to cancel out a large enough amount of Earth's Orbital velocity of 30 km/s (I think you'd need to target around 21 km/s). So you'd have to do some maneuvering out to Jupiter and back to get to the sun.

EDIT: According to the mission report it's going to take about 6 years, going out to Jupiter, then using Venus to increase the eccentricity of the orbit around the sun until it gets to within 4 million miles.

It's supposed then become the fastest moving man-made object, traveling at 200 km/s. Wow!
Click to expand...

There's a problem in the standard undergrad Physics Classical Mechanics textbook where you show that it takes more energy to send something into the sun than out of the solar system. Totally mind blowing.
 
Lister

Lister

Banned
TheBryanJZX90 said:
Wait woah hold on, can you explain more about why we can't go "in" directly towards the sun and instead have to go "out" to Jupiter first?
Click to expand...

IANAA (I am not an astrophysicist) but the way I understand it is that you can't fly directly towards the sun, remember, we are orbiting the sun at 30km/s. If you just point your rocket at the sun and take off you're going to end up in a slightly eccentric orbit... around the sun!

In order to actually "fall" towards the sun, you'd have to cancel out the orbital velocity of the earth, basiclaly point your rocket the opposite way it's traveling along it's orbit and hit go. The problem, as I mentioned, is that you'd have to generate well over 21km/s of deltaV, and we don't have the engines nor the fuel capable of achiving that kind of deltaV.

If we had magical Tv/movie space engines that can just continually fire for ever then we could technically point our vesel the general direction of the sun, and go, but these things don't exist. You need fuel and an engine to push that fuel out, and the more fuel the more energy required to push the craft + the fuel, and therefore the more fuel you need, etc, etc.

Turns out that you cna lower the delta V requirements to get near the sun by going further OUT from the earth and using a big, massive object to kill our deltaV in relation to the sun (like jupiter). That still won't get you super close to the Sun, but it will get you to the inner planet,s which you cna then use to get you closer to the sun.

Even so, as the mission plan says, at the closest approach to the sun you'd be travelign at 200 km/s! So if you wanted to not just reach the sun, but stop and "touch" it's surface for some crazy reason, you couldn't do it, as your velocity would be super huge.
 
Y

Yoshimitsu126

Member
Off topic but if there was a theoretical giant who had a small fish (for him) to grill, would he rather use a large grown Earth fire to get that crispy texture or the radioactive sun to keep it evenly warm?
 
nekkid

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Yoshimitsu126 said:
Off topic but if there was a theoretical giant who had a small fish (for him) to grill, would he rather use a large grown Earth fire to get that crispy texture or the radioactive sun to keep it evenly warm?
Click to expand...

You drunk or high, bruh?
 
K

Kerensky

Banned
sphinx said:
so the closest the probe will be from the sun is 4'000'000 miles?

is sound like it would still be too far from it but an anstronomical unit is 93'000'000 (distance between the sun and earth) so that's pretty damn near.

how can it withstand the heat?
Click to expand...

Crumpled gold mylar foil works surprisingly good for withstanding radiant heat, and steel can be tempered through dystektic alloying, i'm guessing they'll also use a shadow-facing graphite or aluminium radiator to dump the heat made by the power source and the equipment package.
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
Lister said:
A fair few I'd imagine. I don't think we have viable engine tech to cancel out a large enough amount of Earth's Orbital velocity of 30 km/s (I think you'd need to target around 21 km/s). So you'd have to do some maneuvering out to Jupiter and back to get to the sun.

EDIT: According to the mission report it's going to take about 6 years, going out to Jupiter, then using Venus to increase the eccentricity of the orbit around the sun until it gets to within 4 million miles.

It's supposed then become the fastest moving man-made object, traveling at 200 km/s. Wow!
Click to expand...

Jupiter?

16-00815_MissionDesign.png
 
J

jayhawker

Member
Kerensky said:
Crumpled gold mylar foil works surprisingly good for withstanding radiant heat, and steel can be tempered through dystektic alloying, i'm guessing they'll also use a shadow-facing graphite or aluminium radiator to dump the heat made by the power source and the equipment package.
Click to expand...

Transphasic shielding gives us access to the corona.
 
Lister

Lister

Banned
Dr.Acula said:
Jupiter?

16-00815_MissionDesign.png
Click to expand...

Yep, you're right, I was reading the original plan for the mission (many years old now, this wa slong in the planning!).

It does seem like they're going straight to venus and using mutliple, gravity assists instead. I wonder what the savings is in this case? Time, fuel?
 
TheMan

TheMan

Member
well I've instructed my wife to have my remains shot into the sun after I die, so i guess this will make it easier for her to get that done
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
The area they are going to is actually way hotter than the surface (millions of degrees versus about 5000 Kelvin), so this is pretty impressive.
 
T

TyrantII

Member
TheBryanJZX90 said:
Wait woah hold on, can you explain more about why we can't go "in" directly towards the sun and instead have to go "out" to Jupiter first?
Click to expand...


Run really really really fast on ice in one direction with tennis shoes on and try turning 90 degrees and to move (fall) in that direction suddenly.

You'll keep going the way you were before mostly and never get to where you wanted on that 90 line.
 
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