7 more days until Pluto

[planters]

I wish they could slow down. What a place to spend some time.

[absolom7691]

Very true. As it stands, I think they only have a couple of KBOs targeted. Seems like such a waste. If they can ever perfect a reliable ion drive or solar sail, perhaps in the future...

[Draco]

A solar sail that can reset it's self would be nice lol

[planters]

They could use the solar sail to get a fully fueled, ion drive ( yes, I know it would need to be nuclaler -Bush) to the target. Then, it would have the capacity to slow down. We can just about do this now if we wanted to.

[buffo]

I remember the morons protesting the launch because of the plutonium reactor these have

Just a minor nit-pick here. The RTG is not a reactor. There is no chain reaction taking place inside. It generates heat purely due to the radioactive decay of the plutonium. That heat is converted into electricity using an array of thermocouples.

In the end, the difference is a small one. Were the rocket to explode on liftoff, there is still a slight chance that the RTG could be broken open, which might scatter the plutonium around the area. And even though the fuel is not enriched enough to undergo a chain reaction, it is still highly radioactive. (Spreading radioactive elements around haphazardly is generally accepted to be a bad thing.)

However, if it was actually a fission reactor, the fuel would need to be enriched, making it even more dangerous if the rocket blew up, the container ruptured, and the fuel got scattered around.

Adam

PS: In before others ask: No, even if it were a reactor, there is no chance that the rocket exploding could somehow cause the reactor to explode like a bomb. Reactors are very different from bombs, despite what Hollywood would have you believe.

[planters]

(Spreading radioactive elements around haphazardly is generally accepted to be a bad thing.)

Don't tell my wife. We have her convinced that what we do is completely safe.

[absolom7691]

13 more hours to go!

Closer image:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/S...2&image_id=222

[dream beamz]

There should be some live event on TV tomorrow but I just don't see anything. Such a shame. They could explain and even show a few live images coming in and maybe an animation of plutos rotation.

[absolom7691]

and even show a few live images coming in and maybe an animation of plutos rotation.

It would be cool but there is no way they could pull this off. They probe is moving too fast to capture full rotation. The other downer is that they couldn't possible show a live feed. From that distance, the New Horizons downlink is only 2kbits per second. As it stands, it will take up to 16 months to send back all the data and images from the fly-by. It's a shame that Pluto couldn't capture the probe so we could keep studying it.

[Crazy]

It would be cool but there is no way they could pull this off. They probe is moving too fast to capture full rotation. The other downer is that they couldn't possible show a live feed. From that distance, the New Horizons downlink is only 2kbits per second. As it stands, it will take up to 16 months to send back all the data and images from the fly-by. It's a shame that Pluto couldn't capture the probe so we could keep studying it.

Agreed How great would it be to have a picture of our sun, from pluto? Just a small little dot in the sky...Man, I hope I get to see manned exploration of at LEAST mars in my life time Sure wish I lived several hundred years in the future!