nuclear pluto mission by nasa

[Ma Deuce]

I won't be satisfied untill they build project orion and let me take a trip to mars.

That'll be great: provided you don't have a problem with the resulting EMP frying half the satellites in Earth orbit

Oh well, there are still NTRs...

[spikenigma]

I very highly doubt the people who thought this up did it for public opinion. It's a scientific mission. There are a lot of scientists who are interested in Pluto and the KBOs. Many scientists have wanted to send a mission to Pluto for years (and want it to get there before Pluto's thin atmosphere freezes back out as it will in a decade or so). They're also interested in studying the KBOs since they're the oldest remnants left over from the solar system's formation and are pretty much intact from that time (since they haven't been doing much). There are also some theories saying that some of the KBOs might actually be from another solar system who's sun came close (astronomically speaking) to ours and some of the outer iceballs were switched (some give a 1-3% chance that Sedna might have gotten in orbit around our sun that way). And so on and so forth (I need to get to class in a moment).

I see the value in studying objects in the Kuiper belt, they could tell us a lot about the birth of our solar system. But at the end of the day what are the experiments REALLY going to tell us compared with say:

1. a digger mission to Mars polar caps and/or frozen sea
2. a digger mission to Europa to check for a frozen sea/life
3. a mission to IO to check out the lava flows and volcanoes and chemical soup
4. a digger mission to Ganymede to check for a frozen sea/life
5. a digger mission to Callisto to check for a frozen sea/life
6. further missions to Titan's strange surface
7. futher missions to Venus to check out its environment
8. further missions to the moon to check for mining sites and/or possible base sites and sources of ice

...the best results of the KBO mission however - " yep, we've got some rock, some ice and a few Tholin compunds, just as we suspected - mission success, a good technical achievement that we landed a probe that far out! "

the best results of the digger missions - damn, there's a frozen/non-frozen sea here....hold on, did I just see something swim past the probe?

Just because you don't see worth in something doesn't mean other people don't.

I see the worth in it. I just feel that just like the upcoming mars "methane measuring" missions, we could be doing much more for the same cost...

[Shinova]

Not RTGs, but I think there are plans for spacecraft with "real" nuclear reactors in the making.

[General Brock]

Mayabird Wrote:

[quote Pluto's thin atmosphere freezes back ... in a decade or so[/quote]

It'll probably be a while before Pluto's atmosphere thaws again, too, while missions to Jupiter and Europa are more flexible. Since this is Cassini's spare RTG, they probably know how to build a good probe around it fairly quickly. It is also obsolete, in a way. Sending it to scout Pluto is a far better use for it than mothballs or a closer mission.

A better probe can be designed from the ground up for those other missions. The urgency implied by a Pluto freeze might add to the pressure to loosen Congressional purse strings. I'm not saying you can jump off to Europa just anytime, but we've been there; Pluto is also attractive as a world 'first'. That sort of thing would catch a President's eye.

[Jaepheth]

Why Pluto? Despite it's public mystique as "the farthest planet from the sun" chances are it's just another Kuiper Belt Object, with a hundred more like it. I suppose that's a good reason to send a probe out to find out more about them, but still, how about more missions to Jupiter and Saturn, which are a bit more interesting.

The natives already have restraining orders against us


I think the only real issue about nuclear feul is "What happens if it crashes or blows on its way up and spreads radioactive debris all over the countryside"

I haven't heard of any launching problems from NASA in awhile, so I doubt there'd be any problems.

[Sephirius]

whatever the case, I won't be satisfied until I see a 1.6km long, imperial grey thing in orbit. And then have it BDZ florida.