"After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of schedule."
Amazing!
The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt.
Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the volume of discoveries generated by MESSENGER and Cassini, and the wealth of knowledge that New Horizons is going to generate, it's such a shame that my favourite planet, Uranus, is likely not going to be visited in my lifetime. I spent my PhD studying the mysterious outer ring system of Uranus, and I'm 100% positive that a close-up view of the entire system would blow our minds.
Somebody who solves/disrupts science communication deserves a Nobel Prize.
Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go:
If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data.
Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly into the surface of the planet.
Is it simply that we have no way to build something that could both survive such an impact and be complex enough to do anything useful afterwards? Or might it create too much destruction on Pluto's surface? Or some combination of those?
A bullet travels about 1,700 MPH. New Horizons is going about 36,300 MPH.
The probe weighs 480 kilograms, so it's kinetic energy is approximately 63.2 Gigajoules. For reference, this is like 15 tonnes of TNT released on impact. Hard to make something that survives those kind of conditions.
Plus, probes that far out have worse-than-dialup transmission rates. It takes 42 minutes to return a single photo from the LORRI camera. Bursting large amounts of data out in a short period of time before impact isn't feasible.
I think the suggestion was to send the data after impact. I guess the idea is to basically fire a shock-absorbing crate full of scientific instruments, let the impact destroy the crate, and hope the instruments survive and get to work.
Yup, that was my idea. Or to have NH itself fire off some very tiny instruments that might weight little enough to not go off like an atom bomb when hitting the ground. A GoPro, for example. (I KNOW: NOT AN ACTUAL GOPRO. A small armored camera.) Or a thermometer.
The constraint there, though, might be designing equipment that is both very low mass and also capable of talking back to either Earth or the rest of NH as it zips away.
I fear that won't work. The speed relative to Pluto during closest approach was 13.78 meters every millisecond, I can't imagine that anything larger than a grain of sand will not behave like a liquid upon impact.
A few million miles prior to arrival, jettison a 'probe from the probe', control this separately, beginning the negative acceleration of the mini-probe. This mini probe could enter a controlled orbit, and then launch a mini landing probe of even smaller size...etc.
Getting something to slow down enough to orbit is still a huge change in velocity. And even if it did, exactly how much bigger a transmitter could it carry considering it has to be hurled out to Pluto. At least with direct to Earth transmissions we can aim enormous[1] dishes at the signal source.
I wonder if it would be more interesting to fire a sizable dumb projectile into Pluto and then after you've past it a bit (with proper alignment of the spacecraft, sun, and pluto) observe the absorption spectrum of the gas/dust cloud produced.
That's kinda what Deep Impact did. LRO & LCROSS did something similar, but the problem is that for a larger body, you need an impactor with a fair amount of energy before you'd be able to likely generate anything that is observable. Also, there's the planetary protection issue, which makes the design of impactors A LOT more expensive.
You don't have to crash/land the entire probe, you could land a lightweight sensor that was carried by the probe and which requires little fuel to decelerate.
It's theoretically possible, it'd just require a lot of fuel to slow the craft down enough to survive a landing.
source: I've played Kerbal Space Program. If you speak maths (I don't), you could probably do them; the calculations are relatively simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v.
No, it is much much harder. Especially the survival part
Delta-v is literally Physics 101
Landing on Mars is hard, but feasible. Because it has a thick atmosphere to help with the braking
Sure, it adds a lot of complications as well, but it is a very good way of slowing your craft enough for other braking systems to work (like rockets, parachutes, etc)
Of course, bodies with little atmosphere also have a small gravity, so that makes things easier as well (like landing on the Moon)
> No, it is much much harder. Especially the survival part
Please elaborate. What is dangerous about a braking burn? Sure, it's harder (because you need to carry that fuel), but not impossible in principle.
> Sure, it adds a lot of complications as well, but it is a very good way of slowing your craft enough for other braking systems to work (like rockets, parachutes, etc)
But it is not some fuel, it is more or less the same amount of fuel you need to accelerate the thing. And now you have to accelerate twice as much mass at liftoff requiring even more fuel. Of course requiring even more fuel itself. The tyranny of the rocket equation.
It is of course possible but difficultly and costs will probably explode ruining the cost benefit ratio. Fly by ten times or try landing once? Or fly by once and spend the remaining money exploring something else - there is so much else. And entering an orbit seems still vastly simpler than landing on the surface.
Yeah, but Saturn is at approx. 1/4 of the distance to Pluto and it used a different process to intersect to Saturn's orbit, taking more time to get there
in part it's more dangerous than correction or passive braking system because you need a high twr motor and the explosive to go with it to have a way to correct for unforeseen consequences.
see what happened with philae, they got two redundant system to land and both failed.
if the scan reveal pluto to have an usable atmosphere, it will be much much easier to land
however, if you look at the trajectory they used it's an orthogonal encounter [1]
that means the speed they have relative one another is quite much more than when you approach calmly from behind using a hoffman transfer or the like - however if you go that route, instead of waiting 10 years you have to wait a load more, probably more like hundreds (exactly what they did with phila, they approached from the closest orbit possible to minimize the correction burn needed [2])
and let us not forget that having anything in space surviving for soo long is a challenge by itself, as having equipment on earth funded for so long to be maintained operational - remember this story about the other spacecraft that was sent to a comet flyby and was out of gas due leaks on its way back? [3] they had to work a great deal just to rebuild the communication equipement in time
A few months ago someone posted on HN about "ballistic capture" to enter a Martian orbit with far less fuel, and I've spent the last few months wondering if you could do that to mosey into a Plutonian orbit:
My boss co-authored that paper [1] :) Ballistic capture is interesting: makes use of fuzzy/chaotic dynamics in the 3-Body Problem. I worked on analysis of the Weak Stability Boundary, which is the mathematical set of all points in phase-space that lie at this fuzzy boundary, for my Masters thesis [2]. It has been used in a few missions, including SMART-1, Stardust, and Hiten. ESA's Bepi-Colombo mission will also be using it to ensure that there isn't a single point-of-failure to enter orbit around Mercury.
The big problem with ballistic capture is that it doesn't guarantee a more optimal solution. Transfers can take a lot longer, and in theory even require more fuel. So it's very much a case of having to perform mission analysis on a case-by-case basis.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting prospect to send unmanned missions to Mars carrying habitat elements, before a manned mission, since they can be sent well in advance. I analyzed the prospect of potentially using a cycler [3] for this in my thesis.
Part of the reason New Horizons is going so fast is to reach Pluto in "only" ten years. A Hohmann transfer (which you would need to make a ballistic capture) would take about 124 years just to reach Pluto.
The article led me to believe you would avoid a Hohmann transfer with ballistic capture by flying it into a similar orbit and letting the planet slowly creep up on the probe and pull it into orbit. Am I misreading that?
You're cutting the final burn but you're still pulling roughly the same maneuver, by taking an orbit that peaks at about the same altitude as pluto, and that is a slow orbit.
So, for such an impact, you would almost certainly need the strongest bouncing lander ever produced. However, Pluto's escape velocity only is about 1/10th the speed of NH.
This means that if that first bounce upon impact would result in even 10% of the initial velocity, it will literally bounce out of the system and back towards the sun.
> If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data
That's actually harder to do.
To insert in orbit, you can still have some residual speed, you don't have to slow all the way down.
To land on the surface and survive, you would have to brake even harder. Anything near orbital speed would be a non-survivable impact, even for hardened electronics. Not to mention interactions with the atmosphere on the way down.
I am not an engineer, but it might be easier to launch a spacecraft with an ion engine that over years manages to reduce the speed relative to Pluto to something human scale.
Bullet goes about 1.2 km/s at best. New Horizons is going ~14 km/s relative to Pluto. That's a heck of an impact to survive. You could do it on Earth by braking in the atmosphere, but there's not a lot of that on Pluto.
I love HN for things like this - personal accounts of people associated with groundbreaking projects. Thanks for sharing.
Most of your post is about visiting planets and exploring the solar system, but you close witha comment about disrupting science communication. What aspects of science communication are you referring to?
I realise that I made an unexplained logical leap to get to the last comment. Basically, based on my professional experience as a planetary scientist, it's my belief that the reason we don't have more satellites cruising through the Solar System is that we (and I mean scientists, engineers, administrators etc.) continue to fail in communicating their true value to the average person on the street. I think that media like Twitter, Instagram, blogs etc. have definitely helped raise the profile of interplanetary exploration, but I'm still waiting for the genius that comes up with the trump card that will enable science communication to become at least 10x more effective.
The fact that missions like Cassini, Kepler etc. have to fight to keep the lights on is IMHO testament to the fact that we've failed in communicating their value to society. I try to post stuff on my blog [1] to engage people in the wonders of space science and exploration: it doesn't feel effective though. Someone that figures out how to fully convey the value of missions like New Horizons to the public deserves a serious pat on the back.
Great points and great blog too. Paradoxically I think what's missing is more manned space exploration - people have a genuine interest in seeing other planets and knowing about space in general, but this interest is tempered by the painful awareness that that we will never get to visit them, so that it's like being on an island with a tall tower and a great telescope (through which we can see enticing other places) but no way of building a boat.
Of course going into space is so expensive and so few of us would make the cut as astronauts that hardly anyone realistically expects to become a space explorer, but we would like to live vicariously through other space explorers, but this isn't possible if our explorers never go anywhere. I think the reason people get so wrapped up in the story of the Mars rovers and the Rosetta/Philae mission was that those probes are the most relateable things since people walked on the Moon in the 1970s.
Really, I think we should be doing manned Moon missions regularly. People point out that there's nothing on the Moon that we want, which is sort of true (although we've learned so much since the last time we went that we should reconsider that angle) but that's a dreadfully consumerist mindset. The Moon is a (relatively) accessible destination that we could use as a proving ground for interplanetary exploration techniques. But more importantly, making regular visits or having a permanent outpost there gives people something to project their imaginations onto (including their political and technological imagination). I have a small collection of old newspapers and my favorite is one published the day after the first Moon landing with the simple headline 'Men on Moon'. Reading it still gives me a shiver of excitement, followed by disappointment that we abandoned Moon exploration by the mid 1970s.
One often-forgotten detail of the Moon landing was that at the time there was a Russian observer spacecraft orbiting the Moon, and it dropped down to within 10 miles of the surface at the time of the landing (presumably to observe what the Americans were up to). I saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Charlie Rose last week and he was joking that his favorite daydream is meeting the Chinese President at a conference and persuading him to leak a fake memo saying China aims to land a man on Mars, which would galvanize the American body politic back into serious investment in space. Sad but true.
I used to think it was a failure to communicate, but I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the "average person on the street" really just doesn't care.
You can be the best speaker in the world, but you'll still only end up communicating to a small sliver of the average people.
I think changing the cultural attitudes towards science will do far more good in the long run, but it's very difficult. Ultimately, I think science isn't loved because it's slow, difficult, and filled with probablistic truth that will likely change in a few years.
This compares poorly to the easily marketable absolute truths that fill most people's days. The worst of science reporting happens when reporters try to make science fit into this mold.
Typical fallacy wherein one person believes strongly in something - in this case science - and believes that those who don't share the belief are somehow missing out on something important.
If you have a passion about anything at all, good for you. Preaching its importance to the world at large means very little to those who don't share your interest. You might introduce a few new people to a topic which they will then grow into themselves, but the majority of your words will fall of deaf ears.
Fanatics of science are especially prone to this problem, because of this idea that it's all based on facts and improving life, and so surely every single damn person on the planet HAS TO CARE.
Not to mention that the real science buffs typically can't even begin to understand that _not everyone thinks the way they do_. Brainy people tend to think everyone else alive must be as curious and obsessed with details about every aspect of life. You know what, some people are very happy living without daily intellectual bombardment.
Right now, companies like Facebook and Google are working on bringing the internet to countries that don't have good access to it yet; if it wasn't for the lag (and cost), I'm sure they would've invested heavily into a sattelite internet network.
I see a small / niche market in space tourism; Virgin Intergalactic is probably going to get on there. But it'll be limited to those that can shell out 100K for it.
There was some talk about a company a few years back that wanted to mine asteroids; I personally think that's science fiction and won't be a profitable endeavour, but, if I'm wrong, it'll unleash a new kind of corporate space race.
I think it can go very fast if there's enough money to be made. As it stands though, besides satellites, there is nothing to be had.
Well Kepler did win that fight. NASA fortunately decided to breathe life into an extended mission called K2 [1]. This didn't happen without A LOT of back and forth between administrators and scientists though.
It's not helped by being hobbled with two of four broken reaction wheels. It's awesome that we've figured out a way to keep prolonging the mission.
You can't argue with the results though; Over a thousand planets discovered with another four thousand candidates. I'm not sure why we don't have multiple Kepler-like missions running simultaneously to map out our entire section of the Milky Way.
Not sure but I think he was talking about the fact that NASA had to close the communication with the satellite so that it can get busy with clicking and doing science with Pluto during the flyby
In the near future launch prices are going to be much lower, which changes the landscape in exploration and exploitation of space completely. That means that you can get more missions for fewer dollars. It means you can be more adventurous and innovative (since the cost of failure is lower and the time to recover is shorter). Which includes things like making increasing use of advanced propulsion (ion engines, plasma propulsion, etc.) which would enable things like a Neptune orbiter or what-have-you.
As to communications, almost certainly there will be a change to laser based communications over long distances. The technology is maturing and once we have the ability to put more infrastructure off-Earth (orbit, etc.) then you can replace things like the DSN with laser based communication hubs in orbit or at L2 or L4/L5 or wherever. They'd take the form of essentially space telescopes with special instrumentation for sending and receiving laser comms. That would make it possible to send and receive at a much higher rate across the entire solar system.
I watched the Nat Geo special on this the other day. Apart from the fact that Nat Geo is a piece of cp, I was amazed about the challenges and engineering behind this project. Even more amazing is the fact it captured images of Pluto. The show explained there was a chance the cameras could have faced the wrong direction.
And the note about the probe also carrying the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh was touching.
Any change in orbit takes thrust; whether you do it slowly or quickly the required delta-V is the same. New Horizons used a gravity assist from Jupiter to get up to speed, but there's no conveniently placed Jupiter to help it slow down.
Great question. Scientifically, I can't say that Uranus is "better" than any other planet or Solar System body. Neptune, for instance, is also a fascinating system, especially as someone working on modeling planetary rings.
My "preference" for Uranus simply comes from the hours and hours I've spent trying to model dynamic processes in the system. It's a truly fascinating and in some sense "rapidly" evolving system. I spent my time looking at the tiny moon Mab [1] and I could spend hours telling you about how fascinating it is. If you consider how many other moons and rings there are in the system, it's just a shame to think I might not live long enought to see the undoubtedly incredible discoveries that an orbiter would lead to.
In honor of Clyde William Tombaugh [1], the astronomer who discovered Pluto, a canister [2] containing his ashes is on-board the New Horizons space probe. It reads:
"Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the Solar System's 'Third Zone.' Adelle and Muron's boy, Patricia's husband, Annette and Alden's father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde W. Tombaugh (1906 - 1997)."
His wikipedia page also has an amusing quote on the origin on this mission:
In August 1992, JPL scientist Robert Staehle called Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet. "I told him he was welcome to it," Tombaugh later remembered, "though he's got to go one long, cold trip." The call eventually led to the launch of the New Horizons space probe to Pluto in 2006.
It's interesting that by sending his remains on that probe we basically guaranteed that at least some human remains will survive millions of years in interstellar space, unless of course, New Horizons collides with something(which I guess it will, given enough time?).
It would be fitting I think if aliens found his ashes considering he's was something of an ET evangelist and eventually claimed some of his mysterious sightings (green fireballs and glowing rectangles moving in unnatural ways) were probably of ET origin and its unscientific to dismiss this out of hand. Wiki:
Although our own solar system is believed to support no other life than on Earth, other stars in the galaxy may have hundreds of thousands of habitable worlds. Races on these worlds may have been able to utilize the tremendous amounts of power required to bridge the space between the stars..." Tombaugh stated that he had observed celestial phenomena which he could not explain, but had seen none personally since 1951 or 1952. "These things, which do appear to be directed, are unlike any other phenomena I ever observed. Their apparent lack of obedience to the ordinary laws of celestial motion gives credence."
There's a very moving passage towards the end of Stephen Baxter's Deep Future that talks about a space probe as potentially the last evidence of humanity's existence.
Not to shoot the messenger, but it annoys me when these things are viewed through the lens of artificial divisions such as nations. I understand that space exploration has been used as a tool to further many political machines, but it seems silly to me, especially when staring at a picture as beautiful as this from a distance that makes Earth seem so small, to think about the people living on this planet as anything other than humans, rather than citizens of different countries. It just feels divisive where it should really feel uniting. (Kumbaya!)
I really hope we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone.
edit: To be fair, I am really heartened when I see how international the teams that do work in the space station generally are. We've come a long way.
I agree with you in the sense that space exploration is at its core a human, not national, achievement. National divisions are silly when seen in the context of the vastness of space. In a similar vein, I think Gene Roddenberry was right in thinking that true elimination of national boundaries will come after we meet sentient aliens for the first time - with an alien to compare ourselves against, we all see our common humanity much more clearly.
We're partway there. As you say, there is cooperation on the Space Station. Cooperation between the various space agencies on missions from telescopes to probes is commonplace. Look at Cassini: a NASA probe with a ESA lander. The Curiosity rover has a Russian instrument on it.
But we haven't reached the point yet where nationalism is no longer a part of the drive behind space exploration or other 'big-science' projects. I see competition for scientific glory as a healthy and productive form of competition, so I don't think we should completely shy away from it. It's akin to rival schools competing for academic glory - a kind of tribalism that results in achievements which benefit all.
(It may lead to increased levels of backstabbing, but that's hardly innovative.)
Humans are a social species, so also have an innate nature to cooperate.
Also, the concept of 'country' is a rather recent invention. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#History_and_origi... for some context. It's certainly possible that kohanz's "hope [that] we someday get to the point where no one really cares what "country" achieved the next space exploration milestone" can be true yet still have competitiveness.
Perhaps space exploration of 100 years from now will be lead by volunteer teams based on, their WoW clan membership. While preposterous, the teams could still be competitive even if they are not organized by nations.
That's a very narrow and technical view of what constitutes a state, to the point of excluding ancient empires and nations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China and others. They wouldn't meet the standards of modern statehood insofar as they lacked rigidly-defined borders or fully-developed civic institutions, but I think it's a mistake to imagine that they lacked any sense of national identity.
I certainly agree that competition can be wasteful, but proxy conflict can be healthy, eg the space race as proxy competition for the Cold War which almost nobody wanted to see played out as an actual military conflict. Private competition will undoubtedly exist the future (and is already coming into being today) but the capital and infrastructural requirements of space exploration are such that only nation states can command the resources for large-scale projects at present. You might be interested in this comparison of how Apple, the world's most valuabel company, stacks up against actual countries, which suggests it could be considered in the same league as Azerbaijan, Belarus, or perhaps Norway, depending on what metric you use - impressive, but still small potatoes in the overall scheme of things: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/28/2103622/if-apple-were-...
There was no ancient Greece nation. I suspect you mean it as a placeholder for the Hellenic era, or perhaps the kingdom Macedonia.
But as to the issue, I recently listened to a lecture about the process of deciding what the European nations would be after the First World War. The different nations had wildly different ideas of how to decide what was their national territory and people. The people of Alsace speak German, but the French said (and I paraphrase) "look at their love of wine and joie de vivre - they are French, but were forced to speak German".
Or of a farmer in central Europe, when asked "what are you?" answered "farmer", and then "where are you from?" brought the name of the local town. When asked more insistently, he said "Catholic". The concept of nation made no sense to him.
The concept of nationhood is quite complicated. Is Scotland a nation? India during the British Empire? It's more complicated than I want to get into. But in the context of the tgcordell comment, which tries to connect species imperatives with national competition, I mean to point out that the concept of 'nation' is too new to really have an evolutionary component. (And if it does, it's built on cooperation.)
I don't deny that proxy conflict can be healthy, though proxy conflict in Korea wasn't all that healthy for those involved. Is it possible to determine the healthy conflict beforehand, or is it something that's mostly done after the fact?
I agree with your general points, but while many people would certainly have been unaware of or indifferent to a national concept I think people in cities on major trade routes or in power centers like Rome would certainly have been aware of other places and would have been broadly aware of their own significance (although this awareness was doubtless concentrated among a social, military and business elite).
I think of this like local vs. global maxima. Competition is one local maxima, but personally I believe cooperative systems are the global maxima. However, cooperation is more complex, more difficult, and perhaps contrary to human nature. Difficult, but not impossible.
this is a pedantic correction, but 'classical planets' has a specific meaning, being the 7 planets known in antiquity, e.g. to the babylonians. so technically the feat you describe was accomplished by 1979!
"Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices
to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to
make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to
return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to
perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2,
1983). The entire series could be considered highly successful."
In an infamous series of science experiments, no less:
* One of the two cameras on Venera 9 failed to function because the lens cap didn't come off properly.
* Ditto for Venera 10.
* Venera 11 broke the trend by having lens caps fail to come off of BOTH cameras.
* Venera 12... same thing.
* Venera 13, ironically, broke the curse. The lens caps came off properly, and both cameras functioned.
* Venera 14 had both cameras function as well. However, it had a unique new problem: the lens cap landed directly under the lander's soil probe, and it ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap.
As a child, I loved reading about space and astronomy. I think I pretty much read every book about these topics my local town's library. (It wasn't a large {town, library}) Isaac Asimov's non-fiction books were among my favourites.
I never imagined that now we'd be getting the level of detail seen in these photos of Pluto (level of detail akin to a Moon shot), which until now, only existed in my mind from various artistic impressions. I can only imagine how the folks on the New Horizons team feel after seeing the results of their work after so much time and effort.
Amen. I work at NASA and I'm gobsmacked at the beauty of the New Horizons imagery. I can't wait to see the good stuff.
Isaac Asimov's science essay collections had a profound effect on me. I learned physics years ahead of when I would have in school by reading these essays and learning how to do calculations involving kinetic energy, mass, acceleration, etc. Even more important, those essays helped me learn how to think like a scientist. Asimov's secular humanist world view also influenced my own world view greatly. I met him several times at various SF conventions and I miss him.
Not just essays; he wrote something like a real physics textbook at high-school level, which I learned from as a teenager. (Not in school, of course. IIRC it was more illuminating than my actual high-school physics text.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Physics
The images we've been seeing the last few weeks, which grew by a few pixels every day or so, were exciting. I read about how much higher resolution the images would be as the probe reached its closest point in the flyby. But I had no idea how striking the best images would be.
When I opened this article, my jaw dropped. I never in my life expected to see Pluto in this level of detail. I always imagined it would be just a cold ball of rock. This is absolutely amazing.
And there's this still: Images set to be released on Wednesday will be more than 10 times the resolution of those already published.
I bet the scientists just hate that this stuff is shared on Twitter. They made a big deal that this was transmitted from New Horizons as a compressed image (to transmit it quickly) and then it gets mauled by Twitter's recompression too.
It's not like these copies replace the higher-res ones. Not a project scientist, but I'd rather as many people as possible see some image than only a few see only any at all.
Plutos "demotion" from being a fully-fledged planet makes me wonder if it would have been politically feasible to start the New Horizons project if the redefinition had happened a few years earlier.
Still, I am pleasantly surprised by the excitement this mission is garnering.
It is well-known that the New Horizons PI, Alan Stern, had a strong distaste for the "demotion" of Pluto. (An extreme example, this interview: http://www.space.com/12710-pluto-defender-alan-stern-dwarf-p..., which is rather ... over the top in terms of its arguments.)
I actually think his core argument - that a "planet" should be determined by its physical characteristics rather than where its orbit happens to lie - is pretty reasoned and grounded in logic. I'm on his side about the whole "clearing the neighborhood" criterion; it's totally arbitrary, and has less to do with the object itself than it does with where that object lives.
I actually think Pluto's classification as a dwarf planet actually gives New Horizons more significance, not less. Pluto the planet was just a tiny very far away example of an object which we have already studied a great deal of. Pluto the dwarf planet instead is one of the largest and nearest example of an object we know very little and have never studied before (I.e. the kupier belt objects) and which can give us hopefully a lot more insight into how the solar system formed.
In the press conference, the PI was asked about a future mission. He said that he has thought about orbiters and landers and considers the Pluto system to be a valuable science target. But he said that we need to study the New Horizons data for some years, to better design the next mission. At this time, they wouldn't know what the best instruments to send would be. Also, it is far from clear how to send a mission to Pluto that takes a reasonable amount of time to get there (9 years, in the case of New Horizons) but can also stop when it gets there. Cassini took almost seven years to reach Saturn and the orbital insertion burn was something like ninety minutes! I'm not sure how fast it was going at the time, compared to New Horizons at Pluto, but the point is, if you want to get there quickly, you go fast, but then it's hard to stop.
> At this time, they wouldn't know what the best instruments to send would be.
There's an interesting BBC documentary series on the planets, called The Planets, that has an episode covering the Voyager probes. They had to do some quick redesigns on them after Pioneer 10 and 11 visited the outer planets and found fun stuff like radiation and unexpected rings. They said that if they hadn't had the earlier probes, Voyager would have been fried when it got to the system.
I second that recommendation, and it's currently on Netflix. It's a good documentary series. A little long in the tooth now, but only for the entirely positive reason that we've done a fair bit more planetary science since it was made.
You might be dead by the time that actually happens, so better to be killed by sorrow of only getting fly-by data than the agony of having only what Hubble and its successors can resolve.
It seems like just the ticket to get a certain contingent on board. "The noble probe will remain stout and true; in the freezing depths of space it will be warmed by the Americium it carries in its heart."
I might be mistaken, (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) but IIRC Plutonium is a side-product of the enrichment of weapons-grade Uranium. I think the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons treaty might impose some barriers on this process, and we're no longer in the Cold War, so it's kinda hard to get Plutonium.
Uranium enrichment is actually a physical rather than nuclear process, and thus it cannot produce other elements such as Plutonium. However once you have enriched enough uranium to create an operating reactor, its spent fuel will contain a few percent Plutonium. The problem is that only a few percent of that will be Pu-238, and separating that from the other four Pu isotopes is incredibly difficult, that is to say, economically intractable.
Therefore, the Pu-238 used in RTGs is likely produced through another process, neutron capture in Np-237. Np-237 is produced in very small amounts in a uranium reactor, but as it's the only Neptunium isotope produced in any significant quantity, there's no need to do an isotope separation on it. It can be chemically separated from the other elements in the spent fuel, which is much easier, although certainly still not easy.
In any case, with the end of the Cold War there are indeed fewer facilities willing & able to produce Pu-238 in kilogram quantities. In the US, spent fuel from commercial reactors currently cannot be re-processed at all, due to proliferation concerns.
Oh. Thanks for the detailed explanation and correction about the enrichment process. Do you think that once we have asteroid mining we'll be able to get Uranium (and consequently Plutonium) in higher quantities so that the economic costs will be viable again? That is assuming we can overcome the legal/security concerns by then.
That's a good question - AFAIK nobody has any real idea how much Uranium is present within nearby asteroids. Hopefully they will create some more RTGs & send some probes to find out!
It actually makes me hopeful that New Horizons will have a chance to look further on things in the Kuiper Belt. It's a very interesting area that doesn't get much attention.
I was upset about not orbiting Pluto initially but the objects they've identified in the Kuiper Belt are dissimilar so that information will be just as valuable IMO.
Check out [1]. Seems to be a combination of pre-flight calibration tests and in-flight observation of stars and planets with known optical characteristics.
Interestingly enough, I think that's exactly how the Curiosity rover calibrates its camera, though it's the camera on the robotic arm looking at a fixed test pattern.
I think they usually have a black and white camera with filters of specific wavelengths, some of which roughly correspond to red, green, blue, and they combine them. The color pictures I've seen from Mars and Cassini usually say "approximate true color."
They have no green (495-570nm) filter, just panchromatic (400-975nm), blue (400-550nm), red (540-700nm), near-IR (780-975nm) and narrow-band methane (860-910nm).
Does it really matter? I remember reading about this in one of Richard Dawkins' book (I think its Unweaving the rainbow). Now you can complain about the Crab Nebula, whether its color correction, or you are lucky enough to view it up close with a naked eye.
The colors you observe are just models of the different frequencies which our brain has evolved into to label as "red", "violet", or "#782". :)
A much less/more evolved brain (be it alien or terrestrial) will observer it much differently.
This is incredible. Note that this is also a true representation of Pluto's colours by merging a high resolution greyscale picture taken by the #1 camera "Lorri" and a second (lower resolution) colour picture from the #2 camera "Ralph".
There's a detailed and informative article about the design of the New Horizons probe on the British Interplanetary Society site at [1]. An even more detailed description of the science payload can be found at [2].
I think the main reason is that Pluto has an active atmosphere; it snows. Plutos icy surface may be somewhat active as well, so craters may disappear over time in a way that the craters on the moon cannot.
However, there may be other factors:
1. As you note, the mass of the Earth-Moon system is much greater than the mass of the Pluto-Charon system.
2. In the Earth-Moon system, the moon is the outer protector. In the Pluto system, there are five smaller protectors and Pluto is the protected.
3. The inner solar system is a small, dense region closer to the gravity of the sun and gas giants. Objects thrown in our direction are likely to stick around. In contrast, the Kuiper Belt isn't very dense and objects thrown in that direction not only have more places to go, but may be on their way out of the solar system or into extended hyperbolic orbits.
3. KBOs aren't very dense, so even impacts which occur may not create massive craters.
So this got me thinking... is there a way to forecast our space-travel capacity into the far future?
Could we conceivably create a formula that takes into account all of humanity's previous milestones of technological breakthrough's and the distances they have achieved for us.. and project where we could be 100, 500, 1000 yrs from now?
Perhaps there is a vague velocity pattern we can derive from a plethora of historic data?
*apologies for not being very articulate today..im still in awe!
A formula? No, probably not; the thing with space exploration is that it depends on the one hand on money, i.e. government funding or commercial exploitation, and on the other on physics - getting something into space, let alone propel it far away, is a very costly process when it comes to fuel and whatnot required - which increases exponentially the more you want to achieve out there.
Although companies like Virgin Intergalactic and SpaceX are working hard on making it more affordable, thanks to some advancements. Still though, practically speaking, getting anything into orbit is hard enough.
We'll probably see a manned Mars mission in our lifetime, but for anything beyond that you'll probably have to read science fiction.
The closest thing I know about, that's close to what you are talking about, is the wait calculation. Basically, if you assume that the velocity we can attain grows exponentially, and if you do a calculation, you'll find a "best time" when to launch. Assuming that the velocity grows with an exponential growth of 1.4%, equal to the current world economic growth, says that the earliest we would expect to get to the closest star is 1110 years from 2007, or 3117.
I remember reading about Pluto in dozens of space books when I was a child, all filled with beautiful images sent from Voyager I and II, I'm so excited that we can finally add Pluto to that roster
Also, it's so incredible that the New Horizon's team has managed to get to something so small and far away!
"Jingoism: the feelings and beliefs of people who think that their country is always right and who are in favor of aggressive acts against other countries." [1]
Can we please stop comparing a success chant with "aggressive acts against other countries"?
Unnecessary nationalism, sure. Jingoism is hyperbole.
I'm more than a little disappointed that we haven't got gleaming alien cities in the viewfinder this time, but I guess there's still a chance that Ceres is going to give humanity the boost it needs.
Why didn't it stop to look around? Smell the proverbial roses?
Wasn't that its main mission? Or is it now going to check out other Kuiper belt objects?
It was going much too fast to stop (given the available propellant). Also, that would have extended the transit time significantly. On the upside, it's sounding like the Kuiper belt is a really interesting place, so we'll get to see much more!
It's moving too fast for it to stop. It's not [currently] possible to ship enough fuel for it to stop by using rockets. And there is no good atmosphere for it to use to stop (plus we don't have enough information about the atmosphere to design anything yet).
So it will just do a very short flyby, then spend the next year or two sending the data back to Earth. After that it's not decided, but probably some Kuiper belt object like you suggest.
The reason that the stars do not show up on the image is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure.
Since you can see stars near the moon, you should be able to see stars near Pluto, which is less bright. More likely, there are no stars in the (very narrow) angle of the camera.
This is exactly the reason. Properly exposed with a camera, you cannot see stars near the moon.
This is exactly the same effect. There are probably not any stars of high enough magnitude to be visible on the same exposure with such a bright object. In fact, there are definitely not: otherwise, we would see them on the image.
For more proof, check out some earlier navigation images taken by New Horizons as it approached pluto, greatly overexposing Pluto and Charon in order to see the stars around them: https://twitter.com/NewHorizonsBot/status/615264675975065600
It's difficult to imagine Pluto, being so far out, being "bright," but remember that light intensity falls off at an inverse square rate with distance. New Horizons being so close to pluto, it's actually an extremely bright object relative to the stars behind it.
In fact, NASA did a fun twitter experiment where they gave people the exact time at their location on Earth when it would appear as bright as noon on Pluto. You can see many resulting images here, illustrating how bright the Pluto surface might look were you standing on it: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23plutotime
Perhaps no significantly bright stars. I find it unlikely that there are zero stars in that field of view, especially since the probe and planet are most likely roughly in the plane of the galaxy.
This is basically heresy, but what I've been told is that imaging stars from space is actually more difficult, because there is no diffusion of the local atmosphere to help increase the perceived size of the point light source.
If you're saying that the images of all of the point sources manage to "miss" the image-sensing regions of the camera sensor, then I seriously doubt that explanation.
For one thing, it assumes that only a small fraction of the image sensor's surface is actually capable of detecting light, which would make it very inefficient. Typical consumer digital cameras can capture over 30% of the incoming energy, and presumably New Horizons' camera can do better, being specifically designed for a low-light environment.
More importantly, no atmospheric "diffusion" is required to spread out the incoming light, because it's occurring anyway through diffraction at the camera's aperture. The angular resolution of the LORRI camera is specified as about 1 arcsecond, which is comparable to the atmospheric seeing conditions on a relatively clear night on Earth.
Ah yes it is reasonable that several other characteristics make the sensor less likely to register photons from the field of view here. (The sensor/lens could also have some spatial frequency response characteristics that filter out non-diffused stars). I don't find it reasonable that there are no stars in that field of view though :)
Most photos from space don't capture stars unless they're trying to, because whatever object they're photographing is sufficiently bright to blow out any stars.
I don't know about reproducing statuses, but between the KASA pack and the Real Solar System mod, I'm sure one could have a blast recreating quite a few real missions (though I think KASA focuses more on manned missions than unmanned).
Please don't start flamewars on HN. Perhaps you didn't mean to, but threads are sensitive to initial conditions and vulnerable to being derailed, and the trainwrecks that result are not at all what HN is for.
It's true that all of humanity will benefit, but it's also true that a very specific subset of humanity payed for it.
Look at it from a purely practical perspective - it is absolutely unnecessary for anyone outside of America to like this program!
The American voting public took on all of the downsides of this program (the expense, mainly). They hold complete control over its existence, and the existence of many missions like it. Patriotism motivates people, and until we start frequently sending international space probes it seems pretty useful to me.
Rosetta/Philae was a European achievement paid by the EU public, yet that barely gets mentioned. It's really a shame that the endless churn of downbeat economic news has overshadowed everything good that European countries are able to do together...
Maybe Europe would benefit from having a bit more American-style "rah-rah" patriotism around the good old "12 stars on deep blue" EU flag.
Nowadays it seems that we European citizens are constantly looking for reasons to argue rather than reasons to stick together, and that's a huge change from the positive European atmosphere of the '90s.
> Maybe Europe would benefit from having a bit more American-style "rah-rah" patriotism around the good old "12 stars on deep blue" EU flag.
Something most americans don't understand is how repulsive blatant patriotism is. A lot of europeans, along with their nationality, have a sense of being "european", just like most americans have a sense of being "american" (rather than just "Californian" or what have you).
There's nothing wrong with being proud of your country (or continent). There's everything wrong with an "in your face, my country is better than yours" attitude.
If you're a citizen of any EU country, you can just go anywhere else in Europe, no questions asked. You're welcome, anywhere in Europe. I travel a lot. I move a lot (I've lived in several different countries in the EU). This is one hell of a wonderful feeling; and even though, by distances, EU countries are similar to US states... there's really nothing like being immersed in a completely different environment. The weather is different, the language is different, the customs are different.
Singing the national anthem in schools? Chanting "<country>! <country>!" whenever something cool happens which you want to be a part of? It's alright I suppose when you aren't constantly crossing national borders. When there's only [edit: realistically] two other countries on your continent. Nobody's going to be offended (well, nobody that will be able to tell you). But it's the last thing Europe needs.
Have you never attended any football match? I'm not sure this counters my point in any way. If I were to listen to my local club, the east side of my city is just so much better than the west side.
I've been to plenty, and at the national level there is ample patriotism for one's country, regardless of nationality. I do agree with your point. I just don't think it's quite as clear-cut as you suggest.
People chanting "USA" are literally not saying "in your face, my country is better that yours." I think if that's what you're hearing, you're bringing some personal interpretation to your hearing.
What you seem to miss is that Americans chanting "USA" is so frequent and so common even in situations that wouldn't be considered to warrant any nationalism by anyone else that it's a point of ridicule by anyone else.
I admit, that's laughable (and I did get an honest laugh, and upvoted you for the pleasure), but that was taken at Oral Roberts University, which is a fundamentalist college founded by one of the most notorious ex-Pentecostal televangelists my fair nation has ever produced. And that's saying something.
In other words, about as representative of Americans as a Le Pen rally is about French.
[Contra another comment nearby: due to the venue, I believe it was a genuine chant, not ironic, although probably a bit giddy. If it had been a more mainstream university, I agree, that would have definitely been a goofy ironic chant.]
Please, keep explaining America to us. Most of the socially liberal Americans consider it just as ridiculous and it is regularly parodied in our media all the time. I especially love that you dug up an obviously ironic chant by college students at the presence of a bald eagle and cited it as if it meant something. The bald eagle is our national symbol and is so over-the-top American that I could see the joke immediately, but I guess I understand how it would be lost on a European. That you take that video seriously is hilarious.
There's something I could counter relating to certain European tendencies to explain the world to the world since certain parts of Europe still consider most of the planet as belonging to them, but I won't, because this isn't the thread or the place. Did everybody in this thread wake up today and say "gosh, I'm going to argue about America in a thread about Pluto, that's my achievement for the day"?
It's not what I'm hearing, and you probably missed my point. It's alienating and very shallow. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with being proud of one's country's, or a country's achievements. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your government, of your people, of your land.
But turn that into mindless yelling and that's just a pissing contest. It's ignorant of what other countries have to bring.
To give you a concrete example: I'm french. There's a lot of things I'm not proud of from my country. I'm proud of my language; French is beautiful. But I also make an effort to learn the language of every country I live in. I have fallen in love with Swedish. Had I been in a pissing match telling everybody (but mostly myself) how amazing French is, would I have gotten the chance to learn any other language? Would I have gotten the chance to even write my thoughts, in English, on this very forum?
This is a relevant example because, in France, a lot of people have that attitude of being too proud to learn another language. It's one of the recurring tourist complaints about France, in fact! I see this as no different.
If you have ever been to a high school pep rally; most people don’t actually care about the school. But, it’s fun to stand up and yell really loudly.
Nationalism is IMO deeper than that. To use a EU example, many people in Greece complain about countries that are giving them money. “How dare they attach strings when handing us money!!!” That’s nationalist in ways I have trouble understanding.
It's really just a time filler to cover the gap between when classes end and a school game begins. Growing up in the US I think we had ~1 or 2 per year from ~8th-12th grade. They were also generally fairly short as in 10-15 minutes with I think one lasting 45 when the other team was late.
PS: Most games did not take place during the school day, but I think they scheduled a few that with a small overlap if a team would otherwise get home really late during a week night. I think there much more common in low density areas for this reason.
Edit: Though like all such traditions it's been morphing for a while. With some schools holding them before big events and or in the middle of the day.
Frankly, that sounds pretty creepy --- it looks to me like an outright indoctrination session.
I couldn't imagine my school in Scotland doing anything similar (and we were a very sporty school, with compulsory attendance at a lot of inter-school games, which I mostly sneaked away from).
You are in for a treat. This excerpt from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (worth watching in its entirety) tells you what you need to know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLTTugZ4BIw
I agree with all this, but note that he suggested chanting "Europe! Europe!", not "<country>! <country>!". That doesn't make it less blatant, but it does mostly solve the alienation issue you mention.
What continent are you referring to that has two countries? North America has 23 countries, with the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico being the largest countries.
Most of them are tiny island nations, everything south of Mexico is generally considered "Central America" by everyone else and everybody ignores Greenland (which is technically still kinda part of Denmark).
Comparing the 41(!) countries of North America[0] with the 58 countries of Europe[1] is really comparing apples and oranges.
> everything south of Mexico is generally considered "Central America" by everyone else
Define "everyone else", because I certainly don't. "Central" America is part of North America; the dividing line is between Panama and Colombia.
Claiming that Central America isn't really North America is like claiming that the Middle East isn't really Asia. It's a geographically-ignorant statement.
Sorry, I meant two other countries and you're right; I have edited to clarify.
My point was centered on borders and neighbouring countries. Do you ever see US immigration politics talking about anything else than Mexico? Canada + Mexico + the US occupy something like 95% of the landmass alone.
Whenever you hear people talk about immigration in europe, we're talking about immigration from generally 5+ other countries, and often enough another neighbouring continent. Each of those countries are so incredibly different from one another it is very hard to put it in perspective with the US.
When we discuss immigration we are talking about immigration from generally the entire planet, including Europe. I can think of noteworthy discussion around Cuba, Asia, refugees from numerous conflicts, all of South America... we immigrate far more people and nationalities than you would ever dream because of historical status and in spite of our broken system.
We have an illegal immigration problem from Mexico due to conditions there and our border situation. However, countless people from South America flow though the same system by buying their way to Mexico first. That's the immigration politics you observe, because how to handle it is partisan.
This whole thread, which was extraordinarily stupid from the get go, is amounting to Europeans explaining the U.S. to the U.S. You guys are getting it wrong, too, your comments included. Who gives a shit about immigration policy? We are in a bloody thread about mankind's achievement in space. Christ, hang it up for one day.
> Do you ever see US immigration politics talking about anything else than Mexico?
Yes, there's quite a lot of immigration politics around employment based immigrant visas and the dual-intent H-1B and related immigration issues, which is mostly not about Mexico.
Its true that much "immigration" discussion centers around addressing both the current population and the ongoing influx of unauthorized immigrants, where the majority are from Mexico (largely, as a result of an immigration policy based on country-of-origin based quotas, that has guaranteed that the countries that have the largest pool of otherwise-qualified applicants have the longest lines, and the fact that that Mexico, as a result, is one of the hardest places to immigrate to the US legally from, particularly in the family-based categories, while, because of geography, being one of the easiest places to immigrate illegally from.)
> Do you ever see US immigration politics talking about anything else than Mexico?
As a Californian: all the damn time. Mexico is the target of immigration debates because it's the U.S.'s immediate neighbor; most immigrants (legal or otherwise) from South and Central America either go through Mexico or take a boat.
North America differs from Europe only in the linear arrangement of nodes in a migration graph. In terms of origins, I reckon you're significantly downplaying the similarities.
oh please, no american-style patriotism here in europe. I respect our american friends, but please, just... no. to give reasons would mean insulting probably more than few, so I refrain from that. let's say we're not all the same, we've grown up in different environments, and there are quite a few things I personally don't like in current US, and would not see many reasons to be proud.
that we have our own issues is true, just as everybody else out there, including US. personally I am proud of any european space achievement, especially since it's obvious how hard it is to do some coordinated international effort.
You already have that exact same patriotism there.
Enter any thread, on any major forum online, and bring up any of the following topics: healthcare, crime rates, gun control, two party systems, standard of living, inequality, conservative religiousness. You'll be rapidly overwhelmed by bragging from Europeans, about how they're superior.
You can't get away from the boastfulness out of Scandinavia, Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands - about how they're all superior to America on any given topic. I've yet to find a major forum where this doesn't occur.
I disagree that patriotism or nationalistic bragging is in any way uncommon in Europe.
I have a habit of checking the profiles of people who brag about how Europe is superior - such as by saying Europeans aren't posting such comments. You can try it; most are European. Such as yourself.
What if Germany, France and Scandinavia were superior to the US? The murder rate in the US is 3 times higher than in Europe, French banlieues are pretty harsh but have nothing on Northeast Philly, creationism is a non-issue on the Old Continent outside minor communities, and US healthcare is a total mess. I saw this video the other night about a team of physicians going somewhere near Bristol, TN. What's this? It's scenes you'd think you'd see in Africa.
You're trapped either way. If being objectively superior is the criteria for celebration (or as you see it, bragging), then the US trounces any of those countries in space and can be celebrated. If superiority were irrelevant, then it would be fine for the US to celebrate also.
I think this view of celebration as bragging is your real issue.
> You can't get away from the boastfulness out of Scandinavia, Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands - about how they're all superior to America on any given topic. I've yet to find a major forum where this doesn't occur.
You do realize all these "boasts" tend to come from people who don't live, and usually have never lived, in said countries, right? Not to mention the whole Scandinavia deal which comes 99% from americans talking about it like it's the true land of the free, or something. Scandinavia's pretty great for a lot of reasons, don't get me wrong, but unless you're frequenting very nationalistic forums, poeple tend to complain about their country rather than boast it. The grass is always greener in the other country. (Except for Scotland. The grass is greenest in Scotland.)
Regarding the specific issues you raised, I may mention it, not out of pride, but just as concrete examples of things that work fine elsewhere and could work in the US, despite what some conservative folks would want you to believe.
ok you got me there, due to my bad wording. I am not specifically proud of European achievements (although our bureaucracy can be spectacular, so it's even bigger achievement in my eyes), if China/India/Russia/whoever would be doing some successful novel space exploration missions, I would be proud equally. And by same logic, same is valid for US (and this mission).
It's just that I long consider myself citizen of this world, rather than citizen of some pre-marked real estate, which was different 500 (or even 100) years ago, and will no doubt change beyond recognition many times in future. patriotism goes in direct opposition to this belief, bringing "us and them" mentality (with obvious emphasis that "us" is better), which I personally believe isn't something to be proud of and strive for in 21st century. Bear in mind this is my personal opinion, I don't represent all citizens of Europe any more than you do represent all US citizens :)
> and there are quite a few things I personally don't like in current US, and would not see many reasons to be proud.
As an American, I agree that we don't have much to be proud of lately, but I think that's why it's especially important to rally around achievements like the success of our space program as citizens. Despite how it may appear from abroad, the US is more divided than ever at home, and our government pursues policies that many of our citizens don't agree with. It's very, very rare that we can all get together as citizens and be truly proud of something our nation has done, and it serves as a way to build good will between people who normally would never come together. Please don't try to take this away from us.
There was huge news coverage of the initial landing, and the amazing images. Then, when contact was re-established, there was another burst of coverage - so much, in fact, that many friends who ordinarily have no interest in space or science would mention it to me as a 'pub conversation' bit of trivia. I was actually very pleased with the coverage of the Rosetta/Philae mission, modulo the shirt issues, and I hope more space science gets that kind of exposure.
Rosetta/Philae was all over the news a few months ago. Not sure what news sources you read but I saw it everywhere, including cool animations about their lander
Sure. But did you think of it as a European achievement? That's what I was getting at.
When news media talks about European integration, it's always with the "Greeks are lazy, Germans are stuck up" style angle that tries to play up national stereotypes.
Rarely do we get to read about Europe as a group of people that get together to put spacecraft on comets, and the EU as a project that has brought 70 years of peace to Central Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire.
To be frank, across the whole lot of NASA, ESA and even the Indian, Chinese and Soviet space programmes, I had never once seen any achievement as an achievement for anyone other than all of mankind. More than forty thousand years of human civilisation have lead us to where we are -- even if it's a team effort by people alive today, they're standing on the shoulders of millions of giants and they're achieving this for all of us, living or dead as well as all future generations to come.
This is actually why I never warmed up to Star Trek "Enterprise" (Captain Archer and friends) -- it basically presented itself as "Americans in Space", starting with the intro's repeatedly showing (exclusively) American flags. All the other shows didn't waste much time on modern nations because those were something mankind had outgrown: it wasn't even "us humans" anymore, the Federation spanned different species just like the UN today spans different nations.
Such sentiments are only rarely or not at all expressed in any news I consume. While some media are intentionally sensationalistic and some others aggressively push an agenda, I find that they can easily be avoided with some critical thinking.
To give my answer to your first question - yes, while I did think of it as a European achievement, being impressed that so many countries can come together for a common goal, I was more impressed with it as an achievement for humanity as a whole.
Rosetta/Philae were all over the news here in Germany for weeks before and weeks after the approach, landing, etc. Once again here as they came back into communication.
I think you're falling victim to confirmation bias. I've seen lots of talk about ESA in relation to Rosetta, with a lot of pictures of ground crews cheering.
319 million people spending $650 million[1] amounts to $2.03 per person. I probably paid more than average taxes, but I don't feel like I can claim more credit than, say, the Yuan dynasty of 13th-century China and its contributions to rocket science.
Sorry, could you explain this a little further? As an American, my income taxes seem to be pretty solid evidence that I am bearing American liabilities. Especially in a case like space exploration, where the only cost is monetary, I don't see how a burden is being placed on anyone save the taxpayers.
Thank you. Thanks to your insightful comment, instead of discussing Pluto and New Horizons, we have an entire thread dedicated to discussing whether "U-S-A!" is toxic jingoism, and because you got so many replies, no amount of downvoting will fix it.
This is one of the biggest reasons why HN needs thread folding. Once the first-loudest voice catches on, it's hard to see the rest of the discussions without distraction.
"This necessitated aiming New Horizons at a "keyhole" in space just 100km by 150km (60miles by 90 miles), and arriving at that location within a set margin of 100 seconds."
That's pretty damned impressive by any standard you care to mention so go ahead, "U-S-A" yourselves a few more times. I think it was earned.
You do not seem to have understood his / her remark. He / she was not trying to diminish the remarkable achievement nor questioning the celebration of this success. But the jingoistic way it was celebrated.
EDIT: Why do I get downvoted? I was merely explaining OP's point of view.
Can someone express pride in their country without being jingoistic? I think so. Jingoism usually connotes aggressive foreign policy, militarism, and extreme bias on top of pride in nation.
I don't see the bias here--New Horizons is legitimately a project to be proud of.
On the other hand, it's arguably pretty aggressive to accelerate a machine to over 13 km/s and send it inside the orbit of a planet's closest satellite.
On the gripping hand, Pluto's government hasn't complained, so why should you?
Assuming you're being sarcastic; those are actual competitions between nations, by design. His entire point was that this is not a competition. Obviously, if it were, America would be winning. That's not being contested; the problem is not that the US won, the problem is that by continuing to beat the rest of the world over the head with it they are alienating a large chunk of the world.
patriotism in such things as space exploration is laughable, however reasonable commercial reasons behind it are (well described in another post). seeing logic "usa reached pluto" instead of "mankind reached pluto" is a bit sad, and i don't care if it's US, China, India or Monaco spacecraft. it just feels as wrong and antiquated view of the world... but maybe typical to generic US person? (no clue really)
well if they care, you shouldn't be then surprised that this approach would go against the fur of quite a few people (safe to say more than 1000% of US population?). and since even people with different mindset, like me, find it a bit distasteful and unnecessary, not-so-positive reactions are to be expected. btw welcome to the internet, where people complain about stupid things, all the time :)
Because every other country on earth isn't known to take deep pride in their culture and national accomplishments.
What's the disagreement exactly? That they cheered for their country? It's ok at a FIFA match, but not for something drastically more important? Subjective bias at its worse. When I see that attitude about something like this from non-Americans, it reeks of other countries feeling intimidated and jealous because they're not even on the same playing field with the US when it comes to space. It's nothing more than ugly envy.
I imagine they do that embarrassing routine so that American TV channels would report on their achievements.
If they stick to science, Fox News won't mention it. And if Fox News never mentions NASA, then people get upset about spending their tax dollars on an organization that seemingly does nothing...
In Russia, you have to remember to thank Putin. In USA, you have to remember to wave the flag with sufficient enthusiasm. It's the same thing -- Russians just prefer personified nationalism while Americans rally around abstracted symbols (flag, original text of the Constitution, etc.)
I remember reading that this spacecraft would not have been launched without a Russian rocket engine, and that the plutonium fuel also came from that country.
"Owing" something is not always about money. "The West" owes a large part of its wealth to Africa and Asia. It's a team effort, not just a business transaction.
True, but I meant a particular subset of "owing" in which you consider which parties are directly responsible for some event. Paid out vendors are usually not considered the primary parties.
If you want the American public to increase funding for NASA instead of cutting its budget and spending more on wars, maybe it's good to let them run up the scoreboard and slam the football on the field. It is hard to convince the public times of economic trouble to fund missions like this is felt out of fear or national pride.
In an ideal would people would support it for science alone, but we don't live in that world.
Welcome to the Internet. Where even the greatest scientific achievements are eclipsed by the politically incorrect slights of those responsible. (See also: The Rosetta-shirt).
Also, jingoism: "the feelings and beliefs of people who think that their country is always right and who are in favor of aggressive acts against other countries".
I wouldn't go so far as saying it was appalling, but it was in bad taste. No one doubts Americans are ahead of everyone else in terms of science and exploration, so they certainly deserve to celebrate however they want, but science and exploration are beautiful and inspirational because they're borderless and bring humanity closer, even if it's for a short moment. I'd have preferred them not to chant U-S-A and wave flags during the flyby, because that short moment is at its peak when the flyby is happening and everyone around the world share the same curiosity and happiness by watching the stream live, but if that's the way they want to celebrate, that's the way they're gonna celebrate. They deserve it.
On a side note: I completely disagree with people who compare this to the World Cup or the Olympics. The whole idea of those competitions are nations competing with each other and science and exploration is not about the achievement of one particular nation, rather the advancement of humanity.
None of this means that we should take any credit from NASA or the American tax payers. Everyone should be thankful and I am.
I think everyone talking about this as in bad taste isn't looking at the big picture. What if we could take all the energy people direct at the World Cup and redirect it towards space exploration? I mean seriously, the World Cup's budget this year is roughly 15 billion, NASA's budget is 18 billion.
I think part of me would prefer a calmer, more civilized approach to space exploration, but on the balance I'll take twice the budget if I can get it.
I agree, though I get that they're very proud. I think it's a major achievement for humanity.
Humanity has now sent probes to every of our original 9 planets (poor pluto..), we've sent probes into interstellar space. We've landed on comets. We've a permanent international presence in orbit onboard ISS. We're talking manned missions to Mars. We're commercialising space flight.
These kind of missions need public support top hopefully maintain funding, and a little patriotism could help that along. If flag waving helps planetry science then I am happy to play along.
Some excited researchers expressing their joy at one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of the age "was one of the most appalling, jingoistic, alienating spectacles [you've] ever seen?"
I'm American and I cringed the second I heard that too but I noticed they stopped pretty fast, I suspect the few people that did it got caught up in the moment and then quickly realized they might sound a little foolish. Or someone in the crowd gave them a dirty look.
If we can't cheer for our country over this, then when would it possibly be appropriate? There was plenty of cheering ("jingoism") about Rosetta too, as I remember. And it was just as appropriate.
The US is still a young country. They are currently in their (perhaps declining) outward expanding imperial militaristic stage. For this, excessive patriotism is required, is absolutely necessary.
It has been the same for any outwardly expanding empire, from the British, French, Spanish, German in more recent times back to the Roman / Greek days.
The first rule for near constant warfare, get the flags out, get the crowds chanting....
Why is this even downvoted? He's correct. Germany, as a country, was first established in 1815 with the German Confederation. The US confederation predates it by 34 years. The parent comment already mentions Romans, so you can't count the various Roman tribes collectively known as Germania under "Germany".
Yeah, that's an immense cultural shock for everyone not in the USA.
I'm not surprised by it, but it feels... out of place. If anything, they should be chanting "NASA", as not all of the USA is onboard with the space missions.
If overt patriotism is what's needed to get more NASA funding, then so be it.
When the public (read: the political body) needs to be convinced that this kind of exploration and research is worth the money, then a little nationalism is bound to creep in.
Wikipedia says the data rate from Pluto is effectively about 1 KBit/second. That's why it takes so long to get the photos....
I'd like to find more detailed information about the hardware and software on this thing. It's amazing that it was launched back in 2006. My 2006 Mac Pro is basically useless now....
Traveling at 16km/s for 9.5 years would dilate time by almost 300 minutes! Not only is there a 4.5 hr delay because of the speed of light, there's an extra 300 min of relativity correction.
Whoa! I hadn't thought about that. The speed of New Horizons hasn't been constant, of course, but the accumulated time difference is probably close to what you calculated. There would also be a correction due to it being farther out of the Sun's gravity well, but that's a much trickery calculation.
"After 9.5 years and 6 billion km, we made it to Pluto 72 seconds ahead of schedule."
Amazing!
The views of Pluto and Charon already reveal how incredibly fascinating this system is. The dichotomy of their surface colours will most definitely lead to further insight into formation processes in the Kuiper Belt.
Just such a shame that we can't land this time around. With the volume of discoveries generated by MESSENGER and Cassini, and the wealth of knowledge that New Horizons is going to generate, it's such a shame that my favourite planet, Uranus, is likely not going to be visited in my lifetime. I spent my PhD studying the mysterious outer ring system of Uranus, and I'm 100% positive that a close-up view of the entire system would blow our minds.
Somebody who solves/disrupts science communication deserves a Nobel Prize.
EDIT: Fixed typos