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New Horizons is going to arrive there soon enough, so... what does everyone think we'll find?
My guesses:
1) A planet, possibly an exoplanet. It would explain the strange vacuuming.
2) An alien spacecraft from a race that has been monitoring us this entire time and broadcasting our science to the rest of the galaxy to laugh at.
3) A miniature black hole. Because the universe has to screw with our heads, so why not?
4) My ego. I know I left it somewhere.
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Hundreds of millions of socks. No two of which match.
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New Horizons is going to arrive there soon enough, so... what does everyone think we'll find?
My guesses:
1) A planet, possibly an exoplanet. It would explain the strange vacuuming.
2) An alien spacecraft from a race that has been monitoring us this entire time and broadcasting our science to the rest of the galaxy to laugh at.
3) A miniature black hole. Because the universe has to screw with our heads, so why not?
4) My ego. I know I left it somewhere.
It's going to learn more about how orbital dynamics work so far from the Sun and possibly it's relationships with nearby stars. Astronomers are pretty sure that there are no further Neptune-mass or greater planets out there. How many Pluto-size objects on the other hand, might be another story.
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Lots of rocks and some frozen gases?
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An Elder god. Possibly an Outer god. Sitting down to chat with Galactus.
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Hundreds of millions of socks. No two of which match.
It's the leftovers of civilization of alien socks.
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during its accretion
Please allow me to congratulate you on being the only other person on the Paizo boards who uses the possessive correctly, rather than awkwardly substituting a contraction in its place.
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New Horizons is going to arrive there soon enough, so... what does everyone think we'll find?
All the deleted threads and comments from all the messageboards in this solar system. And maybe a stuffy grammarian or two that a captain had thrown out an airlock.
That it's really just yo momma's belt...
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A bunch of loops to hold up the Kuiper Pants. I assume.
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We forgive you. However, I'm unaware of a star called "yo mamma." Could you point it out on a star chart for me? :)
It's probably a red super giant cause...
*45 minutes of astronomical 'yo mamma' jokes*
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Lots of rocks and some frozen gases?
Here's the thing, We really didn't expect anything that interesting from Pluto. We sure as heck did not expect to look at it from behind and see BLUE HAZE surrounding the planet.
Now we're even contemplating the possibility of life beneath the surface due to tidal heating from Charon.
The moral is... we can do all the theorizing we want... But we still need to be prepared to be surprised when we actually get there.
I fervently hope that the ion drive becomes practical enough that we can actually send an orbiter/lander out there before I die. I don't expect that to happen, but I'd like to be surprised.
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You mean Bussard ramjets don't really work? :(
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The problem with the ion rocket isn't whether it's practical or not, it's finding a power supply that will last the decades to get the orbiter/lander there. Otherwise, we'll have to rely on transfer orbits. And those can take a century or more ( Sorry, I don't have the info on hand for an accurate time-of-flight for the transfer orbit ). Solar intensity drops off past the orbit of Mars, so any flight in deep space will have to involve nuclear power of some kind.
We'll be relying on transfer orbits irregardless. The issues you point out are engineering ones involving the refinement of technology we already have, not inventing new tech.
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Bussard Ramjets rely on Fusion reactions, which are nowhere near practical at this point in time.
Even if we had fusion, the density of hydrogen in interstellar space is nowhere near great enough to use it as a fuel source -- you'd be burning more energy to capture it than it could possibly produce.
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True enough. Ion engines, however have a higher Specific Impulse than chemical rockets. Even moreso if you can electromagnetically accelerate the ions. This might be enough to shorten the time-of-flight considerably, compared to the Minimum-energy Hohmann orbit.
We'll be relying on transfer orbits irregardless. The issues you point out are engineering ones involving the refinement of technology we already have, not inventing new tech.
ION engines have a very very low impulse. However they can accelerate for months at a time, which more than makes up for it. Plus, they're extremely efficient users of reaction mass.
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Bussard Ramjets rely on Fusion reactions, which are nowhere near practical at this point in time.Even if we had fusion, the density of hydrogen in interstellar space is nowhere near great enough to use it as a fuel source -- you'd be burning more energy to capture it than it could possibly produce.
And even if the density of hydrogen were high enough to make it work, the drag from your scoop ends up putting a hard limit on your velocity--IIRC, it's something like 0.3c. Well below the point where you get significant relativistic time dilation. (Larry Niven didn't know any of this when he wrote the Known Space stories, which is why he used Bussard ramjets so often.)
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Hundreds of millions of socks. No two of which match.
Actually, they all match. In the sock factory, the workers just grab them and pair them up randomly. Some socks have already formed bonds and those bonds are strong enough to bend spacetime in order to find their true soulmate.
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The aliens watching our planet are sitting in their space station with a battery on a stick going "here boy, here boy.. just a little further..."
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Drahliana,
I had a thought earlier today. Since Pluto's orbit is at an incline compared to the rest of the Solar System's orbital plane, we could use regular chemical rockets to provide the delta-V for the transfer orbit and use the ion rockets to modify the probe's flight path so that it intercepts Pluto at the proper point of its orbit. Your thoughts?
Generally that's taken care with the Jupiter encounter phase of such a mission. If you're going to send probes to the outer solar system, you're going to use Jupiter as your speed boost. By choosing your entry trajectory, you get an exit angle which will send you to your final destination.