Re: new horizons

JUSTIN PENNELLA <1000rronweasley@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Why only do a fly-by with the New Horizons spacecraft? I know the
> capabilities of this spacecraft are light years beyond the Voyagers and
> Pioneers (in terms of fly-bys), but why not just go ahead and put the craft
> into orbit around Pluto for long term study?

Basically, because doing that would cost a lot more money.

Pluto is a (very) long way from the Earth, so to get a spacecraft
there in a quasi-reasonable time (the current mission won't arrive
till 2015!) the spacecraft has to be moving *fast*... and when it
arrives at Pluto it's still moving *fast* relative to Pluto.

To go into orbit around Pluto would require a braking rocket to
kill that velocity, and more importantly, (lots of) rocket fuel
for that rocket. That extra rocket fuel would add to the launch
mass of the spacecraft, which would mean a much larger rocket to
launch the whole thing. And that would cost (a lot) more money.

So... if you had <enter wild guess mode> a billion or so US$ to
spend, you could probably do a very nice Pluto orbit mission. But
politically, that kind of budget is only available for military or
shuttle or PR-stunt missions, not for most science ones.

ciao,

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg -- remove -animal to reply" <jthorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut),
Golm, Germany, "Old Europe" http://www.aei.mpg.de/~jthorn/home.html
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said

.

Relevant Pages

  • New Horizons Update - December 2005
    ... I have been working on seeing the United States fly a mission to Pluto ... flight hardware at the launch pad, we probably would not have had the ... * We conducted our final mission simulations and final spacecraft ...
    (sci.space.news)
  • NASAs Pluto Mission Launched Toward New Horizons
    ... NASA'S PLUTO MISSION LAUNCHED TOWARD NEW HORIZONS ... Md., where the spacecraft was designed and built, received the first ...
    (sci.space.news)
  • Re: cost of probe to Pluto?
    ... > small meteor during the 9-year cruise to Pluto. ... > Tom Rauschenbach wrote: ... >>>It's too bad they didn't build any redundancy into this mission. ... developing a spacecraft to haul all that out ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: New Horizons Mission Two Pluto
    ... Why only do a fly-by with the New Horizons spacecraft? ... launched to Pluto for arrival in a reasonable period of time (bearing ... on a much slower, much longer-term mission. ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Clyde Tombaugh Goes To Pluto
    ... "Super Fast Spacecraft Zooms Toward Pluto ... the planet Pluto lifts off from launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)