The mission was chosen from two candidates, the other being a mission to retrieve samples of an asteroid.
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NASA approves mission to Titan with a nuclear powered quadcopter
- Thread starter Typhon
- Start date
The mission was chosen from two candidates, the other being a mission to retrieve samples of an asteroid.
Ooh, exciting. I've always been particularly interested in Titan since Cassini-Huygens and in particular have been excited by the idea of another mission there to get some actual photos of the crazy stuff going on it's surface with hydrocarbon lakes and whatnot. 2034 is a while away but no doubt whatever this thing turns up will be worth the wait.
Nice, Titan is really interesting. Pretty cool they're finally sending a flying drone instead of another slow ass rover. I imagine Titan must have the perfect conditions for a drone to make that feasible.
We better get some sweet HD aerial footage of Titan! Kinda depressing how long it's going to take though :( we need to come up with faster space travel already.
We better get some sweet HD aerial footage of Titan! Kinda depressing how long it's going to take though :( we need to come up with faster space travel already.
Excellent. I remember reading about this as a mission proposal and thinking it would never be chosen. Titan is a weird and interesting place- look up the Huygens probe
As far as I know Titan is the best candidate for producing complex life in the next few billion years as the sun expands and warms it up. It's probably already a book or something, but it made me think; 3 billion years in the future, the sun has expanded and swallowed Mercury and maybe Venus and destroyed Earth. Titan meanwhile has evolved complex life, imagine them building probes and sending them to the dead planets nearby and speculating if there was ever life on any of them, or imagine they send a probe down through the tumultuous clouds covering Earth and discover the long dead ruins of a former civilisation.
I know right, I'm still in my 20s and it'll get there when I'm 44 assuming no delays.
It's not a nuclear bomb so even if the rocket explodes you won't get a mushroom cloud across half of Florida!
not exactly what I would be worried about...
rather:
How many probes have been launched that use nuclear mechanisms for power?
Don't be so dramatic.
It's not a bomb. Think of a rather heavy engine that has incredibly low power but an amazingly long flight time.
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A number of NASA vehicles already are nuclear powered i.e. the Curiosity Rover. However they go under a huge amount of testing to simulate what would happen if the vehicle exploded at launch so the chances are minute of any nuclear material escaping. Even if it did my understanding is that any impact would be minimal.
I think the bigger worry is that if someone's hair gets stuck on the machine and it explodes in orbit leading to the creation of a supervillain:
Well, I say 'super'..........
I think the bigger worry is that if someone's hair gets stuck on the machine and it explodes in orbit leading to the creation of a supervillain:
Well, I say 'super'..........
OK. Now I'm concerned.
But there ain't no place in the whole of space like that good old toddling town.
This sounds really cool, crazy how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B in our solar system.
Reality Stone = Trump cutting NASA's budget so they can't afford the mission.
/pan shot to the empty launching pad.
Titans our best bet to find life in the Solar System other than ourselves, so about time we actually go and see if there is any.
Titan is probably the most exciting place in the solar system that isn't Earth. Its got a hydrologic cycle with rain, rivers, and oceans. But instead of water like here on Earth, its liquid methane. I can't wait to see a birds eye view of an ocean on another world.
Yeah I was hoping Dragonfly would win. It's such a great concept and for a world as amazing as Titan we really did need to go back to do more exploring.
You really just need to get the weight down enough and get a big enough rotor and it's possible to fly even in 1% the Earth's atmosphere.
But you're mostly correct, the only planetary bodies this is feasable on is Earth, Mars, Titan, and Venus (at around 50 km so you don't get crushed by the pressure first).
Believe it or not, they're actually using a helicopter in the Mars 2020 mission!
You really just need to get the weight down enough and get a big enough rotor and it's possible to fly even in 1% the Earth's atmosphere.
But you're mostly correct, the only planetary bodies this is feasable on is Earth, Mars, Titan, and Venus (at around 50 km so you don't get crushed by the pressure first).
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Stephen Baxter wrote a short story (Sun God in the Phase Space collection) dealing with that (Titan-based aliens find the wreck of a human spaceship long after humanity went extinct) and are trying to figure out what sort of species was behind it. It's a sequel to Titan, a book about a manned expedition to said moon.
I think the bigger worry is that if someone's hair gets stuck on the machine and it explodes in orbit leading to the creation of a supervillain:
Well, I say 'super'..........
I haven't seen "Nuclear Man" in over 25 years, thank you. Was he made up for the movie or was he some obscure Superman villain I've never heard of.
To say this is a thread title I never thought I'd read would be to give far too much credit to my imagination.
I'm very happy to hear of this mission though.
I'm very happy to hear of this mission though.
The Earth will be uninhabitable in about 800 million years. The sun will get more intense making it too hot for photosynthesis.
It wouldn't explode like a normal nuclear bomb would because you have to arrange the materials in specifics ways to do that. In the unlikely even that the explosion does do that, most of the radiation would get swept up into the atmosphere and then be diluted. The nuclear material on the payload is so tiny that once diluted it will barely register compared to the natural radiation that the Earth naturally gets from space and the Sun.
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