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NASA's next big mission: Sending Dragonfly to Titan

stephen bennett said:
Not a lot of success? How would you define that? NASA's missions have been absolutely amazing, from planetary landings and flybys to geo-remote sensing.

They also have the most successful robots ever developed.

Stephen
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I meant that in the context of going forward. Out into the galaxy and beyond - that sort of ambition.
 
Fair enough.

No-one's going to be successful at that though.

Voyager might be the only interstellar spacecraft we ever make. The distances are too large.

Stephen
 
vuk said:
then they are very silly people.
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As has been pointed out: Studying the atmospheres and processes on other planets helps to understand our own. And if these "silly people" hadn't spent so much time and skill developing new instruments, satellites, measurement methods, etc, we wouldn't know anything like as much as we do now about the Earth's ecology.
 
stephen bennett said:
Fair enough.

No-one's going to be successful at that though.

Voyager might be the only interstellar spacecraft we ever make. The distances are too large.

Stephen
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I've forgotten its name, but the probe that took images of Pluto, and then the belt object is also on an interstellar path.

I agree that we need the ability to get higher delta v's though. I've been hoping for probes that make good use of plasma jets. Less thrust, but bigger delta v's over a period of time.
 
Tony L said:
sadly we are filling them up with plastic at present so they really need all the help they can get.
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Has its advantages ..

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Stunsworth said:
They’re clever, as a group they can do more than one thing at once.
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i should have perhaps worded things differently. on a social level, it seems a poor choice in terms of government investment. of course, if the wealthy were taxed properly, we could attempt to do it all, but that's far from the state of affairs.
 
Vuk,

An argument could be made that the money allocated for these missions could be better spent on pressing issues on Earth, but NASA's budget really is a piss in the ocean.

The size of the circle is proportionate to how much money is funneled to one department or the other.

Hint: It's not NASA (little circle top right) that should be on the receiving end of your anger. It's the f'in' military.

DeathAndTaxes2016-Watermark.jpg


Sorry, I couldn't find a more recent version.

Joe
 
Titan sounds like an amazing destination. Rivers of liquid methane? -150 C? Why, that’s even colder than Canada!

Finally got around to watching CNN’s Apollo 11 documentary last night. Am so glad they found this amazing footage. It was simply breathtaking!
 
Joe P said:
Jim,

It's the New Horizons probe.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Joe
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Yes. That's it. I should have recalled the name as I'd only watched the new 'Planets' episode that covered it the day before. But my memory is worse than it used to be... erm, or at least I think so. 8-]

What we really need is to launch probes into earth orbit *and* launch plasma rocket units. These are then combined in orbit and sent off. Their accelleration is low, but they'd get to the outer planets and beyond much sooner, and may also have more ability to slow down for orbit rather than flypast. Alas, NASA became tied to big boosters and the shuttle. :-/ And the big money now is in Earth orbit satellites, so that's what's in the mind of most of the commercial booster company people.

Fortunately, there are one or two exceptions, but it's a big ask for a commercial approach at present.
 
And the first bit of mission footage ... ummm, footage from a computer showing you how Titan and Dragonfly might look.


Joe
 
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