Trip to Jupiter

[Drooper]

Yesterday I tuned into a type of fictional documentary on a manned trip through the solar system. It was a very realistic dramatisation of a manned trip from earth, to a landing on Mars and onward to Jupiter. That was as far as I saw. For a novie like me it seemed extremely credible and covered some the of fascinating challenges a trip like this would face and the possible technological solutions that could be used.


I tuned in after the Mars lanidng and the craft then slung itself around the sun in order to speed up and catch Jupiter on the other side of the solar system.

Some of the interest parts included:

passing by the sun. The sling-shot trajectory placed the craft through the outer atmosphere of the sun. The craft shut down all but essential systems to divert all power to a magnetic field generator. It als orientated itself with its heat shield towards the sun. Even then it was known by all involved that a corona at the worng time in the wrong place would melt them all (they showed you the mission planing and control meetings where these issues were discussed).

Passing through the asteroid belt. Trying to monitor all the particales that could take the craft out and the rapid calculation that need to be made. In the event, due to error at mission control they passed within one kilometre of a large asteroid 200k tonnes I think the nearly wiped everyone out and left the crew mightly shaken and pi55ed off.

[geni]

Originally posted by Drooper

Passing through the asteroid belt. Trying to monitor all the particales that could take the craft out and the rapid calculation that need to be made. In the event, due to error at mission control they passed within one kilometre of a large asteroid 200k tonnes I think the nearly wiped everyone out and left the crew mightly shaken and pi55ed off.

So they got closer than any other craft passing thought the belt ever has.

[The Don]

Here's the website for the programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/spaceodyssey/index.shtml

I especially liked the fact that they didn't ignore the medical problems that space travellers would encounter, especially exposure to high energy particles.

[davidhorman]

It's a two-parter, by the way - second part is on tomorrow and repeated on Sunday.

David

[wollery]

Originally posted by Drooper
Yesterday I tuned into a type of fictional documentary on a manned trip through the solar system. It was a very realistic dramatisation of a manned trip from earth, to a landing on Mars and onward to Jupiter. That was as far as I saw. For a novie like me it seemed extremely credible and covered some the of fascinating challenges a trip like this would face and the possible technological solutions that could be used.


I tuned in after the Mars lanidng and the craft then slung itself around the sun in order to speed up and catch Jupiter on the other side of the solar system.

Some of the interest parts included:

passing by the sun. The sling-shot trajectory placed the craft through the outer atmosphere of the sun. The craft shut down all but essential systems to divert all power to a magnetic field generator. It als orientated itself with its heat shield towards the sun. Even then it was known by all involved that a corona at the worng time in the wrong place would melt them all (they showed you the mission planing and control meetings where these issues were discussed).

Passing through the asteroid belt. Trying to monitor all the particales that could take the craft out and the rapid calculation that need to be made. In the event, due to error at mission control they passed within one kilometre of a large asteroid 200k tonnes I think the nearly wiped everyone out and left the crew mightly shaken and pi55ed off. I saw it too, it was very well done, I particularly liked the stuff on Venus! Shame that you missed that bit.

Just one minor correction to what you said (I know, I'm a pedantic git!) - they passed through the Sun's Corona, which is its outer atmosphere, and what they were worried about was a solar flare.

[Drooper]

Originally posted by wollery
I saw it too, it was very well done, I particularly liked the stuff on Venus! Shame that you missed that bit.

So what happened on Venus already!!!!!!????

Originally posted by wollery
Just one minor correction to what you said (I know, I'm a pedantic git!) - they passed through the Sun's Corona, which is its outer atmosphere, and what they were worried about was a solar flare.

Yeah, that too :hit: I remember it was hot. :)

[The Don]

Originally posted by Drooper
So what happened on Venus already!!!!!!????
Well if you couldn't be bothered to watch it, I'm not sure that you deserve to know.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Didn't see it sounds neat.
I would think rather then landing on Mars at a cost of inertia and extra fuel you could either park a satellite and have it orbit Mars at a distance where your ship could dock and resupply or use a fancy trajectory where that ship could use gravity of the inner planets and/or mars and match the primary ships trajectory The resupply ship could be launched before the primary ship.
Orbital mechanics isn't my strong suit but we did that with Galileo, voyeger and deep space 1 ( Ion propulsion.) using Gravity Assisted trajectories (IIRC)

[Drooper]

Originally posted by The Don
Well if you couldn't be bothered to watch it, I'm not sure that you deserve to know.

aaaawwww come on.:( If I didn't get back to work I was going to miss my deadline.

[davidhorman]

I would think rather then landing on Mars at a cost of inertia and extra fuel you could either park a satellite and have it orbit Mars at a distance where your ship could dock and resupply or use a fancy trajectory where that ship could use gravity of the inner planets and/or mars and match the primary ships trajectory The resupply ship could be launched before the primary ship.

There was a conainer of H₂ waiting for them when they got to Mars.

David

[Matabiri]

Originally posted by Drooper
Passing through the asteroid belt. Trying to monitor all the particales that could take the craft out and the rapid calculation that need to be made. In the event, due to error at mission control they passed within one kilometre of a large asteroid 200k tonnes I think the nearly wiped everyone out and left the crew mightly shaken and pi55ed off.

To second what geni said: asteroid belt's very sparse, really, and no-one's going to carry the fuel to waste trying to dodge them. But it's a dramatisation, I suppose...

What was the fuel/propulsion set-up, by the way?

[Drooper]

Originally posted by Matabiri
To second what geni said: asteroid belt's very sparse, really, and no-one's going to carry the fuel to waste trying to dodge them. But it's a dramatisation, I suppose...

What was the fuel/propulsion set-up, by the way?

Actually, they didn't make a big thing of the asteroid belt, just the possibility that there could be a catastrophic encounter with a big rock.

In fact the fuel issue was highlighted and the very reason why mission control decided NOT to make an adjustment to the craft's path even though they thought a near miss (although not quite that near) was likely.

The near miss was clearly included to make the program interesting and to give some indication that trying to calculate the movement of object in space is subject to some error.


And by the-by-the craft had a fusion reactor (OK, the program is dealing with what is theoretically possible). Check out the wev site linked above for some technical details on the hardware. It is a bloody big craft.

[Matabiri]

Originally posted by Drooper
And by the-by-the craft had a fusion reactor (OK, the program is dealing with what is theoretically possible). Check out the wev site linked above for some technical details on the hardware. It is a bloody big craft.

Hey, don't knock fusion...

Doesn't say what the details of the propulsion system actually are, though. Shame - it's an interesting problem.

[davidhorman]

Can you someone clear up something about the centrifuge thing they have?

There were two pods that rotated around the main body of the ship, so the crew had gravity in their quarters. With this kind of thing, would the crew really feel like a force was pulling them straight down, or would it be a bit diagonal (in relation to the floor)?

Or in other words, could they determine which way they were spinning? Intuitively, it seems to me that they would feel that the direction of rotation would be "uphill", but I'm not sure why.

David

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally posted by davidhorman
There were two pods that rotated around the main body of the ship, so the crew had gravity in their quarters. With this kind of thing, would the crew really feel like a force was pulling them straight down, or would it be a bit diagonal (in relation to the floor)?

Or in other words, could they determine which way they were spinning? Intuitively, it seems to me that they would feel that the direction of rotation would be "uphill", but I'm not sure why.


Try this

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43638

[davidhorman]

Try this

Thanks BSM. I think I can best summarise the thread by saying it would feel all weird and stuff.

Strange that people can so quickly adapt to the Coriolis forces (according to one linked article). It's not the sort of thing that would have come up during our evolution (or is it.....?)

David

[Correa Neto]

A wild speculation from a geologist (biologists, if I´m wrong please be nice):

This "easy" adaptation (just now came to my mind how fast we can adjust our ballance in a rocking ship - a similar phenomena?) adaptation to could have been an inherited trait from our ancestors. Tree-dwelling species such as monkeys must need a fine-tuned ballance in order to manage safe living in a 3d-environment such as a forest canopy. Possibly this was also a welcome aid when it was time to evolve an erect bipedal locomotion.

[pupdog]

The guy that played Commander Corby (or whatever his name was) on TV died just the other day. You know, the one with a sidekick called "Cadet Happy" (what was he smoking?). They had a radio version, and, in one scene I remember, they were on their way back to Earth. "We're just rounding Jupiter now" exclaimed Cadet Happy. How many people to this day think that travel within the solar system is like driving a VW Beetle around the block?