This is the core booster for the Heavy, which has only flown a few missions. They’ve got the other booster landings down pretty tight.
Matt_W
3070
There’s a calculator here:
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/radiation-pressure
Looks like at a distance of 1 AU, you get a radiation pressure from the sun of about 9 micro-Pascals, which means with a 32 m^2 sail, you’d get about 290 uN of force, which is not much. It’s about the downward force of 6 regular paperclips (3 grams) at Earth’s surface. Pressure (and thus force) drops off as the distance from the sun squared, so at Mars’s orbit (1.5 AU) the force would be just under half of what it is near Earth. At Jupiter’s orbit (5.2 AU) the pressure would be less than 4% of what it is here.
Yup - radiation pressure’s a direct function incident irradiance, so it falls off as the inverse square of the distance.
How did the ancient Bajorans manage to sail to Cardassia if the amount of force is so small?
RichVR
3073
Giant planet based laser? Like the Moties?
Romalar
3074
It’s got some funding. I’m optimistic about the idea for using miniaturization and laser sails to do solar system exploration. Not so convinced about doing so for interstellar exploration like they describe, but hopefully they’ll move the former forward.
I read this in Cmdr Sisko’s voice
RichVR
3076
I always thought of the character on Benson when Odo was on. It ruined the immersion for me.
“Benjamin Sisko”? “Benson”? Coincidence?
What’s this TVC Musk mentioned? Also, how much of a redesign do you think it wood take to fix that issue from happening again? Anticipate a major or minor structural adjustment?
Thrust vector control.
Hard to say what it would take to fix. It might just be a slightly more aggressive reentry burn—it looked like the rocket had plenty of margin for the landing, given how long it burned as it waved off from the drone ship.
Always pops into my head when I hear ‘Roger’, ‘Clearance’, or ‘Vector’.
RichVR
3081
They were using TVC 14. Should have gone with TVC 15.
If they did, then Musk would be in there someplace, rotating in the sky
Editer
3083
The project my space-scientist friend Sarah has been working on, Dragonfly, just got chosen as NASA’s next New Frontiers mission! (Over CAESAR, a comet return mission.)
Dragonfly isn’t just going to Titan. It’s landing a quadcopter on Titan that will fly all around the place.
So cool.
Congratulations to your friend! I’m very happy they picked this mission; Titan really deserves this kind of exploration.
It’s going to be quite a challenge to make a lander tough and resilient enough to operate for two years so far (light-hours) away!
Gendal
3085
That looks to be an amazing mission, can’t wait to follow it’s progress. Glad to see it’s another MMRTG power source. Solar probably wasn’t much of an option for Saturn’s neck of the woods come to think of it =)
Editer
3086
Yeah, solar’s out both because of solar distance and also Titan’s atmosphere is really hazy.
Romalar
3087
Yeah, so far the record for solar missions is Juno at Jupiter, and that’s pushing it.
OMG that is so awesome!!!
I’m curious what the air density of Titan is. While it’s mostly Nitrogen and methane so component-wise it could be similar to Earth, but with less gravity there is less overall atmosphere for the moon to hold in.
