NASA News Conference Live Thread Wednesday 02/22/2017 1:00 PM EST / 12:00 PM CST

[Oceander]

No one said it would be easy...

True, but ....

It's taken Voyager 40 years or so to get where it is now.  At that rate, getting to 550AU will take about 160 years.  So, a much more robust boost system will be needed. 

At 125AU Voyagers signals are very faint.  Since the signal drops off with the square of the distance, signals from 550AU will be incredibly faint unless a really robust transceiver is used. 

It will be sitting in interstellar space, and bearing most of the full force of cosmic rays so all of its systems will have to be very robust and most likely will have to have a high degree of redundancy. 

All of which means the craft will need a very robust, much larger power source, perhaps a real reactor instead of living off the drizzles of energy from the natural breakdown of plutonium. 

All of which means we're looking at a craft that would be significantly bigger than anything else we've ever launched outside of Earth orbit. 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

True, but ....

It's taken Voyager 40 years or so to get where it is now.  At that rate, getting to 550AU will take about 160 years.  So, a much more robust boost system will be needed. 

At 125AU Voyagers signals are very faint.  Since the signal drops off with the square of the distance, signals from 550AU will be incredibly faint unless a really robust transceiver is used. 

It will be sitting in interstellar space, and bearing most of the full force of cosmic rays so all of its systems will have to be very robust and most likely will have to have a high degree of redundancy. 

All of which means the craft will need a very robust, much larger power source, perhaps a real reactor instead of living off the drizzles of energy from the natural breakdown of plutonium. 

All of which means we're looking at a craft that would be significantly bigger than anything else we've ever launched outside of Earth orbit.

 


Cool stuff, wonder if it's worth it?

[Cripplecreek]

All of which means we're looking at a craft that would be significantly bigger than anything else we've ever launched outside of Earth orbit.

That's one of the fundamental things about space travel. When it comes to men in space, bigger really is better and bigger means MUCH bigger. For manned spaceflight within our own solar system to become truly routine will require ships the size of aircraft carriers with crews of at least several dozen.

Interstellar ships would dwarf the aircraft carrier sized ships and be measured in miles rather than feet or meters. (On the Expanse series the Nauvoo is 2.5 x .5 miles) Personally I would just use the asteroids as spacecraft.

[Doug Loss]

All of which means the craft will need a very robust, much larger power source, perhaps a real reactor instead of living off the drizzles of energy from the natural breakdown of plutonium. 

All of which means we're looking at a craft that would be significantly bigger than anything else we've ever launched outside of Earth orbit.

Yup.  Think of it as a shake-down mission for interstellar vessels.  Along with the extra-solar planetary images, we'd get experience in conducting operations in an interstellar (or nearly so) environment.

[Oceander]

Yup.  Think of it as a shake-down mission for interstellar vessels.  Along with the extra-solar planetary images, we'd get experience in conducting operations in an interstellar (or nearly so) environment.

Which leaves the matter of the budget.  I'd guestimate a budget on the order of $100 billion, and I just don't see that coming from the federal government.

[Doug Loss]

Which leaves the matter of the budget.  I'd guestimate a budget on the order of $100 billion, and I just don't see that coming from the federal government.

http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/design/foci/

I have to warn you though, the background image for the above site can be eye-melting...

[Oceander]

http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/design/foci/

I have to warn you though, the background image for the above site can be eye-melting...

Yes, they are.  But I didn't see a discussion of budgetary requirements. 

[Doug Loss]

Further Thoughts on TRAPPIST-1

[Doug Loss]

Yes, they are.  But I didn't see a discussion of budgetary requirements.

Well, the mission design was from 1997, so any figures they might have posited would be meaningless now anyway.

[Oceander]

Well, the mission design was from 1997, so any figures they might have posited would be meaningless now anyway.

Possibly.  At the least, indexing for inflation would have given an order of magnitude estimate. 

[Doug Loss]

Possibly.  At the least, indexing for inflation would have given an order of magnitude estimate.

It might be possible to fake up an estimate ourselves.  They were talking about 4 Energiya launches.  We could figure the cost of an equivalent throw weight, maybe using Falcon 9 Heavies.  Figuring the cost of the vehicle from costs of similar vehicles, scaled up for size.  Stuff like that.