Author Topic: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System  (Read 872 times)

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rangerrebew

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Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/cassini-prepares-sacrifice-good-solar-system/
« Last Edit: April 24, 2017, 03:48:13 pm by rangerrebew »

Offline Joe Wooten

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2017, 05:58:50 pm »
Doesn't everyone just love heroic sacrifice endings??????

Offline LateForLunch

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2017, 06:04:05 pm »
Doesn't everyone just love heroic sacrifice endings??????

No doubt the ecoparanoids will all complain that the spacecraft's nuclear power-plant will "contaminate" the planet. This even though an inconceivably greater amount of radiation batters the entire planet every nanosecond from solar wind and cosmic ray bombardment.
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Offline Cyber Liberty

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2017, 07:27:20 pm »
No doubt the ecoparanoids will all complain that the spacecraft's nuclear power-plant will "contaminate" the planet. This even though an inconceivably greater amount of radiation batters the entire planet every nanosecond from solar wind and cosmic ray bombardment.

They've been freaking out about Cassini since before she was launched.
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geronl

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2017, 07:30:00 pm »
for the good of science

I'm not sure how the solar system benefits from it

Offline LateForLunch

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2017, 08:30:03 pm »
They've been freaking out about Cassini since before she was launched.

Yep, I'd be much more concerned about say, crashing an Earth probe on Europa and possibly contaminating the water ocean there with Terran microbes/spores/viruses. Viruses are especially problematic since some of them might survive a journey across deep space by encapsulating and going dormant. Viruses are in many ways more like bioactive chemical machines than living organisms so they are very resilient to extremes in conditions.

It would be a shame to contaminate any pristine viable planet. None of the outer planets are viable environments, so nothing that we send up there would survive for long. Europa or some other planetoid is a potentially different story.
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Offline Cyber Liberty

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2017, 08:38:55 pm »
Yep, I'd be much more concerned about say, crashing an Earth probe on Europa and possibly contaminating the water ocean there with Terran microbes/spores/viruses. Viruses are especially problematic since some of them might survive a journey across deep space by encapsulating and going dormant. Viruses are in many ways more like bioactive chemical machines than living organisms so they are very resilient to extremes in conditions.

It would be a shame to contaminate any pristine viable planet. None of the outer planets are viable environments, so nothing that we send up there would survive for long. Europa or some other planetoid is a potentially different story.

Yeah, it's probably best to crash it into a huge atmosphere than letting it hit ANY of the moons.  It would spread not just microbes but radioactive debris.  Cassini is not something I'd like to see wander the solar system as space junk.
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Offline LateForLunch

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2017, 08:51:45 pm »
Yeah, it's probably best to crash it into a huge atmosphere than letting it hit ANY of the moons.  It would spread not just microbes but radioactive debris.  Cassini is not something I'd like to see wander the solar system as space junk.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, sieur, but space is one big seething ocean of hard radiation. In fact the #1 danger to any astronaut crossing space to any object even in the inner planets is hard radiation.

See, the only thing protecting Terra from becoming a barren lifeless frozen rock like Luna or Mars is the Earths electromagnetic field (ionosphere), which channels most of the harmful particles and high energy EM light that rains down on the planet, into the electromagnetic lines of force instead allowing them to hit the surface.

Radiation from Cassini would be comparatively minuscule to that surging around the solar system from the solar wind (mostly protons) and cosmic rays.

There is some concern however about intermediate zones of the larger outer planets where theoretically conditions might be someone milder than the upper atmosphere or the lower regions. In the clouds of Saturn/Jupiter, it is conceivable that some sort of life might exist. Highly unlikely but not impossible. So caution might be warranted with biological contamination.
Radiation from plutonium isotopes in Cassini are not a real concern because the volume of those planet's atmosphere are inconceivably massive.
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Offline Gefn

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Re: Cassini Is Ready to Sacrifice Itself for the Good of the Solar System
« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2017, 01:23:33 am »
Doesn't everyone just love heroic sacrifice endings??????

I said in another Cassini thread, I'm going to miss her. She took some amazing photos. I'm glad I lived in a time I was able to view them.
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