3310: Rejected Space Mission Profiles
| Rejected Space Mission Profiles |
 Title text: Although NASA agreed that Voyager 2 'seemed lonely' they decided against launching a companion orbiter mission after further measurements indicated that the spacecraft actually preferred the peace and quiet. |
Explanation[edit]
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This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: |
This comic depicts four space missions which were supposedly rejected, because each would obviously be a bad idea.
The "Jupiter rover" mission depicts a Mars rover-like vehicle on Jupiter. As the rover is a wheeled vehicle, it can only operate on a body with a solid surface such as Mars. Jupiter is a gaseous planet with no solid surface. In addition, Jupiter has winds in excess of 1,000 km/hr, atmospheric pressures exceeding 1 million atm, and temperatures exceeding 24,000 K; any rover made with current technology and materials would be destroyed upon deployment; the Galileo probe specifically designed to penetrate the Jovian atmosphere was destroyed when the atmospheric pressure was approximately 24 atm.
The "Voyager 2 orbiter" mission would send a probe to orbit Voyager 2, which is itself a space probe. As Voyager 2 was built on Earth, its size, shape, and features were already well known to NASA before it was launched into space, making this mission pointless; it would also interfere with some of Voyager's own still-ongoing measurements of its current environment. Orbiting Voyager 2 would also be a non-trivial task. Voyager 2 has a mass of 722 kg and a minor axis of 2.5 m. Escape velocity for any unpowered orbit would be 0.68 m/hr, and the relative mass of the 'orbiter' is likely to form a binary system between the two objects. Trivial fluctuations in velocity would lead the co-orbiting pair to be unstable; these are unavoidable due to the asymmetry of the Voyager probe. Powered orbits would require non-trivial mass for station keeping. Not to mention that it would mean somehow catching up with with the second-furthest man-made object there is, which will have five or more decades of head start on any mission yet to be launched.
The "Crewed Pluto flyby" mission would send astronauts to pass by Pluto in order to collect scientific data about the minor planet. However, the mission as depicted would have the astronauts pass Pluto and continue out of the solar system, apparently with no way of returning to Earth. In addition, current timeframes for a Pluto flyby are on the order of a decade. Sustaining astronauts on such missions for years requires on the order of 1 kg/person/day. The entire mass of the New Horizon probe would be required each year for each astronaut. Due to the limits of the rocketry equation, this quickly exceeds the combined payloads of all space missions to date.
The "Neptune core return" mission would somehow extract the solid core deep beneath Neptune's gaseous atmosphere, then tow it back to Earth. The core of Neptune is estimated to be on the order of the size of the earth; any such towing out of the gravity well would require impractical amounts of energy. Additionally, the atmospheric pressure near the Neptunian core is estimated to exceed 100,000 atm and would again require significant advances in technology to survive descent to Neptune's core.
The title text extends the joke of the Voyager 2 orbiter, claiming that the project was scrapped because the probe actually prefers to be alone. Voyager is not sentient (although a successor to it become so, for the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture), so it doesn't actually have preferences.
Transcript[edit]
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This is one of 37 incomplete transcripts: |
- [Caption above the panels:]
- Rejected Space Mission Profiles
- [Four panels in a 2x2 grid.]
- [Upper left panel:]
- Jupiter Rover
- [A Mars rover-type vehicle falls through the gaseous clouds of Jupiter.]
- Rover: AAAAA!
- [Upper right panel:]
- Voyager 2 Orbiter
- [A small probe is shown in an orbit around Voyager 2.]
- [Lower left panel:]
- Crewed Pluto Flyby
- [A diagram depicting part of the solar system, with the sun and four planets, probably Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, each with curves indicating part of their orbits. A dotted line shows the path of a spacecraft passing Pluto.]
- Voice from spacecraft: Uh, bye, I guess.
- [Lower right panel:]
- Neptune Core Return
- [A rocket is shown above the surface of Neptune. On two sides there are arms extending from the rocket. At the ends of the arms are cables connected to an enormous rock that's being pulled out of the planet.]
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