[extropy-chat] Pluto New Horizons launch -getting ready

[Robert Bradbury]

On 2/19/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Definitely - you wrote a good explanation of why soft landing on a solid
> surface at 14 km/s is a nonstarter.


I *never* suggested that one could achieve a  "soft" landing.  What I
suggested was that we weren't being clever enough with respect to
engineering a probe that could survive getting to the surface (or orbit the
planet).  And as I pointed out in my last message it doesn't matter (much)
what speed the  rest of the probe is going when it hits the surface so long
as the part you desire to have functioning can withstand or entirely avoid
the consequences of that impact.

Since the folks at MIT are now building what sounds like a nanotechnology
based bolometer which seem to be capable of single photon detection the
question for Spike or Amara would be how much power would you need to pump
into an LED array (or laser) on Pluto to guarantee more than one photon
would be available to say a 1 m mirror with a nanobolometer detector on
Earth?  The reason I ask is because 1m optical mirrors are relatively cheap
and the bandwidth claimed by the MIT folks was on the order of ethernet
rates (they were talking about streaming video from Mars).  You could make
the mirror larger but you are starting to talk expensive telescope land
now.  I'm assuming that if one throws out the silly dish required for a RF
downlink that the next heaviest item in the mix is the RTG.  Lower the power
required for the down-link and you can decrease the mass of the RTG you have
to transport/land.  I presume its running on plutonium -- so you could also
decrease the mass by using a hotter/lighter radioisotope.  The up-link isn't
a problem because we can obviously put lots of power into the instructions
being sent to Pluto (though I presume with the transit time that New
Horizons is operating on autopilot during the flyby -- yes?)

I don't recall whether I ask this or not -- does anyone know if the data
storage on the New Horizons (or for that matter even the Mars Landers) is
being handled by flash, disk or tape?

Robert
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