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

[Jeff Davis]

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote various comments
regarding Pluto landing techniques (shown below my
post):

Here's my two cents:

CAVEAT:  Yo no soy scientista de los roketas, y por
eso mi opinion tenie el vale, probablemente, de dos
centavos, no mas.

First, employ an ion drive, with all the implications 
for higher velocities and weight savings.  If this
alone doesn't make an orderly terminal decelleration
possible, then employ a grazing decelleration through
the upper atmosphere of Uranus or Neptune or both. 
Then we're talking heat shield and post-decelleration
course corrections.

Naturally this requires either Neptune or Uranus to be
so situated as to make this feasible.  Does anyone
know the current whereabouts of those two planets, and
whether or not they are -- or would be -- available to
be employed as I propose?

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> So if we were to try an impact landing on Pluto, 
> we would still need to ...reduce the relative 

                   <snip>

> ... if we attempt to land on Pluto, the required
> deceleration is ... about 13.5 km/sec.

 
> If we suggest something like ... drop a cable and
allow the drag across the surface to decelerate the
vehicle, ...

                    <snip>

> If you decide to go the route of chemical rocket
> deceleration, you have a problem of how to keep
> the fuel from freezing ...

                    <snip>

> Of all the possibilities, the one most attractive
> to me is to send it out on a Hohmann orbit, ...

>  The ...drawback [being] that it takes
> about 62 years to get there...






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