Argo was of the missions that was suggested as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. It would have been the second mission to a Kuiper Belt Object, after New Horizons.

The hardware would have been basically identical to New Horizons, with some upgrades, and this would have represented a significant cost saving over missions that require the wheel to be reinvented.

The mission plan would have been: launch straight to Jupiter, which assists to Saturn, which assists to Neptune, and then onward to one or more KBOs. This would have taken advantage of a happy alignment of J, S and N, and would have given a very wide range of KBOs that could be reached. Like New Horizons, it would have been a mission with a pretty long timeline, taking about a decade to get to Neptune and maybe another 4 years to the KBO.

Given the work of Galileo, Cassini and Juno, there’s probably not much extra information that could have been provided by Argo about Jupiter and Saturn from a flyby, but there would have been a lot of opportunities to increase knowledge of Neptune and its major moon Triton. The only mission to Neptune so far was Voyager 2 back in the 1980s, and there have been advances in spectrometry and imaging since V2 was built. It would also have been an opportunity to characterise the half dozen Neptunian moons that have been discovered since the Voyager 2 flyby.

There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The JSN alignment meant that suitable launch opportunities ran from mid-2015 to end-2020. The Pu-238 bottleneck has been resolved, and I haven’t read anything saying that Argo has been firmly scrapped, but I can only assume that it has been, since there would be little hope that it could proceed to launch by the end of 2020 even if they approved the project now.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/08/white-paper-argo-mission-to-neptune.html

dv said:

Argo was of the missions that was suggested as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. It would have been the second mission to a Kuiper Belt Object, after New Horizons.

The hardware would have been basically identical to New Horizons, with some upgrades, and this would have represented a significant cost saving over missions that require the wheel to be reinvented.

The mission plan would have been: launch straight to Jupiter, which assists to Saturn, which assists to Neptune, and then onward to one or more KBOs. This would have taken advantage of a happy alignment of J, S and N, and would have given a very wide range of KBOs that could be reached. Like New Horizons, it would have been a mission with a pretty long timeline, taking about a decade to get to Neptune and maybe another 4 years to the KBO.

Given the work of Galileo, Cassini and Juno, there’s probably not much extra information that could have been provided by Argo about Jupiter and Saturn from a flyby, but there would have been a lot of opportunities to increase knowledge of Neptune and its major moon Triton. The only mission to Neptune so far was Voyager 2 back in the 1980s, and there have been advances in spectrometry and imaging since V2 was built. It would also have been an opportunity to characterise the half dozen Neptunian moons that have been discovered since the Voyager 2 flyby.

There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The JSN alignment meant that suitable launch opportunities ran from mid-2015 to end-2020. The Pu-238 bottleneck has been resolved, and I haven’t read anything saying that Argo has been firmly scrapped, but I can only assume that it has been, since there would be little hope that it could proceed to launch by the end of 2020 even if they approved the project now.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/08/white-paper-argo-mission-to-neptune.html

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

Argo was of the missions that was suggested as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. It would have been the second mission to a Kuiper Belt Object, after New Horizons.

The hardware would have been basically identical to New Horizons, with some upgrades, and this would have represented a significant cost saving over missions that require the wheel to be reinvented.

The mission plan would have been: launch straight to Jupiter, which assists to Saturn, which assists to Neptune, and then onward to one or more KBOs. This would have taken advantage of a happy alignment of J, S and N, and would have given a very wide range of KBOs that could be reached. Like New Horizons, it would have been a mission with a pretty long timeline, taking about a decade to get to Neptune and maybe another 4 years to the KBO.

Given the work of Galileo, Cassini and Juno, there’s probably not much extra information that could have been provided by Argo about Jupiter and Saturn from a flyby, but there would have been a lot of opportunities to increase knowledge of Neptune and its major moon Triton. The only mission to Neptune so far was Voyager 2 back in the 1980s, and there have been advances in spectrometry and imaging since V2 was built. It would also have been an opportunity to characterise the half dozen Neptunian moons that have been discovered since the Voyager 2 flyby.

There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The JSN alignment meant that suitable launch opportunities ran from mid-2015 to end-2020. The Pu-238 bottleneck has been resolved, and I haven’t read anything saying that Argo has been firmly scrapped, but I can only assume that it has been, since there would be little hope that it could proceed to launch by the end of 2020 even if they approved the project now.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/08/white-paper-argo-mission-to-neptune.html

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

> There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The USA simply ran out of plutonium-238. A certain amount was produced and then stockpiled during the cold war. When the stockpile ran out any missions using it were cancelled.

Which KBO would you send it to?

Number one candidate for me would be Eris, because it’s the same size as Pluto and should also be classed as a planet. With a bit of luck it will look like Pluto. By way of comparison, the third largest KBO has a mass less than a quarter of that of Pluto / Eris.

Second choice candidate for me would be Makemake, because it’s the only object in the solar system that is large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium where the spin is so fast that it is not spherical or even an oblate spheroid. It ought to be extremely peculiar.

Third choice candidate for me would be Sedna, because it’s the closest thing we have to a large Oort Cloud Object.

Other good options include Quaoar and Orcus. Other than those, there’s only one object out there bigger than old Ceres.

The problem is that it’s really difficult to visit two dwarf planets because the gravity isn’t strong enough for a slingshot. The best combination for two dwarf planets may be Haumea and Orcus, see positions in diagram below.

!https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JP9AfWhCaOPtu8cKLUBa0×7FRTc=/992×0:6392×3600/920×613/filters:focal(992×0:6392×3600):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50082107/RR245orbit_labeled.0.0.png!

mollwollfumble said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

Argo was of the missions that was suggested as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. It would have been the second mission to a Kuiper Belt Object, after New Horizons.

The hardware would have been basically identical to New Horizons, with some upgrades, and this would have represented a significant cost saving over missions that require the wheel to be reinvented.

The mission plan would have been: launch straight to Jupiter, which assists to Saturn, which assists to Neptune, and then onward to one or more KBOs. This would have taken advantage of a happy alignment of J, S and N, and would have given a very wide range of KBOs that could be reached. Like New Horizons, it would have been a mission with a pretty long timeline, taking about a decade to get to Neptune and maybe another 4 years to the KBO.

Given the work of Galileo, Cassini and Juno, there’s probably not much extra information that could have been provided by Argo about Jupiter and Saturn from a flyby, but there would have been a lot of opportunities to increase knowledge of Neptune and its major moon Triton. The only mission to Neptune so far was Voyager 2 back in the 1980s, and there have been advances in spectrometry and imaging since V2 was built. It would also have been an opportunity to characterise the half dozen Neptunian moons that have been discovered since the Voyager 2 flyby.

There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The JSN alignment meant that suitable launch opportunities ran from mid-2015 to end-2020. The Pu-238 bottleneck has been resolved, and I haven’t read anything saying that Argo has been firmly scrapped, but I can only assume that it has been, since there would be little hope that it could proceed to launch by the end of 2020 even if they approved the project now.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/08/white-paper-argo-mission-to-neptune.html

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

> There was a bottleneck in plutonium-238, for some reason, and missions relying on radioisotope thermoelectric generators were disfavoured. Argo was backburnered.

The USA simply ran out of plutonium-238. A certain amount was produced and then stockpiled during the cold war. When the stockpile ran out any missions using it were cancelled.

Which KBO would you send it to?

Number one candidate for me would be Eris, because it’s the same size as Pluto and should also be classed as a planet. With a bit of luck it will look like Pluto. By way of comparison, the third largest KBO has a mass less than a quarter of that of Pluto / Eris.

Second choice candidate for me would be Makemake, because it’s the only object in the solar system that is large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium where the spin is so fast that it is not spherical or even an oblate spheroid. It ought to be extremely peculiar.

Third choice candidate for me would be Sedna, because it’s the closest thing we have to a large Oort Cloud Object.

Other good options include Quaoar and Orcus. Other than those, there’s only one object out there bigger than old Ceres.

The problem is that it’s really difficult to visit two dwarf planets because the gravity isn’t strong enough for a slingshot. The best combination for two dwarf planets may be Haumea and Orcus, see positions in diagram below.

!https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JP9AfWhCaOPtu8cKLUBa0×7FRTc=/992×0:6392×3600/920×613/filters:focal(992×0:6392×3600):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50082107/RR245orbit_labeled.0.0.png!

Oops. Mixing up Makemake and Haumea there. Sorry about that. Haumea is the odd shape and the one to visit if we can. Makemake is bigger, so a better target than Quaoar or Orcus.

Orcus (the anti-Pluto!) and Quauor would be up there for me.

Now, you mention Sedna and Eris: technically neither of those is considered a KBO but I suppose there’s no reason not to target them.

Or for that matter the somewhat Sedna-ish 2007 OR10. (2007 OR10 is one of the top five biggest trans-Neptunian objects known. Whom does it have to fuck to get a real name??)

There was another proposed trans-nep mission, New Horizons 2, that may have taken a look at 47171 Lempo. This is not one of the very large objects out there but it interested me because it was a ternary: there are two objects (each of them ~250 km diameter) orbiting each other like a classic binary, and a more distant object (~130 km diameter) orbiting both of those.

Bubblecar said:

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

Yeah, something like that.

Or every few years. Keep a steady conveyor belt of information going.

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

Yeah, something like that.

Or every few years. Keep a steady conveyor belt of information going.

Redirect military budgets

Cymek said:

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

They should be launching missions like this every year, since they take so long to arrive at their destinations.

Yeah, something like that.

Or every few years. Keep a steady conveyor belt of information going.

Redirect military budgets

(shrugs)

Last year, the President’s budget increased annual military spending from $590 billion to $686 billion per annum.

NASA’s entire planetary science budget, including all solar system exploration, is $2 billion per annum. It makes up a dishearteningly small fraction of NASA’s budget but certainly compared to the military budget it is not even a second order amount.

Here’s NASA’s Planetary Science Budget for the next few years.

dv said:

Cymek said:

dv said:

Yeah, something like that.

Or every few years. Keep a steady conveyor belt of information going.

Redirect military budgets

(shrugs)

Last year, the President’s budget increased annual military spending from $590 billion to $686 billion per annum.

NASA’s entire planetary science budget, including all solar system exploration, is $2 billion per annum. It makes up a dishearteningly small fraction of NASA’s budget but certainly compared to the military budget it is not even a second order amount.

Here’s NASA’s Planetary Science Budget for the next few years.

It’s madness. Should be increased to $200 billion.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

Cymek said:

Redirect military budgets

(shrugs)

Last year, the President’s budget increased annual military spending from $590 billion to $686 billion per annum.

NASA’s entire planetary science budget, including all solar system exploration, is $2 billion per annum. It makes up a dishearteningly small fraction of NASA’s budget but certainly compared to the military budget it is not even a second order amount.

Here’s NASA’s Planetary Science Budget for the next few years.

It’s madness. Should be increased to $200 billion.

I mean I wouldn’t go that far …

But they could easily, say, double it.

dv said:

Orcus (the anti-Pluto!) and Quauor would be up there for me.

Now, you mention Sedna and Eris: technically neither of those is considered a KBO but I suppose there’s no reason not to target them.

Or for that matter the somewhat Sedna-ish 2007 OR10. (2007 OR10 is one of the top five biggest trans-Neptunian objects known. Whom does it have to fuck to get a real name??)

There was another proposed trans-nep mission, New Horizons 2, that may have taken a look at 47171 Lempo. This is not one of the very large objects out there but it interested me because it was a ternary: there are two objects (each of them ~250 km diameter) orbiting each other like a classic binary, and a more distant object (~130 km diameter) orbiting both of those.

The name is supplied by the discoverer, ,but it has to be approved by some Astronomical organisation or other. The rules are quite strict, for instance whether it is a female or male diety affects whether the name is allowable in different parts of the solar system.

Here’s a breakdown of NASA’s $19.9 billion budget:

$4.5 billion: Development of new manned spaceflight technology (Next generation spacecraft etc)
$4.6 billion: Ongoing manned spaceflight and LEO operations (ISS etc)
$1.0 billion: Exploration research and technology
$0.1 billion: Education and outreach
$2.8 billion: Safety, security and mission services
$0.4 billion: Facilities construction
$0.6 billion: Aeronautics
$5.9 billion: Science

That $5.9 billion Science budget can be broken down as $1.8 billion: Earth science (missions involving the Earth: LandSat, IceSat etc) $0.7 billion: heliophysics (missions involving the Sun: Parker Solar Probe etc ) $1.2 billion: astrophysics (Hubble, JWST etc) $2.2 billion: “planetary science” but actually covers everything else in the solar system that is not the Earth or Sun: lunar missions, planetary missions, missions to other moons, asteroids, KBO, comets, the heliopause … all ongoing, planned and under construction missions.

I ain’t going to want to toe-cut the other Science components, but together the manned space flight expenditure is over 9 billion dollars. It’s cool’n‘all but it seems out of whack. The information that has come from NASA in the last 40 years, that’s astounded and impressed and fascinated and genuinely increased the sum of human knowledge, has come from the Science expenditure, not the Manned program.

dv said:

Here’s a breakdown of NASA’s $19.9 billion budget:

$4.5 billion: Development of new manned spaceflight technology (Next generation spacecraft etc)
$4.6 billion: Ongoing manned spaceflight and LEO operations (ISS etc)
$1.0 billion: Exploration research and technology
$0.1 billion: Education and outreach
$2.8 billion: Safety, security and mission services
$0.4 billion: Facilities construction
$0.6 billion: Aeronautics
$5.9 billion: Science

That $5.9 billion Science budget can be broken down as $1.8 billion: Earth science (missions involving the Earth: LandSat, IceSat etc) $0.7 billion: heliophysics (missions involving the Sun: Parker Solar Probe etc ) $1.2 billion: astrophysics (Hubble, JWST etc) $2.2 billion: “planetary science” but actually covers everything else in the solar system that is not the Earth or Sun: lunar missions, planetary missions, missions to other moons, asteroids, KBO, comets, the heliopause … all ongoing, planned and under construction missions.

I ain’t going to want to toe-cut the other Science components, but together the manned space flight expenditure is over 9 billion dollars. It’s cool’n‘all but it seems out of whack. The information that has come from NASA in the last 40 years, that’s astounded and impressed and fascinated and genuinely increased the sum of human knowledge, has come from the Science expenditure, not the Manned program.

That the public budget the black budget is much much higher nearly a trillion that how they build interstellar spacecraft engineered from the Roswell crash and my antigrav design stolen

dv said:

Whom does it have to fuck to get a real name??)

This made me ponder, which are the largest nameless objects in the solar system? Which are the largest objects not yet visited?

Sure enough, 2007 OR10 is the biggest object without a proper name, at 1250 km, and by quite a margin. It’s been twelve years since its discovery.

Here are the top five, with diameter and description.

2007 OR10 – 1250 km – KBO
2002 MS4 – 930 km – KBO
2002 AW197 – 770 km – Detached object?
2003 AZ84 – 770 km – KBO
2013 FY27 – 740 km – Scattered disc object

There are plenty of smaller and more recently discovered TNOs so (shrugs).

——

How about the largest unvisited things? Some of them would take quite some time to get to. Eris, obviously a juicy target, is like 2.5 times further away from us than Pluto is. Until two months ago it was the most distant object known within the solar system.

(Name, diameter, year of discovery, description, distance)

Eris, 2330 km, 2005, Scattered disc object, 96 AU
Haumea, 1630 km, 2004, non-resonant KBO, 51 AU
Makemake, 1440 km, 2005, KBO, 52 AU
Quaoar, 1110 km, 2002, KBO, 43 AU
Sedna, 1000 km, 2003, Detached object, 86 AU

As you’d expect, trans-Neptunian objects dominate this list. Now that Ceres and Vesta have been visited, you have to go a fair way down the list to get to the biggest unvisited thing that’s not a TNO, which is the asteroid Pallas, about 500 km across.

With all these resources available in our solar system I wonder how long it would take use them all.
Could take thousands of years or last a lot longer and could be a reason to not leave your solar system no need to as everything you require exists in your local area

Was just reading the wikipedia article on Gerard Kuiper.

He went to study at Leiden University in 1924, where at the time a very large number of astronomers had congregated. He befriended fellow students Bart Bok and Pieter Oosterhoff and was taught by Ejnar Hertzsprung, Antonie Pannekoek, Willem de Sitter, Jan Woltjer, Jan Oort and the physicist Paul Ehrenfest

Some prominent names there!

And how the heck did literally the two biggest things in the solar system get named after two Dutch guys. Rigged.

dv said:

Was just reading the wikipedia article on Gerard Kuiper.

He went to study at Leiden University in 1924, where at the time a very large number of astronomers had congregated. He befriended fellow students Bart Bok and Pieter Oosterhoff and was taught by Ejnar Hertzsprung, Antonie Pannekoek, Willem de Sitter, Jan Woltjer, Jan Oort and the physicist Paul Ehrenfest

Some prominent names there!

And how the heck did literally the two biggest things in the solar system get named after two Dutch guys. Rigged.

LOL.

Hold on, did I write a one paragraph biography of Kuiper at one time. I’ll check. No, that was astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn, he was Dutch, too. 1851 to 1922, much earlier.

Also, IIRC, Paul Ehrenfest committed suicide.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

Was just reading the wikipedia article on Gerard Kuiper.

He went to study at Leiden University in 1924, where at the time a very large number of astronomers had congregated. He befriended fellow students Bart Bok and Pieter Oosterhoff and was taught by Ejnar Hertzsprung, Antonie Pannekoek, Willem de Sitter, Jan Woltjer, Jan Oort and the physicist Paul Ehrenfest

Some prominent names there!

And how the heck did literally the two biggest things in the solar system get named after two Dutch guys. Rigged.

LOL.

Hold on, did I write a one paragraph biography of Kuiper at one time. I’ll check. No, that was astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn, he was Dutch, too. 1851 to 1922, much earlier.

Also, IIRC, Paul Ehrenfest committed suicide.

“Having made arrangements for the care of his other children, on 25 September 1933, in Amsterdam, Ehrenfest fatally shot his younger son Wassik, who had Down syndrome, then killed himself”

Damn

One difference between the Oort and Kuiper is that Oort proposed the Oort cloud exists, whereas Kuiper thought that those planetessimals would have been wiped out by now.

This is a nice diagram showing the distribution of perihelion and eccentricity in the trans-Neptunian cinematic universe.

See that diagonal that passes through Pluto? Those are all objects that, like Pluto, are in 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune.

You can see a few more diagonals, containing objects in orbital resonances with a different ratio.

Full Size Image Here

dv said:

This is a nice diagram showing the distribution of perihelion and eccentricity in the trans-Neptunian cinematic universe.

See that diagonal that passes through Pluto? Those are all objects that, like Pluto, are in 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune.

You can see a few more diagonals, containing objects in orbital resonances with a different ratio.

Full Size Image Here

Diagram didn’t display here. Let’s try again, still didn’t work.

It’s weird that they’ve mapped perihelion vs eccentricity rather than semi-major axis.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

This is a nice diagram showing the distribution of perihelion and eccentricity in the trans-Neptunian cinematic universe.

See that diagonal that passes through Pluto? Those are all objects that, like Pluto, are in 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune.

You can see a few more diagonals, containing objects in orbital resonances with a different ratio.

Full Size Image Here

Diagram didn’t display here. Let’s try again, still didn’t work.

It’s weird that they’ve mapped perihelion vs eccentricity rather than semi-major axis.

Concur, that’s what I would prefer