We're About To Fly a Spacecraft Into the Sun For the First Time (arstechnica.com) 43
NASA's Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun on Christmas Eve, flying within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface and entering its atmosphere for the first time.
The spacecraft, which travels at speeds up to 430,000 miles per hour, aims to study the origins of solar wind -- the stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun's corona. The probe's heat shield will endure temperatures exceeding 2,500-degree Fahrenheit during the flyby, requiring specialized materials like sapphire crystal tubes and niobium wiring to protect its instruments.
The spacecraft, which travels at speeds up to 430,000 miles per hour, aims to study the origins of solar wind -- the stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun's corona. The probe's heat shield will endure temperatures exceeding 2,500-degree Fahrenheit during the flyby, requiring specialized materials like sapphire crystal tubes and niobium wiring to protect its instruments.
Set the controls (Score:2, Funny)
for the heart of the sun...
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Mod Parent Back Up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"Houston, there is a Santa Claus" (Score:4, Funny)
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Nah, they can't. They'd have to fly going to the Sun from the dark side of the Sun and it's like the dark side of the Moon, we can't ever see it from Earth. The corollary is that radio-transmission would then be blocked by the mass of the Sun. Great idea although thinking of it. With relay stations, it might work indeed.
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Yes, but there is no dark side of the Moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark...
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disney owns that idea now
First time? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it's getting closer to the sun this time than it (or any other spacecraft) ever has before (it did it's final Venus flyby on Nov 6 [nasa.gov]). The story is cool enough that it doesn't need made up "firsts".
Journey to the far side of the sun (Score:1)
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They double-checked ... (Score:3, Funny)
flying within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface
Re: They double-checked ... (Score:1, Troll)
There's two kind of countries...ones that use metric units in everyday speech, and ones that landed men on the Moon, invented the airplane, the internet, and the social media that's corrupting today's youth.
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It's truly bizarre, the story of the metric system in the US. From the Metric Act of 1866, being one of the original 17 signatory countries to the Metre Convention, the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, Executive Order 12770 (George H. W. Bush) directed departments and agencies within the executive branch of the United States Government to "take all appropriate measures within their authority" to use the metric system "as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce".
So...
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So... why the stubbornness? At this point it almost seems like it's just a long running inside joke that the rest of us don't get.
Oh yes, it absolutely takes a special kind of moron country to keep using anything not 10-based just for historical inertia reasons, when base-10 is so vastly superior.
On an unrelated note, remind me, how many minutes in a day? Was it 100 or 1000?
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"Metric system" doesn't mean base ten. That's "decimal system." The System International (SI) is a decimal metric system.
The US actually uses a metric system, the same one SI is based on, actually, but then disguises it as the non-decimal, apparently non-metric imperial system.
Re: They double-checked ... (Score:1)
Because American units are better for everyday use in two important ways:
1. Having developed in distant time, the words for them are shorter. Most commonly used units are one syllable. Contrast that to the three and four syllable monstrosity for weight or distance: ki-lo-gram, ki-lo-me-ter.
2. The units are more human scale. An inch is about a thumb width. A yard is your arms wide. A mile is a long way. A pound is a little bit of heft. A pint is enough to drink. Etc.
Re: They double-checked ... (Score:1)
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So you have the same abbreviation for weight and for distance...so much better than having two distinct short words for two distinct commonly used units.
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Lol. Measure distance in kilos.
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No, kilograms is abbreviated to "kilos" and kilometres is abbreviates to "kay".
Re: They double-checked ... (Score:1)
"K" is a general abbreviation for "thousand" in American English. Almost always for a thousand dollars, but sometimes a thousand feet in the context of aviation. It's also the SI unit for absolute temperature.
Wonderful amount of namespace collision this everyday metric stuff causes.
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No-one abbreviates "Kelvin" to "kay" in normal speech, people say "Kelvin". It's obvious from context whether "kay" is an abbreviation of "kilometres" or something else (e.g. "kilohms"), but on the off chance there's a situation where it could actually cause confusion, you can add one more syllable to make it unambiguous.
Also, you've got plenty of overly long unit names in the US system, like "fluid ounces" (of which the one for specifying quantity is different to the one for nutritional information), and
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Only two countries don't use metric for everyday life: The USA and Liberia.
The USA landed men on the moon, using the metric system and the work of a German engineer. Liberia didn't land any men on the moon so far. (Or women.)
There is some controversy about who invented the airplane first.
The internet was not the first or the only computer network protocol, and it is based on the French Cyclades [wikipedia.org] project. (I say "based on" but its more like a direct rip-off.) It eventually beat X.25 as the dominant proto
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Yes, and they still measure their beer in pints, and occasionally body weight in stone.
That doesn't change the fact that they use the metric system in everyday life. Litres and centrimetres and kilogrammes and degrees Celcius.
Feet are still used for aviation (what a concept), but that is the case in most countries.
I guess switching all the road signs would be too much effort.
Old joke comes to mind (Score:4, Funny)
In the 1960s, America landed a man on the Moon.
Not to be outdone, Poland announced a mission to land a man on the Sun.
"But the Sun is too hot!"
So they replied: "That is no problem, we will land at night.
Finally! (Score:2)
Bradbury's The Golden Apples of the Sun [wikipedia.org] is coming true!
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New NASA Chief MTG said they sent the probe at night so it wouldn't get to hot.
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Douglas Adams foresaw this (Score:3)
Disaster Area are a plutonium rock band fronted by Hotblack Desiato from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones...
As a finale they fly their spaceship into a sun as a special effect for the concert.
Adams was a Pink Floyd fan, this refers to the song 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun'
Let's call it the ultimate tourist experience (Score:2)
Maybe we can lure some billionaires into being on board.
2500 degree what? (Score:1)
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Kelvin is the only reasonable scale for temperature. [xkcd.com]
Celsius is easy to convert to at least.
Fahrenheit is just an unmitigated nightmare. Temperatures work different from temperature differences, and there are no reference points that you could even approximate.
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I thought it was absolute, but your mom's vag measured -10K.
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Kelvin is absolute. You must have used Fahrenheit somewhere in your conversion.
Easier to leave the solar system than reach sun (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite fascinating how orbital mechanics work. The Parker probe is making close approaches at high speed to the sun because it's actually really difficult to actually attain a circular orbit relatively close to the sun without spending a ton of energy to reduce the velocity that Earth's orbit imparts on all spacecraft leaving this planet. In fact it would be very difficult to send a probe to land on, say Mercury, due to the delta V involved (and thus energy required). If we wanted to send something into the sun to burn up, that would be really hard and take a tremendous amount of energy. Makes me laugh how many sci fi stories revolve around nearly falling, or falling, into the sun.
For now we'll satisfy ourselves with flybys that use the other planets to help reduce the energy requirements.
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