APOD: Behind Saturn (2016 Aug 01)

[neufer]

Please stop anthropomorphizing spacecraft and using feminine pronouns. They're not women.

True, they are not women, they are not even alive. However, they are either ships or aircraft and both of those are, by tradition, commonly referred to with the feminine pronoun in English.

Planets, stars, galaxies, moons and even the falling rocks variously termed "Asteroids", "Minor Planets" or "Dwarf Planets" are also feminine, even those, such as Jupiter, whose names are most certainly male. Even countries and cities can be female.

<<The personification of nonliving nouns (e.g., ships or nations) as “she” has fallen out of common usage. It’s now generally considered quaint or poetic. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition), as well as the style books of the Associated Press and the New York Times, recommend using “it” or “its” to refer to ships. In 2002, Lloyd’s List, the 276-year-old London-based shipping newspaper, officially dropped the gender personification and now refers to ships with the pronouns “it” and “its” instead of “she” and “her.”>>

[Chris Peterson]

Newby could be retrieved. All we need to do is slingshot her past her next target so she falls towards another falling rock then bounce her from rock to rock until one of the gravitational slingshots gives her an Earthward trajectory.
It might take a few centuries, and it would require us to find suitable rocks and ice-balls in appropriate orbits but those JPL guys are very, very good at this sort of stuff.
They got Voyager to Neptune using this technique, bouncing Newby around should be easy for them.

Chris is going to give us pages of why this is a ludicrous idea. :)

New Horizons is currently moving away from the Sun at 14.5 km/s, in a part of the Solar System with a solar escape velocity of 6.7 km/s. There's no body out there massive enough to do more than slightly deflect the hyperbolic (nearly linear) orbit it's currently in.

[Ann]

Please stop anthropomorphizing spacecraft and using feminine pronouns. They're not women.

True, they are not women, they are not even alive. However, they are either ships or aircraft and both of those are, by tradition, commonly referred to with the feminine pronoun in English.

Planets, stars, galaxies, moons and even the falling rocks variously termed "Asteroids", "Minor Planets" or "Dwarf Planets" are also feminine, even those, such as Jupiter, whose names are most certainly male. Even countries and cities can be female.

<<The personification of nonliving nouns (e.g., ships or nations) as “she” has fallen out of common usage. It’s now generally considered quaint or poetic. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition), as well as the style books of the Associated Press and the New York Times, recommend using “it” or “its” to refer to ships. In 2002, Lloyd’s List, the 276-year-old London-based shipping newspaper, officially dropped the gender personification and now refers to ships with the pronouns “it” and “its” instead of “she” and “her.”>>

In Swedish, the Sun has traditionally been thought of as a female being. And the Moon has been considered male, maybe because there is a "man in the moon". Now no one would refer to the Sun as "she" or the Moon as "he", of course.

Interestingly, the word "människa" - "human being" - has been regarded as feminine. It is in fact still acceptable in Sweden to say "människan, hon" = "a human being, she".

In English-speaking countries, people say "man, he".

Ann

[Guest]

Newby could be retrieved. All we need to do is slingshot her past her next target so she falls towards another falling rock then bounce her from rock to rock until one of the gravitational slingshots gives her an Earthward trajectory.
It might take a few centuries, and it would require us to find suitable rocks and ice-balls in appropriate orbits but those JPL guys are very, very good at this sort of stuff.
They got Voyager to Neptune using this technique, bouncing Newby around should be easy for them.

Chris is going to give us pages of why this is a ludicrous idea.

New Horizons is currently moving away from the Sun at 14.5 km/s, in a part of the Solar System with a solar escape velocity of 6.7 km/s. There's no body out there massive enough to do more than slightly deflect the hyperbolic (nearly linear) orbit it's currently in.

Hi Chris,

Given that its velocity exceeds escape velocity, is it really correct to describe New Horizons as being in 'orbit'? Is there some nuance to the term orbit that I am missing? No criticism intended, just asking...

[neufer]

New Horizons is currently moving away from the Sun at 14.5 km/s, in a part of the Solar System with a solar escape velocity of 6.7 km/s. There's no body out there massive enough to do more than slightly deflect the hyperbolic (nearly linear) orbit it's currently in.

Given that its velocity exceeds escape velocity, is it really correct to describe New Horizons as being in 'orbit'? Is there some nuance to the term orbit that I am missing?

<<An orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object about a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet about a star or a natural satellite around a planet. Orbits of planets are typically elliptical, and the central mass being orbited is at a focal point of the ellipse. Isaac Newton demonstrated that Kepler's laws were derivable from his theory of gravitation and that, in general, the orbits of bodies subject to gravity were conic sections.>>

(If New Horizons should accidentally crash into 2014 MU69 then it will be in Obit.)

[Chris Peterson]

Given that its velocity exceeds escape velocity, is it really correct to describe New Horizons as being in 'orbit'? Is there some nuance to the term orbit that I am missing? No criticism intended, just asking...

In common usage, we usually think of "orbit" as referring to a closed orbit. That is, one with an eccentricity of less than or equal to one: circular or elliptical. But the same orbital mechanics work when the eccentricity is greater than one, defining an open, or hyperbolic orbit. The shape of that orbit is still defined by the central mass of the system. In terms of the math, in terms of the technical usage, orbits are orbits whether they're open or closed. An object leaving the Solar System at greater than escape velocity is in a solar orbit until some other massive body becomes dominant, and then it would be seen as being in an open orbit around that body, not the Sun.

[Dan]

Hello All...I'm just curious why Cassini has to be directed into the planet in September, rather than allowing it to continue gathering data from the planet? If the power source of the craft is depleted, why not just send it out into open space to travel for ever??

Just curious..

[Chris Peterson]

Hello All...I'm just curious why Cassini has to be directed into the planet in September, rather than allowing it to continue gathering data from the planet? If the power source of the craft is depleted, why not just send it out into open space to travel for ever??

Just curious..

Cassini is gravitationally bound to Saturn. It can't be "sent out into open space" without using a big rocket engine and a huge amount of fuel- probably more than was used in its original launch from Earth. It can either be left in orbit, where it will eventually be perturbed and possibly hit a moon, or it can be allowed to fall while some control remains.

[neufer]

Hello All...I'm just curious why Cassini has to be directed into the planet in September, rather than allowing it to continue gathering data from the planet? If the power source of the craft is depleted, why not just send it out into open space to travel for ever??

Just curious..

Cassini is gravitationally bound to Saturn. It can't be "sent out into open space" without using a big rocket engine and a huge amount of fuel- probably more than was used in its original launch from Earth. It can either be left in orbit, where it will eventually be perturbed and possibly hit a moon, or it can be allowed to fall while some control remains.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Actually... that's not quite true.

If Cassini was in a circular orbit of velocity V_o then to be "sent out into open space" requires a velocity impulse of only [sqrt(2)-1]V_o as compared with a velocity impulse of -V_o in order to crash into Saturn.

For a Saturn crash to require a smaller velocity impulse (than the full escape option) requires the elliptical orbit aposaturn to be about 31/3 (= 2/[3-sqrt(8)] - 1) times perisaturn! Fortunately, Cassini is almost always this sort of a highly elliptical orbit. Hence, it roughly just as easy to crash into Saturn as to escape it...but pre-crash perisaturn orbits close to the rings are much more scientifically useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E ... retirement

[neufer]

<<If Cassini was in a circular orbit of velocity V_o then to be "sent out into open space" requires a velocity impulse of only [sqrt(2)-1]V_o as compared with a velocity impulse of -V_o in order to crash into Saturn.

For a Saturn crash to require a smaller velocity impulse (than the full escape option) requires the elliptical orbit aposaturn to be about 31/3 (= 2/[3-sqrt(8)] - 1) times perisaturn! Fortunately, Cassini is almost always this sort of a highly elliptical orbit. Hence, it roughly just as easy to crash into Saturn as to escape it...but pre-crash perisaturn orbits close to the rings are much more scientifically useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E ... retirement

Actually... that's not quite true.

Elliptical orbits make it only slightly easier to crash than to leave the planet.

In the limit of the planet being much smaller than the orbit it is always easier to leave a planet than it is to crash onto a planet. At high eccentricities the velocity impulse required to escape the planet is about half the velocity impulse necessary to crash (i.e., being essentially the orbital velocity at the most distant point). Of course, with a finite sized planet it is not really necessary to reduce the orbital velocity at the most distant point to zero. (Interactions with moons can be used to make it easier both to leave and to crash onto a planet.) Since Cassini has never had a large velocity at aposaturn it has never been much of a problem to either leave Saturn or crash onto Saturn anytime one wished to.

[Dustdreamer]

It's a thing. Don't blame me for it, I only live here I didn't design the language. English, she is a law unto herself.

You're the only one here doing it. It's long been officially deprecated. Stop.

The practice has been "officially deprecated" by one US college and one US newspaper. That is almost so bad as saying that the BBC's insistence on never using quote-marks around the titles of books, films, plays and musical albums, never capitalising acronyms when they can be sounded out easily {Esa, instead of ESA}, never using those little dots to indicate initialisms or acronyms {RAF instead of R.A.F.} and other signs of a poor, Media Studies orientated education and massive intellectual laziness are all "officially Sanctioned" just because the B.B.C. says they are.

I heartily suggest you read the Wiki article on the Nimitz.

But you're [correct spelling, according to American Usenet postings, "your" being "officially deprecated" by many thousands of Americans] hostility is noted. I love the beauty, power and flexibility of the English language and I won't be amending my evil ways with her but I will be gone.

Now, how do I delete a userid?

[geckzilla]

It's a thing. Don't blame me for it, I only live here I didn't design the language. English, she is a law unto herself.

You're the only one here doing it. It's long been officially deprecated. Stop.

The practice has been "officially deprecated" by one US college and one US newspaper.

Which is a lot more than you have to work with as you tried to defend yourself by saying that's just how English works, which just isn't true. English evolves when a majority of people either naturally change their language or if they decide to consciously make the effort to change, such as once they realize it is sexist in an age when they are trying hard to promote diversity in STEM fields. Check out NASA's style guide: http://history.nasa.gov/styleguide.html

Manned Space Program vs. Human Space Program:

All references referring to the space program should be non-gender specific (e.g. human, piloted, un-piloted, robotic). The exception to the rule is when referring to the Manned Spacecraft Center, the predecessor to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, or any other official program name or title that included "manned" (e.g. Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight).

Note that I certainly don't hold it against anyone using it historically or for making historically correct references. It was a thing. It is no longer a thing. Things that aren't specifically covered by NASA's style guide are covered in The Chicago Manual of Style. I'd consider both NASA and The Chicago Manual of Style a much higher authority on the matter than you.