Starship Asterisk*

neufer wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Distances of the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future. Proxima Centauri is in yellow[/color][/b]

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makc wrote:
Look, those stars are getting really close soon. What is it, if not the invitation? We must get ready!

geckzilla wrote:
Uranus will get skipped because most astronomers are unwilling to endure the juvenile snickering any discussions about the planet evoke. Neptune is the next target.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Uranus#Proposed_missions wrote:
<<A number of missions to Uranus have been proposed. Scientists from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom have proposed the joint NASA–ESA Uranus Pathfinder mission to Uranus. A call for a medium-class (M-class) mission to the planet to be launched in 2022 was submitted to the ESA in December 2010 with the signatures of 120 scientists from across the globe. The ESA caps the cost of M-class missions at €470 million.

Another mission to Uranus, dubbed HORUS, was designed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. The proposal is for a nuclear-powered orbiter carrying a set of instruments, including an imaging camera, spectrometers and a magnetometer. The mission would launch in April 2021, arriving at Uranus 17 years later. The minimum duration of the HORUS mission is two years.

In 2009, a team of planetary scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory advanced possible designs for a solar-powered Uranus orbiter. The most favorable launch window for such a probe would be in August 2018, with arrival at Uranus in September 2030. The science package may include magnetometers, particle detectors and, possibly, an imaging camera.

In the 2011 decadal survey for the future potential of planetary exploration, the United States National Research Council recommended a Uranus orbiter and probe. However, this mission is considered to be lower-priority than future missions to Mars and the Jovian system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Neptune#Proposed_missions wrote:
<<NASA has researched several mission possibilities for Cassini–Huygens-like missions to this planet, but because of budgetary and other constraints these have not been approved. It is known that any future mission will have radioisotope thermoelectric generators and similar instrumentation to Voyager craft, but with more cameras and storage capacity; and will need better error correction than Voyager.>>

BMAONE23 wrote:Will the development of an Uranul Probe make us more like the Gray's?

Nitpicker wrote:
Not only is it extremely well produced and argued, it is also very funny.

BMAONE23 wrote:
Lying on it's side like that though...Hmmm....Where did the Gastrointerologist go with that scope

http://www.universetoday.com/19111/weather-on-uranus/ wrote:

[b][color=#FF0000]True-color and false-color image of Uranus. Image credit: NASA/JPL[/color][/b]

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Weather on Uranus
by Fraser Cain on October 3, 2008

<<We understand the weather on Earth. The Sun heats the air at the equator, causing it to rise. The warm air goes to the poles, cools down and sinks, and then circulates back. Scientists call this Hadley Circulation. The weather on Uranus works very differently. This is because Uranus is tilted over onto its side, rotating at an angle of 99-degrees.

Over the course of its 84-year orbit, the north pole of Uranus is facing towards the Sun, and the south pole is in total darkness. And then the situation reverses for the rest of the planet’s journey around the Sun. Instead of heating the clouds at the equator, the Sun heats up one pole, and then the other. You would expect the pole facing the Sun to warm up, and to have air currents move towards the other pole.

But this isn’t what happens. The weather on Uranus follows an identical pattern to what we see on Jupiter and Saturn. The weather systems are broken up into bands that rotate around the planet. While Uranus has a completely different tilt from Jupiter and Saturn, it does have internal heat rising up from within. It appears that this internal heat plays a much bigger role in creating the planet’s weather system than the heat from the Sun. Although less than Jupiter and Saturn, the wind speeds on Uranus can reach 900 km/hour, and seem to be changing as the planet approaches its equinox – when the rings are seen edge on.>>

orin stepanek wrote:
New Horizons is now less than 600 days from closest encounter with Pluto! http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Ceres_approach wrote:
<<Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA on September 27, 2007, to study the two most massive objects of the asteroid belt – the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in February 2015, five months prior to the arrival of New Horizons at Pluto; Dawn will thus be the first mission to study a dwarf planet at close range. Dawn's mission profile calls for it to enter orbit around Ceres at an initial altitude of 5,900 km.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons wrote:
<<New Horizons is a space probe launched by NASA on 19 January 2006 to study the dwarf planet Pluto and the Kuiper belt. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx, with an estimated (closest distance ~10,000 km) arrival date at the Pluto–Charon system of 14 July 2015.>>

neufer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Ceres_approach wrote: <<Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA on September 27, 2007, to study the two most massive objects of the asteroid belt – the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in February 2015, five months prior to the arrival of New Horizons at Pluto; Dawn will thus be the first mission to study a dwarf planet at close range. Dawn's mission profile calls for it to enter orbit around Ceres at an initial altitude of 5,900 km.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons wrote: <<New Horizons is a space probe launched by NASA on 19 January 2006 to study the dwarf planet Pluto and the Kuiper belt. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx, with an estimated (closest distance ~10,000 km) arrival date at the Pluto–Charon system of 14 July 2015.>>

Beyond wrote:Counting chickens Shouldn't that be counting puppies

A different version was versified by Jefferys Taylor as "The Milkmaid" in his Aesop in Rhyme (1820). As in Bonaventure des Périers' telling, the bulk of the poem is given over to the long reckoning of prices. It ends with the maid toppling her pail by superciliously tossing her head in rejection of her former humble circumstances. The moral on which Taylor ends his poem is 'Reckon not your chickens before they are hatched’, where a later collection has 'Count not...'

Beyond wrote:
Counting chickens Shouldn't that be counting puppies

Beyond wrote:

BMAONE23 wrote:

Beyond wrote:
Wouldn't the not counting heads be because of Hydra

You're probably OK either way as long as you don't try to NIX the idea

Yes, we should STYX to it.