Twilight and Luna discuss the Rosetta mission and Luna makes a comet · 10:11pm Aug 9th, 2014
It was great to see that Twilight’s Sputnik remained orbiting around the Popular Stories box for some five days—far longer than I expected for such a short story. And it has been an exciting week for space science, with the amazing photos from the Rosetta mission. Let’s hear about comets from Twilight and Luna…
Photo: ESA; Twilight by VaderPL; Luna by 90sigma.
Princess Luna and Twilight Sparkle looked on, observing the action at the European Space Agency mission control centre, in Darmstadt, Germany, as the data from the Rosetta spacecraft was displayed on screens around the room.
“This is an amazing achievement,” said Luna. “To put a space-probe in orbit around a comet, you need to accelerate it to a comparable speed, and approach from behind. Comets are on highly eccentric orbits, and they move very fast when they get close to the sun. This took a lot of carefully planned manoeuvres over ten years. Particularly impressive that they did it without magic—just using rockets—although I guess it makes it easier in some ways as they don’t have to worry about other magical creatures messing up their work.”
“These pictures are amazing,” said Twilight. “When I look at comets through my telescope I just see a blurred object. But these photos show all the detail of the surface. I wish I could reach out and touch it with my hooves.”
“That is not to be recommended,” replied Luna. “At least with the real thing. But you can make your own comet at home easily enough.”
“How?” asked Twilight.
“Come—I shall show you.” Luna reached out a hoof to Twilight, then they vanished in a white flash, teleporting across hyperdimensional branes, and reappearing inside Sugarcube Corner.
The sight of two alicorn princesses suddenly materializing in the cake shop foyer was perfectly normal for Ponyville, and the regulars, sipping drinks and eating cakes at the tables, paid no attention.
“Hiya,” said Pinkie Pie. “What can I get you?”
“A jug of water,” said Luna, “a cup of soil, a sack of dry-ice, and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. And some plastic bags, a large bowl, and a heavy mallet. And two strawberry milkshakes while we’re waiting.”
“Sure thing,” said Pinkie. She placed the milkshakes on the counter and went to fetch the other items from her party supply store.
“Comets,” said Luna once she had all of the ingredients in front of her, “are made of frozen gases and water.” She tipped the jug of water into the bowl. “With a certain amount of rock and sand.” She added the dirt. “And some organic molecules.” In went a dash of sauce. “They originate in the outer solar system where it is very cold.” She took the sack of frozen carbon dioxide and pounded this with a mallet before tipping the dry ice dust into the bowl. This immediately produced clouds of condensation as the water froze and the carbon dioxide sublimed. “We also need some ammonia—can you bring some cleaning fluid Pinkie?”
Pinkie Pie obligingly fetched a bottle of some strong spelling green liquid which Luna added to the icy mixture, along with another dash of organic compounds. By now the cold gas clouds and foul spells had filled the room and all the ponies present were standing in a circle around Luna wondering what dark magic the princess of the night was brewing up.
“Knead it together well,” continued Luna, paying no attention to the audience. She levitated the mix out of the bowl and wrapped it up in a plastic bag, forcing it into a small ball. She then triumphantly opened this, and let a dirty snowball roll onto the floor.
“There you are—a comet!”
At the sight of the apparently smoking dirty white object unveiled on the floor, most ponies took a step back. A few edged towards the door, and Mr and Mrs Cake moved protectively towards the crib containing their baby foals. However Twilight Sparkle thrust her head towards the snowball with a delighted grin. All the young fillies and colts in the room rushed forwards to join her.
“Wow! That’s amazing—it looks just like the photos from Rosetta—on a different scale of course—but look at the surface—you can see the ice sublime, emitting a volatile tail—just as when a real comet moves close to the sun.”
Luna sat back looking smug. Pinkie Pie was equally enthusiastic, although a little less attentive to the implications for improved knowledge of the solar system.
“Anypony want some ice cream?”
If we were really serious about heading to comets especially, we would be looking at using a combination of solar sail mirror concentrators, thermal power converters, and ion, plasma drive, given using the exhaust preheat as a cold source could give some very impressive efficincies., and then focal point heating will give a plasma without needing high voltages.
So, could we build a 200km/s in one year comet catcher with todays tech? Lets go all out, lets put a football of lead for radiation shelding, and a whole Rasberry Pi SoC in the middle, then run a decent OS on it, one that looks on the Pi as a supercomputer, not one that looks as the Pi as a glorified thermometer reader.
Really impressive is Rosetta, but.. ten years to gt there, then only a year of work, when its solar powered, when Voyager is still going, operationally, 40 years later, with 50 year old tech.
2356869
Dat nuclear reactor tho. Also the voyager probes were specifically designed to continue going and transmitting for as long as the reactor it has on board can keep it running. Still, you're right that it is extraordinary they are both still chugging.
Personally, I am wondering about the mission to Pluto.
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Thats what I implied. space probes, once in space, are no longer designed to last as long as possible, acting as sensors and beacons drifting through space. We now know about the gravity tramlines that allow rocks, powered as they are by solar heating differentials, to drift from planet to planet. If you use Voyagers thermal pile, and instead of decaying nucliides, you add concentrators, thin film reflectors etc, you can look at abrasion values from other experiments to work out how long a solar sail mirror of a given size will last before certain amounts are lost through impacts etc.
Voyager is just over 10 AU out? That means a solar sail thats 10 metres diameter for each metre square of solar panel, will keep those panels generating ion thrust at the same level as Earth orbit, while also acting as a communication antenna greatly increasing the data rate per power needed.
I think the turnover point for solar sails is about 1.5 light years out, where the suns optical bubble gives way to the Sirius optical bubble. that is, try sailing to Alpha Centauri, and before you get even halfway there, you have to sail by the light of a different star.
I think.
2356941
I suppose the thing is that most space agencies still feel there is too much to concentrate on within our own solar system to want to take the time and expense to build an extrasolar probe, especially since the voyager probes are still going strong. Something like that solar sail would probably become more attractive once the Voyager missions conclude. In the meantime, we make ever more sophisticated probes to explore our local neighborhood. And of course, there are always people looking over the logistics for manned missions...
¡Another MasterPiece!
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the problem being doing flights like that, Voyager is only ging to last a few more years, it takes many years to even get round to making a design up, more years to get the design built, and currently even more years to get it going to where you want. For Rosetta? We should have its replacement on te launch pad, ready for programming, due to it being designed over the decade past.
Its like that trick, do we build cryogenic units now, arks in 20 years time, FTL ships in 100, given the rate of commercial advancement. Theres ever increasing stories of military having to purchase over the counter resources because their black programs just cant keep up with shere volume and price. Its the same with Space access. Ive seen a test last December, of hat could be called a Vortex engine. Gives you Hydrogen performance, from Keroscene. Even the USA first got a man into space with a souped up aluminium engine V2, the Mercury Redstone, given graphene, nanotubes reinforcing etc, how long before the average college can 3D print off even a Prospero class launcher? Especially if it tuns out that cheap polymers, due to 3D foam, can be used for srtuctures it couldnt be in classic mass production?
Also waiting for a combination of cubesat swarms, and the phase array signal manipulation being trialed in smartphones in concerts. Nice to see that turning up at last.
I get the feeling this isn't the first time Luna's made a comet. Perhaps not even the first one made using kitchen supplies. Have to give the astronomers something fun once in a while.
I love your posts on real science. You also do nice world building in your fiction. Perhaps someday you post on how some of the stranger parts of real physics on the quantum level get mirrored on a visible scale in Equestrian magic. Some examples might be: quantum entanglement, quantum teleportation, quantum computing, string theory, branes, and even the duality of light (particle and wave).
Pinkie Pie as the life sized avatar of quantum mechanics just seems right for some reason.
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Thanks. Yes, something with Pinkie Pie and quantum mechanics is a very good suggestion. The problem I can anticipate is that once I start thinking about that sort of thing, it's difficult to stop... I can imagine writing something, then endlessly revising it and never finishing...