TiME |
TiME |
May 5 2011, 08:48 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 613 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
Ahoy mateys!
NASA announces Discovery mission selection for Phase A. Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) is among them. Har! |
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May 16 2011, 01:08 PM
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#2
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 16 Joined: 30-March 08 Member No.: 4078 |
Except that the vast majority of the data will probably be GCMS results, which are a little less photogenic, albeit very scientifically valuable.
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May 17 2011, 05:35 AM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 613 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
Except that the vast majority of the data will probably be GCMS results, which are a little less photogenic, albeit very scientifically valuable. I'm glad to see that you lot are thinking about all this - fun, isnt't it? Obviously I'm not going to go into specifics but it is possible to address some of the questions that have come up in very general terms. Materials/temperatures - guys, come on. Huygens operated in this environment until its batteries ran out. Launch vehicles - to say nothing of the liquified natural gas industry - deal with cryogenic fluids all the time. Of course heat leaks and insulation need to be designed appropriately, and material properties at the relevant environment must be considered, as they do on Mars and Venus or in vacuo. Communications - some cogent discussion on the thread. This has been thought about a lot for Titan balloons too. I'll remind readers that many cruise ships, and drones for that matter, use gimballed antennas for satellite communications. Again, not trivial, but a familiar and soluble problem. As for data - have a look at the Huygens or Pathfinder or any other mission's balance of data volume between imaging, composition, meteorology etc. On any mission this balance gets struck somehow (and indeed it can often be tuned during the mission) |
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May 17 2011, 06:07 AM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Materials/temperatures - guys, come on. Huygens operated in this environment until its batteries ran out. Launch vehicles - to say nothing of the liquified natural gas industry - deal with cryogenic fluids all the time. Thanks for responding Ralph. My actual concern was not so much the low temperatures affecting the TiME craft as the other way around. If it drops down in that hydrocarbon sea and then sets it boiling and steaming that would seriously affect instrumentation's ability to collect data would it not? If nothing else images would be difficult. With respect to terrestrial cryogenic industrial uses, to the best of my knowledge none of that equipment is required to go through launch vibration tests at STP and then transition to high loads and stresses in cryogenic environs. My armchair recollections are that materials which are strong and ductile at one end become fragile and brittle at the other end and vs. vs. Certainly the temperatures we are dealing with are substantially lower than any of the Mars craft were designed for, and then finally the whole notion of the vehicle in contact with an ocean of liquid adds a heat capacity component to the materials calculations that is barely a factor in the gaseous 0.01 atm on Mars. I'm certainly not questioning your knowledge or understanding of the conditions (I read your book), just outlining my line of thinking that caused me to pose (perhaps in-artfully) the previous question. -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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