Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge |
Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge |
Dec 25 2005, 12:33 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Any serious plans to send a probe into the Sun to explore its depths as far as possible?
What would help a probe last as long as it could and how deep could it get? Could it even radio or laser out any data? What about a Sun skimmer? -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Dec 25 2005, 07:46 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Well, there's always David Brin's solution. Use a laser to *refrigerate* the probe, and to provide braking thrust against the Sun's gravity.
The idea is to drain the thermal energy into a system that powers a very powerful, very HOT laser. This would be the *only* way to use a "radiator" to shed heat into the photosphere. A side benefit would be that such a laser would exert *significant* thrust, and it would be aimed at a target that it couldn't much hurt -- the Sun's surface. The catch, of course, is that we really don't have the technology to build such a hot laser, or to convert the heat we can't reflect away into power for the laser. Once we develop those technologies (if we ever do), then a solar probe is more feasible... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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