Subject: It's today -- it's now.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-07-14 12:44:00 UTC
In 5 minutes as I post this, New Horizons will be passing through the Pluto system. It's been nine years on the road, but it's finally made it!
It's been a really weird feeling for me, watching the old Hubble image of Pluto be resolved in more and more detail over the last few days. Pluto's not just a blur! It has features!
Keep up the good work, New Horizons!
hS
We have informal names for some regions of Pluto and Charon.
Oh yes. I'm serious.
"One does not simply fly 3 billion miles to take a photo of Mordor, the dark spot on top of Pluto's moon Charon."
hS is overwhelmed with fannish glee
Oh, yes. This is brilliant!
Oh yes, I have been following this. I thought they were calling that dark spot on Pluto the Whale or something. Balrog is much better. And it always fills me with warm fuzzies to be reminded that the guys and gals in the space exploration community are Our People. ^_^
Fire up, gang! It's time to role-play the Fellowship another forty-seven times!
~Neshomeh
It has also been renamed.
It is now called Cthulhu.
Because space is full of geeks.
We're going to Pluuuuutoooooo!
(If you suspect there'll be a Gathering Report as soon as they come out with an official map - you'd be right. :D)
hS
We should RP the alternative Fellowships for this one, to keep things fresh. Naturally, this occurred to me the instant after I posted this morning. But I remembered now, so it's all good! ^_^
~Neshomeh, who pulled a nine-hour shift instead of seven with no breaks today thanks to her relief suffering an unspecified emergency, and is a bit loopy with freedom.
On the one hand, that is an incredibly awesome idea which I cannot gainsay.
On the other hand, given that we're going to Mordor flying in a ship made out of nine rings (of nuclear bombs), we might spend more time roleplaying the other side.
On the other other hand, it's a two year trip and we already watched the entire canon last time... and I'm going to arbitrarily declare that there's 20 of us this time. Nine Fellowshippers, nine Nukewraiths... plus Elrond and Sauron to direct things.
Oh yes, it's the War of the Alternate Rings across the decks of a nuclear spaceship. ^_^
hS
ALL OF MY YES! I love it!
Yes, there are mountains on Pluto. The BBC says they're as big as the Rockies. And... they're made out of water-ice. ^^ Space is weird. Remember the ice-volcanoes <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b2-IsVH5OtrMALHcBska0FCxqdCG5i55SeUl52J3Y/pub">back on Titan? Those would've melted these mountains like Earth's volcanoes melt rock.
So yeah, we'll be climbing those when they've got names, count on it. ^^
hS
Rosetta took a picture of Pluto.
Beyond the Belt stars or will star every operational spaceship we have beyond the inner limit of the asteroid belt. At present, that's eight vehicles:
-Voyager 1 (red-hearted Voyager above)
-Voyager 2 (blue-hearted Voyager above)
-New Horizons, at Pluto
-Dawn, at Ceres
-Cassini, at Saturn (not shown)
-Juno, en route to Jupiter (not shown)
-Rosetta*, around a comet on its way through the solar system
-Philae*, Rosetta's lander (not shown)
(*Right now, Rosetta and Philae are actually inside the orbit of Mars, but they joined their comet outside the Belt and will be going back there. So they're still in.)
Whenever there's news from the outer system, I'll be thinking about using these guys to share it. Because why not? It's fun! ^_^
hS
...in your first panel looks distressingly like Bill Cipher. I mean, look at it!
It even has the top hat!
That's... seriously uncanny. And not even my fault!
That's the official picture of New Horizons from the mission logo. When you take into account the fact that the actual ship is gold instead of silver... yeah. I think whatever-that-thing-is has a fan at NASA. ^_~
hS
The image of the deep space probes bickering among themselves makes me grin.
Oh dear lord, they're the Continuity Council, IN SPACE!
There's seven of them (not counting Philae) and seven members of the CCoGiE... so can you match them up? :D
(Juno is naively enthusiastic; Cassini I haven't pinned down yet, I'll have to poke at its missions. That should be enough information, right?)
hS
Telemetry data is coming back from New Horizons!. Photos to follow!
Given 'oops, we lost Philae' earlier this year, I was really worried this was going to be another 'mission goes unaccountably wrong' situation. But it isn't! It's still working! Yaaaaay!
hS
Right now, both Goldstone and Canberra are talking to New Horizons. Relatedly, I love the DSN Now website; you can actually see what's communicating with who!
Canberra is also chatting with Voyager 1. I bet that's going well...
hS
(Beyond the Belt: the new Space Soap Opera, coming soon to an internet near you.)
(Can't decide whether to render them as humans or keep them as robots. Argh decisions.)
Voyager 1 is an old grump, and 2 knows it. ^_^
(Distinguishing two identical spaceships ain't easy, you know. They look more different from the front...)
hS
Whooo's a cute widdle dwarf planet? You are! Yes, you are! Oh, Plutokins, it's soooo lovely to be able to see you up close!
...astronomy fangirl? Me?
*innocent whistling; pointed ignoring of shelf full of astronomy books*
If all's gone well, New Horizons is now whirling away from Pluto at nearly 31,000 miles per hour. We won't hear from it for a few more hours, though - it's too busy taking photos!
And with appropriate gratitude to Jonathan Coulton:
They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I don't care
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
hS
The New Horizons webpage says we have eleven and a half hours until it phones home. Factoring in a 4.5 hour transmission time (across the entire solar system), that means New Horizons will spend another seven hours taking pictures before letting us know how it's doing.
Unless, of course, something's gone wrong... but let's not think about that.
hS
Sadly, it will have failed its objective. See, when it was launched, the idea was for it to 'explore the only unexplored planet in the solar system' - yup, when the mission was launched, Pluto was still a planet.* I wonder if anyone bothered to tell the probe that it's not going to be looking at a planet anymore?
If I'd spent 9 years getting somewhere to look at a planet, I'd feel pretty silly if I got there only to discover that there weren't any planets nearby. Or maybe I'd think that the scientists who changed the definition of 'planet' were silly.
We should get some cool photos out of this. I wonder if Future!Boarders will ever pay Pluto a visit?
- Irish
*don't worry, Pluto - I'm not a planet either
Alike. The answer is alike.
hS
(Though I think we might have to scrounge up a new ship in Jovian space. Helicarrier/Valiant is down one lander and has used up its boosters; sure, the nuclear torch would get us there eventually, but something with a bit more delta-V would be nice. Also, I've used up most of the available Argosy pictures.)
Um, I mean, see the photos. Yes.
*whistles innocently*
But seriously, this is just so cool.
... it's home to both flesh-eating microbes and crystalline humanoids. Which invites the question of exactly whose flesh the microbes eat...
In other fandommy Pluto news: the proposed naming scheme for surface features in the Pluto system includes potential feature names such as 'Shire', 'Mordor', 'Morgoth', and 'Smaug'. :D
Which, of course, suggests this:
I guess we might be extending the Io Gathering...?
(To prevent disappointment: no, there's no extra report yet. Maybe next year.)
hS
We're going in style.
Turns out Jovian Customs had a leftover Black W-class Orion they were willing to hire out to us. We just had to promise not to blow up anything important with our 'engine'.
(We let them have the use of Helicarrier in part-exchange, so it was slightly less prohibitive than it would have been. They'll even take care of sending it back to Earth for us.)
hS has 11 pictures of the Black W, so is well prepared for writing the report when, uh, someone actually names some features on Pluto
This is gun be gud. >:)
*pulls hS away from the engine* No touchy, we need that!
... should I name names this time round?
I claimed there were 11 Boarders on the Io gathering. Per the Io thread, that includes:
-Huinesoron
-Kaitlyn
-Iximaz
-Neshomeh
-Darkotas
-Tungsten_Monk
With 'are we nearly there yet', we can presumably add the Irish Samurai to the list. I'd also guess Phobos is present, but it hasn't been explicitly said.
On the one hand, using names would flesh it out a bit,a and would let me include uploaded!PoorCynic, terrorist!Scapegrace, and, er... furry!bodymod!World-Jumper, I guess? On the other hand, it would stop people being able to project themselves into there, and would mean I didn't have to fix in stone names who may not be around in a few years time. :-/ Decisions.
hS doesn't have a picture this time, sorry
...is married to some kind of human-turned-shark, or forces some poor girl to be in a shark suit before he'll have anything to do with her.
Anyway, yeah, I'd love to be there, iffin you'd let me. I myself will stay human, so no need to install a pool or something. I'm not some kind of Otherkin, just a dude who really likes sharks.
(It's funny because IRL, I'm actually kinda nervous of the deep ocean because of the sharks. And Orcas.)
That makes sense. ^^
Anyway, you can't come to Pluto - you already said you were on Earth when we finished Io, and we're not stopping in between. :D But -- spoilers -- this report will almost certainly end with 'want to come out to [some other rock]? We'll meet you on the way back.' So you can do the next one. ^^
(Or you can retcon your 'wish I could've been there' and, uh, be there. Uppa'you.)
hS
Never mind. I'll just join you guys on the trip to, I dunno, Venus or something. You kept going further out of our solar system. Time to go in!
I'm afraid I'm a gloomy, miserable loner. If I was cooped up in a spaceship with anyone for any length of time, I'd eventually go mad and try to kill you all, just so I could enjoy being all alone for the rest of the trip.
(And then I'll stay on Pluto so I don't have to go back to horrible, crowded Earth.)
... why do think there are only 11 Boarders going to Pluto?
After all, while it is fairly well documented that 11 rode out to Io, as you've already pointed out, it was necessary to change ships at Jupiter. Any Boarders that were already in the area would've been able to tag along for the outbound flight to Pluto :)
- Irish
We're not in a 'passenger liners to the planets' setting; the Deep Space Network doesn't go out past Jupiter, for instance. So while there's a few science colonies in the Jovian system, there's no massive community to allow for 'in the area'. And besides, they'd surely have joined us for the Io landings!
But... with a tweak, it could work. Posting the Io Report could have got new PPC converts in the Jovian area - it'd presumably be fairly big news, since tourists don't normally go and wander through volcanoes! And given the sort of person who joins the PPC (slightly awkward geeky nerds ^_~), it's not unreasonable to postulate a few former PPCers who get nostalgic over the Report and decide to tag along for the next trip.
So that works. I'll probably avoid hard numbers this time round - it's an Orion, it's not like we're limited on mass!
hS
And it is hilarious.
We'll be taking an Orion with 400 km/s of delta-V. To make a return trip, our best course turns out to be this:
-Start at Jupiter.
-Burn at one Earth gravity for three hours, taking us up to 100 km/s, and out to roughly the distance to Earth's moon. By comparison, the Apollo missions took three days. New Horizons itself (see that? That's topical, that is!) took more than eight hours.
-Turn off the engine for three years.
-Burn at 1g for another three hours to stop over Pluto.
I love Orions. They are the best spaceships. ^_^
hS
I'll admit, the Orion drive is kinda cool. But is it really the best ship to use in this case? Quoting from the very page that you yourself linked: The sad little secret about Orion is that the mission it is best suited for is boosting heavy payloads into orbit. Which is exactly the mission that the enviromentalist and the nuclear test ban treaty will prevent. Orion has excellent thrust, which is what you need for lift-off and landing. Unfortunately its exhaust velocity is pretty average, which is what you need for efficient orbit-to-orbit maneuvers.
And you are talking about an orbit-to-orbit transfer.
Finally, I couldn't let any conversation involving project rho go by without a link to my favourite page: the Boom Table :)
Because what could be more useful than a comparative list showing the destructive potential of a bunch of real life, theoretically possible and definitely impossible weapons?
- Irish
Because I've got a nice set of pictures of it. ^^ Seriously, you're right - Orion is a pretty terrible design, efficiency-wise. But this ain't a hard sci-fi novel. ^~
In fact, it's probably viewed as inefficient even in the setting - they're willing to hire one out to a bunch of geeks who decided to go to Pluto on a whim! I think I described it as 'left-over' (though whether that's from a war or a construction operation, I don't know), and I think that's accurate. We're not taking an Orion because we wanted an Orion - we're taking one because it's what was available.
The Boom Table is fantastic, and I can't believe I missed it before. ^_^ Thank you!
hS
In my capacity as anticorporate terrorist and guerrilla leader, a la Paulo Abacar. =]
I mean, it's a report on us riding a wave of nuclear bombs to Pluto; discussing the state of affairs back in England is probably quite a long way from our thoughts (unless something seriously dramatic happens, but that'd leave me in an Eleven PPCers Lost In Space scenario, which isn't what this is about).
But yeah, I can probably mention people who've explicitly said they aren't there; the question is whether to name anyone who is. And I'm leaning towards 'no', because we're up to eight already and there's still fifty-odd years to go. ^_^
hS
I'll bring a karaoke machine! We can sing all the nerdy songs we want!
(I'm still interested in figuring out a PPC karaoke night RP)
Starting with "Discord".
John de Lancie did a planetarium show voiceover? I got to see it. It was AMAZING. *fangirls*
That does sound amazing! Lucky!
They have it online. http://www.clarkplanetarium.org/distribution/blackholes
Now I'm thinking about Star Trek. I need to watch more TNG. :P