NASA - Solar Probe Plus:
"At closest approach, Solar Probe+ will be 7 million km or 9 solar radii from the sun. There, the spacecraft's carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures greater than 1400o C and survive blasts of radiation at levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft. Naturally, the probe is solar powered; it will get its electricity from liquid-cooled solar panels that can retract behind the heat-shield when sunlight becomes too intense. From these near distances, the Sun will appear 23 times wider than it does in the skies of Earth."
Well at first I was going to say we were screwed - after all NASA has not had the best track record lately - but being that we are going to be 7,000,000 km or about 4,349,598,346 miles from the sun I would think we'd be safe.
Okay so a couple of things show themselves:
Well, duh, the Sun is going to be bigger -- you are seeing it at a totally different angle. The reason the sun and the moon appear to be the same size on earth is because they have the same
angular size to our eyes/brain (about 1*) and the moon is moving away a little each year (something like 1 cm) so in a few million years they will no longer have the same angular size. It is believed that this equality is what allowed the Earth to develop life as opposed to any other planet.
Solar power - good plan .... I'm surprised they thought of it. Actually it would behoove them to use solar power for ANY of the satellites they send up around the Earth, although the amount of light they would get in the far corners of the solar system would not be enough to charge the batteries. But hey as long as the whole point is to study the sun -- use the goodness it is giving you.
Liquid Cooling - not so sure about this one. If you have even put water into a hot pan you will see that it will bubble and steam (and since its not a closed system evaporate away) in the radiation (=heat) put off by the sun the steam will be heated to the point of becoming plasma (the fourth state) and eventually .... or maybe that should be ultimately ... it will blow whatever closed system they have. Causing the solar panels to overheat.
Batteries - so my question is ... will the extended exposure to the sun cause the batteries to overcharge and KABOOM??? I mean think about it. Back when they first made rechargable batteries you had to be very careful how long you charged them otherwise they could explode...why wouldn't this be the same issue with the crafts batteries?
Data - who is going to interprete it? After all if you look at the schedule they have quite the issue with time. The probe will not go out until 2015 (3 yrs after the Mayan doomsday) and the data won't be completed until 2022-2025 (for analysis) ... NASA is assuming that in 15-20 yrs we will still be
interested in this sort of thing ... and that there will be power on Earth to allow them to gather it.
Radiation - so if they really have to make this thing to withstand levels of radiation never experienced before ... how the hell do they test it? Its not like they can make conditions in the lab .... nor could they stick this stuff into a nuclear generator .... so how do they do it? I've seen what their math & simulations can do - they are only about 60% correct at this point. That's an awful lot of money to go "oops" with.
Actually my real concern with their math is that they will make a boo-boo that will cause the craft to plunge into the sun and cause some chemical reaction that we weren't expecting and speed up the destruction of our sun.
Although -- I've often wondered why they can't figure out a way of sending the worlds garbage to either (a) one of the planets were there is no life anyways [who's it going to hurt?] or (b) send it and nuclear waste into the sun where it will burn up before doing any harm?
Actually mom came up with the sun scenerio first ... but that was pre-nuke waste.
Makes sense to me!
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