You can also click here for real-time video in Real Media format. Last I saw they were doing ops with NH connected to the third-stage motor.
Posted on 12/12/2005 3:27:28 PM PST by MikeD
I have been working on seeing the United States fly a mission to Pluto since early in 1988. After a few weeks of discussions with colleagues and a little scheming and ritual screwing up of a 31-year-old's courage, my first meeting with NASA officials on this was held on May 8, 1988, in the office of Geoff Briggs. Dr. Briggs was NASA's Director of Planetary Exploration at that time.
In that meeting I asked Geoff, "With Voyager about to arrive at Neptune, why isn't NASA even planning a mission to Pluto?" His deceptively simple response lulled me into a false sense of security: "Alan, we should be. I'll see about a study of how we might do that. We'll get back to you."
If I and my "Pluto underground" colleagues had known then what it would take, how many meetings, proposals, presentations, reversals, setbacks, and outright cancellations it would take to get that study turned into flight hardware at the launch pad, we probably would not have had the courage to take on the task. But who could have known? It sounded so easy after Geoff's positive reaction to a simple question. And so we began.
Of course, it wasn't easy. But here we are, about 6,060 days, or 211 months later, and it's finally possible to say: "Next month, we set sail for Pluto."
(Excerpt) Read more at pluto.jhuapl.edu ...
You can also click here for real-time video in Real Media format. Last I saw they were doing ops with NH connected to the third-stage motor.
Dreams accomplished, kudos! Now for the next dream : take one of the Kuiper Belt planetoids like Pluto, and put it in close orbit around Venus. Venus would be earth-like if it had enough volatiles which mostly compose Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects. You're proof positive that dreams come true, now DREAM even BIGGER!
tick tock, tick tock
In orbit around Pluto I'd expect to find Howard Dean.
I will miss my old friend, and this picture is of the man as I knew him.
Clyde Tombaugh was born in 1906 to an Illinois farm family. As a boy he developed an interest in stargazing that was encouraged by both his father and his uncle. The first telescope Clyde ever looked through belonged to his uncle. The first telescope he ever owned was bought from Sears. By 1925, Clyde was dissatisfied with his store bought telescope and decided to build one for himself. Clyde's father took a second job to pay for the materials needed to build it. The telescope Clyde built in 1925 was only the first of more than thirty telescopes he was to build over his lifetime.
In 1928 Clyde completed the construction of a very accurate 23-centimeter reflector. The mount for this telescope was built from part of the crankshaft from a 1910 Buick and discarded parts from a cream separator! Nevertheless, it was with this telescope that Clyde made the observations responsible for a job offer from the Lowell Observatory. Clyde made very detailed drawings of his telescopic observations of Jupiter and Mars. He sent the drawings to astronomers at the Lowell Observatory asking for their comments and suggestions. What he received instead was an offer to come to Lowell to work as a junior astronomer. Clyde accepted the job and joined the search for Percival Lowell's "Planet X", a planet beyond Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh's job was to photograph one small piece of the night sky at a time. He then had to carefully examine and compare the photos in an effort to detect an unidentified moving point of light that might be a planet. Clyde Tombaugh photographed 65% of the sky and spent thousands of hours examining photographs of the night sky. After ten months of very hard work, sometimes working through the night in an unheated dome, Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh died at the age of ninety on January 17, 1997.
You are correct -- the atmosphere will freeze because the distance is increasing. We *really* want to hit the early end of the launch window so we can get the Jupiter assist and arrive at Pluto in 2015. It's estimated that the atmosphere will freeze in 2020, but we don't know for certain.
I never had the privilege of meeting him, but many of my co-workers did. By all accounts he was a great man.
Las Cruces is a great town -- La Posta is the best Mexican food I've had anywhere, and I live in San Antonio...
Ping!
Way cool. Brings back old memories! I worked on the Magellan in SAEF-II at the Cape then went out to JPL to fly her. :-)
Wow! I would have loved to been able to meet him!
Used to stay at the Holiday Inn in Las Cruces when I was visiting the TDRSS site. :-)
I also had a friend who was stationed at Fort Bliss. There is still a V-2 in the "park" at Fort Bliss I got to stand next to when I was down visiting.
Mike - Have you popped over to the museum on the Canaveral side yet? There is a V-2 engine on display.
We discovered the joys of the Mission Inn on our last sounding rocket flight. It's an old Best Western on Main Street. For $57 a night (plus tax) you get your room, wireless internet, free hot breakfast, and the best, most personal service I've ever had in a hotel/motel. All the NSROC people stay there, and the staff of the Mission Inn appreciated the business. Halfway through our stay (sounding rocket teams typically spend 3-4 weeks in the field at a time), they gave us a gift bag with some locally grown pecan treats and a gift certificate to a local restaurant. Sure, it's not the newest, nicest place around, but you can't beat the service.
The Air Force museum? No, I haven't made it there. Hopefully, I can make it to the NH launch and pop in during a down day. Otherwise, I'll have to wait until we ship LAMP for LRO in a few years. I did check out the Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo 1 sites.
Thanks for the tip!!!! :-)
The museum is worth the trip. I remember popping over to it late one night after a test on the Magellan. Stood next to a Mercury Redstone still sitiing on the pad. It was pointed at the moon directly overhead. Was an awesome feeling standing there. I will never forget it.
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