The New Horizons spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral last week on it's way to Pluto to take some happy snaps! Travelling at over 75000kph the New Horizon is the fastest spacecraft to date but will still only arrive at Pluto in 2015.
Pictured is the Atlas V rocket powering it into orbit. :D
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0601/NHLaunch_cooper_8.jpg

More pics of the Launch

looks rad
cant help thinking tho that technology will advance to the point where they launch another that will arrive before this one eh

Cool! damn thats a long trip at those speeds though.
What distance is this thing billed to travel before it reaches pluto?

i thought it would have taken longer than 10 years to get to pluto.

Only if you're walking, not if you're travelling by giant flaming rocket

This missions seems like a waste of time and money to me. We'll wait 10years to see some pics come back of a cold round rock. I would have rathered see the time and money spent im other places.

Stardust will teach us tonnes more than this mission ever will.

It's pretty cool to think that we'll all forget about this, then in 10 years there will be a massive news story about what happens when it gets there and we'll all think, "Oooooh I remember when they launched that!" and our kids will all say, "We don't care."

This missions seems like a waste of time and money to me. We'll wait 10years to see some pics come back of a cold round rock. I would have rathered see the time and money spent im other places.

Well it's a good thing that an armchair scientist such as yourself isn't in charge of NASA's missions!

I would have rathered see the time and money spent im other places.

Yeah, like running an aircraft carrier for a year that does squat all.

That is a cool pic!

It's pretty cool to think that we'll all forget about this, then in 10 years there will be a massive news story about what happens when it gets there and we'll all think, "Oooooh I remember when they launched that!" and our kids will all say, "We don't care."

hehe I get that when I tell my kids about the day I was let home early from school, all excited and awesomely wrapped.....to watch a man walk on the moon.

:P

heh they might decide to take pluto off the planet list with the info they gather.

Wow, that looks awesome!! Can't wait to see the pics.

"Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day". ~Bill Vaughan

the press & my post make pluto the emphasis of this mission because it is the only planet that hasn't been relatively closely imaged by a passing spacecraft. the main scientific reason for this mission is to examine the density & composition of the kuiper belt which may harbour potentially dangerous asteroids & comets & wotnot. as to whether this mission or any other nasa missions are a worthwhile expenditure... thats for nasa to decide. space exploration advances science which eventually benefits everyone so props to america for doing anything in these expensive fields of discovery. our enlightnend government spends ~$0 on space exploration! :D
the nasa press release there is a link to the high resolution jpg of the launch :D

Xy: it will travel approx. 3 billion klms to get to pluto... then keep going into the kuiper belt... then just keep going! cya! :P

Then some passing space ship cops a satelite in their hull at 75000 km/h, gets angry and comes and destroys us all.

This missions seems like a waste of time and money to me. We'll wait 10years to see some pics come back of a cold round rock. I would have rathered see the time and money spent im other places.

There are a lot of good reasons to go to pluto. The more we know about the make up of our solor system the more we advance our knowledge about how solor systems are created. The simple truth is that we don't know a lot about stuff that far out.

Stardust will teach us tonnes more than this mission ever will.

The problem with pure science is that you just don't know what you will learn. More than once fringe research has discovered something that has been critical to something mainstream.

NASA has a lot of problems, but their un-manned projects normally spend their money well. Isn't its mission after pluto going to the edge of our solor system to the heliopause to do more experiments there? That alone is worth the cost of the project.

hehe I get that when I tell my kids about the day I was let home early from school, all excited and awesomely wrapped.....to watch a man walk on the moon.

I was in class watching the Challenger launch (because it had a teacher on it) when it exploaded, live.

I would have hated to be have been a teacher that day.

As much as I'm an advocate of Space travel & Exploration, why don't we (as in humans) spend more effort (and obligatory cash) on getting down into the bottom of the oceans and figuring out whats on our own planet first.

Then again, look at s*** this way

We're technologically way ahead of say, the African Bushman, we, us in our happy lil present lives. Whose game to say that our (collective) governments haven't got just as far a technical edge on it's (again, collective) populace?

After all, all of our present Govt's learnt from one of several ancient masters of this technique (Both East, West and all that's in the middle religions spring to mind - well, actually, not so much the Eastern ones that I've read about but hey!)

"Keep em ignorant an they're happy"


PS: I really want to watch the sunrise... while I'm sitting on the moon and I hope I live long enough to do just that! (a bonus would be if just after taht I could press a button which would launch all my hidden spacecraft into action that would then leave me in charge of [insert meglomainiacal dream here]

last edited by HERMITech at 01:29:41 25/Jan/06

nasa should spend more time building my imperial star destroyers. damn lazy bastards.

its solar typo

oh wait...

Isn't Pluto a dog?

that high res pic in the press release is fkn s*** quality

We, the governments of Earth, need to band together into a....Federation. Then and only then can we explore strange new worlds, seek out distant star systems, and boldly go where no man has gone before!
And have sex with hot looking alien women!!

last edited by Tanaka Khan at 12:57:03 25/Jan/06

heh, hermitech... i seriously doubt lil' jonnie howard is witholding advanced science on us ;P~ pollies usually get through thier lives with a smattering of economics & law. science gets diseminated from space agencies to the general public via the scientific community not through thier relative governments.

Blows me away that they would have enough fuel to travel 3+ billion kms away.

Blows me away that they would have enough fuel to travel 3+ billion kms away.

It runs on nuclear power once it's out of the orbit. Which in fact cause a lot of protest from the tree huggers.

More info on the Plutonium issues

And more from Wiki

The RTG contains 24 pounds (11 kg) of iridium-clad plutonium-238 oxide pellets constructed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This is less than the original design goal and is due to delays at the Department of Energy, including security activities, which held up production and resulted in the current plutonium load. The mission parameters and observation sequence had to be modified for the reduced wattage.

The Department of Energy transferred the space battery program from Ohio to Argonne in 2002 because of plutonium security concerns after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The heat from the RTG also keeps the spacecraft's instruments from freezing in space.

i heard there are parts of this spacecraft that have foam on it. a multi-billion $ rocket, and its got foam on it? shouldn't we use something a bit stronger and reliable than something that comes encasing a new moniter?

its not that kind of foam

polystyrene is a good insulator genius

and its got foam on it? shouldn't we use something a bit stronger and reliable than something that comes encasing a new moniter?

Different "foams" have different chemical properties. As just said, this foam isn't the same thing that encases monitors; it's much stronger (chemical bonds stronger) and plus as cs_master said, it has really good insulation properties (kinda important when ur going out into space).

Blows me away that they would have enough fuel to travel 3+ billion kms away.

Considering the rumours of how little push you need in space to move I think it is easy to get your head around

inertia will get the rocket to pluto on the smell of an oily rag

i'd like to see pictures of pluto close up - the only real pictures we have of the planet are of some kind of a shiny blurry dot, all the others are artists' impressions

no, its actually kinda just foam really......this nasa lady came 2 our school a few years ago with some bits of the stuff. they use it coz its light and just paint it with some heat s***......and yes its kinda soft

that's why I don't get how a piece of foam falling off the Columbia shuttle on lift-off could "smash" into the wing and put a mark on it, let alone a big hole

oh no, foam!!

save us from the FOAM

guess u guys never watched dicovery. i can be bothered explaining it.

i can be bothered explaining it.

well go on then!

Glass is a liquid, not a solid.

Actually thats kind of debatable.
Some people call it a supercooled liquid crystal, and use it to explain bulging stain glass windows. But it doesn't explain ancient roman glass being fine. Anyways to state it as a fact is a bit rich.
a wiki clicky to help you learn

That's totally amazing. It's wonderful, and I guess a little scary sometimes, what man can accomplish.

yea i know what ya mean Jim, Lockers are wonderous and deffinatly get ya into scary places!

Considering the rumours of how little push you need in space to move I think it is easy to get your head around

'Space' has no friction, no air absolutely nothing. space is exactly that, space. a vacum, a void.
so empty it'll suck anything into it to fill it.

For eg. on one of the ferries that go across the Cook Strait in New Zealand was making one of its 3 crossings.
the weather was shocking, huge waves, passengers getting sick etc. but nothing the huge Interislander cant handle.
during the journey a fatty fat chicky babe decided to have a s***, all her fatty fatness covered the whole bowl seat and all.
her big arse s*** came to a sudden end when the rocky waters made her accidently hit the flush button.
Vacum
she died
her insides were SUCKED out of her fat ass.

the toilets had some hardcore suction systems in those days.
the suction in this case caused a vacum. its the vacum that pulled anything it could to fill the void. since her ass was so fat it couldnt suck the whole thing in so pulled a whole heap of s*** out of her ass.
thankfully now days this wont happen due to buttons placed out of reach while sitting.


anyways, no friction blah blah blah.
What this means is once a mass is moving it keeps moving in that exact direction at that exact speed, until it hits something or a nearby mass(planet/sun/astroid/gas/lump of s***) pulls(gravity) it.

You still need fair amount of force to get it moving in the first place. but not a constant force, or anything at all to keep it moving.



last edited by Fuknukle at 22:08:31 27/Jan/06

bring on more space research, having all our eggs in one basket is asking for trouble

Yeah there is a black hole comming for us and the sun will explode so we need to escape!

fukin bring on the titties!!

we need more research into this fat chick arses*** vacuum phenomenon as well

isnt that fat chick thing an urban myth? isnt the setting a cubicle on a plane? didnt mythbusters bust this myth?

that's why I don't get how a piece of foam falling off the Columbia shuttle on lift-off could "smash" into the wing and put a mark on it, let alone a big hole

oh no, foam!!

Cos you're a moron?

I'd beg to differ, let's settle it by me throwing foam at you

and the sun will explode so we need to escape!

The sun has longer life in it than you, me or a few generations of generations to go so who rightly cares :P
Besides, it will expand and completely consume the earth before going supernova, by which stage anything left here will be KFC.
We need a new planet to f*** up yo.

isnt that fat chick thing an urban myth? isnt the setting a cubicle on a plane? didnt mythbusters bust this myth?

not in New Zealand. it happened around 1978 from memory.
the interislanders have the newspaper clippings on their wall with all the articles on it.
funny s***

^^^ I recently went to NZ (like last week) and I didn't see the news clipping you're talking about. Might've been on a diffrenet boat though we were on the boat named Kaitaki (one of thier new large ship).

Newspaper clippings? It must be real.

http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/toilet.asp

Yea I saw the Myth Busters episode where they proved that was a myth.

i never heard about the plane one :S

Wasn't there a few kids who got killed this way by sitting on the old pool filters and having their insides sucked out.
It was a while back now and I was fairly young when I saw something about this so I wouldn't even know where to look for some kind of evidence for this.

"inertia will get the rocket to pluto on the smell of an oily rag"
but there is still gravational effects to consider.
and maybe dark matter effects.(pioneer 400 000 km off target)

Only 5443200000 kilometers till it's there :)