🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C1ABD8.Ms2@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh Hopkins) writes...
>lwahl@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Lynne K Wahl) writes:
> 
>>Hmmm... This sounds like an interstellar probe is needed to collect 
>>information before a *really* fast spacecraft is launched.  How about
>>a .01c speed probe with a small "sail" that would be primarily used to 
>>collect interstellar H (for testing) and with magnetic sensors to check
>>on the magnetic medium as it goes.  How far from the sun would this
>>"Pathfinder" type of probe need to go before getting outside the sun's
>>environment?  

We have four spaceraft (Pioner 10 & 11 and Voyager 1 & 2) that have already
left the solar system and looking for the heliopause.  I'd say one of them
would reach the helipause within 10 years.

>>As an exercise, how fast would, say a refueled shuttle ET, one SSME,
>>and a 30 ton probe go if launched in a "generic" solar escape orbit? 
> 
>Really slowly.
> 
>JPL proposed the TAU (Thousand AU) mission a number of years 
>ago.  It would have used a nuclear reactor and an ion drive to boost out of
>the solar system in about fifty years and check out interstellar space. 
>Unfortunately, since it required new power, engines and communications gear it
>never got very far.

The TAU mission would also use a light-wave communications system. It would
study low energy cosmic rays, low frequency radio waves, interstellar gases,
gravity waves and perform high precision astrometry.  The spacecraft would
also be targeted to flyby Pluto on its way out of the solar system.
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