Newt

So it is. I read a paper about how its orbit may have come to be as it is, that paper was speculating about a puffy stage in Neptune's existence, it was possible but fairly difficult to really justify with the evidence they had. There also have been hypothesis that connect Pluto as an old moon of Neptune, and something threw off Triton's orbit, while launching Pluto far away. As far as I know, that is not the current belief, it was from before we realized that there were more trans neptunian objects. Triton's orbit is weird, though. It is bizarre in how circular it is, e=0.000016 (Luna's e=0.0549), but retrograde, and fairly inclined.

It seems like often the nature of people on the internet to take small suggestions and add heaps of hype. I usually try to get most of my space news from NASA, or otherwise more directly from the source for that reason. If this turns out to be the case, it is really interesting. Otherwise, we still have a fantastically large Solar System with a good deal to explore that we have hardly even started on. We have yet to orbit two major planets, yet to properly map many significant moons, yet to land on most of the bodies in the solar system.... It really is huge, the Solar System. This is just another example of how much there may still be to figure out.

You probably have not matched orbital velocity correctly, so you just zip past the target really fast. This is a hard but rewarding thing to be able to do, and it takes practice. You need to intercept them with a very slow relative velocity, staying in exactly the same plane. Try to follow some rendezvous and docking tutorials, these should help you get close enough to do a transfer. Welcome to the forum!

Both, probably, and more. Off the top of my head I do not recall the average resolution that Pluto will be mapped in, but there will probably be quite a lot of distinct features to be seen, and named. Ceres has names that it will be assigned from Gods of all the inhabited continents, Mars by this time has gone through most of the main Mars scientists and has resorted to small towns as crater names. There are tons of features on essentially any object, and they cannot be sane and limit their choices to one mythology. If they do, it will change eventually. (That said I do not recall specifically christian hellish names on the list, they may avoid them for fear of offending people, or I may not recognize them because of my limited familiarity with that religion)

I once watched a 3D movie on a 3D TV, Prometheus it was, and I would not recommend it. Otherwise the DLR put out a pretty neat Mars 3D flyover video, I am not sure where you would get it. Most of the time, I would suggest watching good films, with stories that interest you, or that are recommended on their merit as good, thoughtful stories, not on the merit of their special effects and filming styles. I recommended some of those, most I doubt highly are 3D, and the rest I am not sure.

The IAU is the only entity that can name extraterrestrial objects and features thereupon at this time. What is more, the IAU explicitly states that they will not ever name anything a name that has been paid for. I highly doubt that those will get names after them before they are all forgotten. However, if you would like to 'name' something anything you like, there always are scams.

9/10 For the Salyut; many advances were made there prior to Mir, but had its problems. 10/10 for the Soyuz. Such a reliable vehicle.

'Landing' and 'landing a rover' are two very different things. China has landed on the Moon, which may be a good start (for Viking there was a lot of work done looking at how the lander might behave landing on Lunar regolith, as a possible analog for some Martian regions), but still, landing on the Moon is not really like landing on Mars apart from that you loose your speed and stop on the ground. In that way, it seems like India, having orbited the planet, may be ahead of China, but really only slightly. As for Japan, they do have a good well established space exploration programme, but as far as I have heard there is not much emphasis being placed on Mars.

This thread does not seem to be about asteroid/Mars/other extraterrestrial mining; rather it is about the disposal of goods via launching them to space, especially Venus. I agree with the skepticism of using it for general waste. Just dumping spent cans and rotten meat on Venus, or anywhere off the earth, seems a serious waste of resources, as it takes a lot to get it there, and it still has generally use to provide. I believe that there was a suggestion that slugs of spent nuclear fuel be launched away from the Earth, this seems more practical in that the material is far more dangerous, and far less useful. It still would be preferable to not generate waste, though.

Frozen_Heart: My point was more that NASA has everything that Spacex has but more geared to the application; traveling to Mars in an Orion only would probably be like driving around the Earth in a car, without opening the door. Except going to Mars might take rather longer, and you would have to black out all the windows. There will be a habitat module of some sort, but Orion may be used in some roles, such as crew transfer, and Earth return.

If NASA does it alone, I doubt it will be much if any SpaceX hardware used. Spacex has a decent LEO rocket, and a decent LEO cargoship, which may sometime soon hold people, too. The may also sometime have a heavy lifter. NASA, incidentally, is working on their own heavy lifter, advertised by NASA as a vehicle that will go to Mars with people on the top. NASA also has the Orion, which is meant to go far beyond LEO, and is perpetually touted as a Mars vehicle. Maybe Spacex will help build some small part. It will be a collaboration, but I would look to the bigger players like Boeing, which has built far more space hardware than Spacex, to build the key parts of the vehicle.

Hydrogen and helium are useful because they put outward pressure on the generally fragile skin of blimps and balloons, which permits light structures to be made at large scales, as well as that can expand to maintain the same pressure as the surrounding so as to maintain lift. Vacuums exert no meaningful pressure, so the structures have to be made strong enough to resist the difference between in and outsides. Most materials that can do this well are really heavy--heavier than the benefit of making the pressure that low would be, and so we do not really use them.

The IAU put out a list of name candidates for features on Pluto a while ago. I saw one copy briefly, and it is consistent with the underworld theme generally. I plan to try to get a copy soon, and may post more about it then.

I do not wholly share Nibb's view of the future, but I think that the point that Nibb is making is well worth noting. A millennium is a long time, and a thousand years ago, the world was a different place as far as humans are concerned. the Americans did not know of Eurasia, the Eurasians knew not of America. The planet was vast and unknown. Printing hap yet to really gain importance, and many ideas, such as of what today is basic physics and high school level mathematics, did not exist in anyone's understanding. Anywhere. We like to talk about the significant changes that have occurred in the past century, the advent of the Internet, the development of spaceflight, jet engines, practical computers and growth in economic globalization, and these are important certainly. If all that can happen in a hundred years (a person's lifetime, now at least), think of what can happen in ten of those. I have read a number of books predicting the future over various spans, from 'Future Shock', to 'Looking Backward', to even '2001', if you count that. If there is one thing they share in common, it is that they are wrong. Bits have levels of correctness, but as specificity deepens, and as span increases, incorrectness mounts. By 3001, the governments may be driven by religions based on people alive today, religions that will seem to go back for ages, to the people alive at that point. The world may be in ruins after a devastating nuclear war that caused a several hundred thousand year cool period on the surface, all humans may be dead. Who knows? This thread is about speculation, as far as I can tell, but any speculation should be taken with a heavy skepticism, even if it is founded on clear rationale. Nibb's predictions are seeming to generate criticism, though, not because they are any less founded than the other speculations, but because they are not in line with the opinions of those listening. We should be able to disagree (I see no reason to believe any of the predictions made here, to be perfectly honest), but still treat each other with respect.

Well, we must admit that defining the parameters needed for the formation of life are highly uncertain. It seems unlikely that life could evolve in a puddle of methane, perhaps, but we really do not seem to know enough about it to say exactly what is needed for the formation. Sometimes when we see complex and powerful systems, we can attribute their success to any number of the myriad unique qualities of the environment of their formations. Sometimes these peculiarities are relevant, and sometimes not. It is difficult to state life's needs, when we only have really one example to analyze. I highly doubt that the methane is the result of an organism, at least in significant quantities. At the least, it seems quite probable that it could have originated by other means, and pending a greater explanation or the discovery of life that could likely output the material in such quantities, it is most logical to suggest that really it has resulted by less exotic means. As for how and where, again, there are a lot of things that have to go right in order to get life started. What has to go right is, however, an open question, so we cannot say whether anywhere on Titan is suitable, or define what we need to know to decide that question.We have not seen bunnies bounding across the surface, or anything else that screams out that life is there on Titan, so it is apparent that, in its form, if life exists on Titan, it is hidden or otherwise difficult to recognize, with the instruments we have used to investigate the area. There is still much that we do not know, and alas, it is extremely difficult to prove, beyond doubt, that life does not exist on an object the size of Titan.

Tommygun: I am pretty sure that it all gets back to Los Alamos, but I am unsure how it gets there quite.

I think that the main issue with who/when a mission such as this will occur is not really a very easy question to answer. I spend a lot of time in an archive that deals with space exploration through the ages, and in the right sections it is no challenge to find new proposals of Mars sample returns, Mars rover sample returns, discussions about new landers and rovers and small solid rockets and recovery stages remaining in orbit, most of which are preparing to launch in just a few years to a decade after the document's production. Of course, none of these happened. Why not? The reason is complex, and changes over time, but this overall trend has left me wary of every proposed sample return mission that I come to. When this happens, if it happens in the reasonably near future and in a situation of similar economics for the space agencies, It will probably have to be a small, basic mission. This is not the test that we can launch prior to sending humans, but a separate mission, with probably a very different architecture from any manned mission, and from prior rover missions as well. Spacex, probably could not do it. Not unless NASA told them to, and paid for it all, which I would doubt that they would. Spacex currently has been able to demonstrate its ability to complete tasks which seemed somewhat routine 40 years ago, and has yet to demonstrate its ability to construct and fly a complex scientific payload of their own. China, while more developed than Spacex, is as has been mentioned, somewhat underfunded, and I am skeptical that they would be able to pull off a sample return mission without more experience at Mars. The same goes for India. Japan and the EU have certainly both demonstrated competence and interest in the development of unmanned spaceflight systems, but both have not done especially much at Mars, although ESA has plans to further develop their Mars program with several planned missions in the upcoming years, including a (as far as I can tell still extremely up in the air) Mars Moon sample return mission. If ESA makes an effort to conduct such a mission to the planet surface, it will probably be a a rather long time and is currently at best in the dreams of engineers and administrators. NASA is clearly the lead in successful Mars exploration. while there have been many failures for assorted reasons, the US has landed many very succesful vehicles on the surface, and flown many more in flybys and orbits. That said, NASA has also had many proposals for sample returns, as well as manned landings, since the sixties. To date, no such missions have launched, let alone landed back on Earth. Its problems passing that stage are multifold, and encompass budget, interactions between various NASA centers, and political will to carry out such a mission. NASA currently has been alluding to such a mission in the future, but as before, I would hesitate to call it concrete. Russia also appears to have an actual plan for a 2020's sample return, but I will note that that remains fairly far away, and their are many opportunities for such a mission to be forgotten over that long a time. These opportunities have killed quite a few other sample returns before their ten years were up, and from looking for newer articles about the project, this one may already be dead. We cannot really know who will launch the first one probably until it launches, or at least until the vehicle is being assembled and experimenters are building their devices. we will not know which one is successful first until the capsule is recovered. Who will do this? If it happens soon, I would suggest that the only contender with experience to make it happen is NASA. If a mission is proposed, and put in place as a clear plan, it will probably have better chances if it is strongly connected to multiple governments; it is harder to pull the plug if several governments have already spent millions of dollars on a project, as US politicians want to keep relations good with French and Italian and German politicians. If it happens further down the road, it is increasingly difficult to determine. If the EU, China, Japan, Russia, or, who knows, maybe Liechtenstein pursue a determined and successful, well funded Mars program, it is entirely possible that they will be the first, but when that will happen is very unclear.

It also was only ever a small amount that would have been difficult to use for weapons purposes, and would probably draw a lot of attention if someone were trying to get at any significant amount through this way.

Acceleration from rotationally generated psuedogravity can be found from the equation a=v^2/r. Here the Coriolis force comes into play because of the difference between gravity change over a persons length, mostly, but is circumvented by the idea of continuous 1g acceleration by the vehicle itself. However, that does sound like not what you are going for. Some things are easier with a non rotating component (think docking) not impossible, but made far simpler. What exactly needs to be on the separate nonrotating section? It would be simpler to think of an excuse if that were known. Also it would be simpler to decide mass if roughly the power source, engine type, and other things were. Have you looked at the Atomic Rockets page? This has a mass of good information for this sort of project, and I suggest you browse some of the stuff there if you have not already. As it is most of what you have for the ship seems pretty up in the air, and it would be helped by stating some starting points. Many of these could be justified by things that we do not understand today, really, efficiency of the specific machines, or how long the technology has been being developed, that sort of thing.

Look at some of the entries to the contest at :http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Contest/ That is a highschool student competition from NASA Ames, for the design of hypothetical large (10.000 or more inhabitants generally) orbital space colonies, doubtlessly inspried by O'Neil's work. Most of the grandprize winning space colony designs are on the site, and some of the information you can get from it certainly could be relevant to you spacecraft. One of the 2012 winners (Kon Tiki) seems especially similar, in that it has to deal with interstellar travel.

I say other, under the belief (hope) that it will be a coalition. Maybe Russia, USA, and Europe, maybe something else. I would also note (feeling nitpicky) that NASA already has made it there, as has India, and Europe, and, for the USSR/Russia (if you count failures soon before mission successes as successes, USSR made it several times). What we are talking about is manned flights, I understand.

I think it is important to note that really extremely little is understood about exactly what conditions life needs to first form, and then survive. While there is much reason to believe that terrestrial life arose from subocean hydrothermal vents, we do not know this to be the case, and we even less know this to be the only possible source. We have much evidence to suggest that life is extremely versatile in where it elects to live, given time to adapt (there certainly are life forms that could hibernate on comets, and given a little adaption perhaps they could awake, eat, and reproduce every perihelion, only to freeze solid again for a few decades), but again, if we do not know the conditions in which life can form, it is very difficult to predict where it will be, even if we know it can live in an area. It is to answer these questions, among other things, that we are exploring this star system. There is strong evidence that life formed in it at least once, but an ambiguous answer to whether it formed at other times. We are unsure of exactly the conditions under which it may have formed that once. There are logical deductions which we may make about life's needs and abilities, it is evident that it needs an energy source, for instance, though the parameters for that energy source are unclear. But nothing beats evidence. Currently we are in the stage where we need several working hypotheses, and a determination to test our ideas. That is one of the reasons that we have rovers on Mars, and why we have a (dead) lander on Titan, to pursue evidence to tear our hypotheses to shreds, and, eventually, to not. Currently we see only a sliver of a very large picture, and are only sketching out what the rest might look like.

If either of you want either some research assistance, or the occasional digital animation, I am available if I get a warning of at least a few days (depending of course on the complexity of the project, animations sometimes take a few days to render, let alone design).

The wind really does matter, if you need to be near the equator to rendezvous with the ship that is going to take you home, or to catch the new ships coming down with supplies.

There have been quite a few 'Soyuz' variations over the last fifty years. You might should note the differences between them. Also might space stations (which definitely have habitable volume) count, too?