Catching Interstellar Objects. What If We Could Explore Oumuamua Or 2I/Borisov?
The distances to other stars are depressingly enormous. Sure, it’s incredibly far to get to Mars, Jupiter, and even Pluto, but at least you can design a robotic spacecraft to make the journey and see the science results in your own lifetime.
But in the case of other stars, interstellar flight times will take thousands and even tens of thousands of years to send just a robotic mission.
Fortunately, the Milky Way has got our back. Other star systems have been hurling comets and asteroids towards the Solar System. All we’ve got to do… is catch them.
Watch the video here, or click this link to watch it on YouTube:
In case you missed it, I had an interview with Moiya McTier on Open Space, discussing exoplanets and her other projects.
Catching Interstellar Objects. What If We Could Explore Oumuamua Or 2I-Borisov_.mp4 (Vimeo)
Comments (3)
Very nice synopsis and I enjoyed the eye candy videos of conceptual spacecraft sailing around the solar system, along with your lucid narrative. One nit-pick if you don't mind: one has to be careful with phrases like "slingshot around the Sun". I prefer to avoid the term, and use "gravity assist" for Voyager-like carefully timed and often un-powered fly-bys of planets to gain or lose energy. Instead, what Project Lyra is proposing is an "Oberth maneuver", which requires the rocket to fire at perihelion when it is moving fastest. See for example https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1244:_Six_Words
Thanks, I'll be more careful, but I try to make that distinction of a gravity assist when it's what Voyager was doing. In this case they're also going to use the close orbit around the Sun to help change the direction that it's headed so it can intercept the target object, so I figured "slingshot" was the right term.
Seeing stuff coming through our solar system is cool but what really needs to happen is to start putting physicists into space to explore new theoretical concepts of space travel. This could be a warp drive or folding space or whatever they can dream up. Until we learn new physical laws that will enable us to get to other solar systems in a few months' time frame, the universe will be out of our reach.