Word: pluto
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...Once Pluto, king of all the netherworld, got some respect among astronomers. In 1930, he joined his brethren as the namesake for the farthest planet in our solar system. But among some astronomical ingrates, Pluto has recently fallen out of favor. Two years ago Pluto was almost reduced to a mere "minor planet" by the International Astronomers Union, and last February New York's Rose Center for Earth and Space left Pluto off the list entirely, relegating him instead to a disk of icy comets known as the Kuiper Belt. One year later, passions still rage in the astronomical community...
Many would find it absurd to challenge Pluto's planetary qualifications. It circles our sun, it has a moon (Charon, the boatman of the Styx), it is roughly spherical, it has an atmosphere--and it has a cartoon dog named after it. If that's not enough for a planet, what...
...with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Michael Eisner? Part of the problem may be that NASA has simply put too many of its budgetary eggs in the space-station basket--scrapping in the meantime a number of smaller, worthier projects like its long-dreamed-of mission to Pluto (see box). As public interest in the giant orbiting construction project continues to wane, NASA has grown increasingly desperate for a hit. The flap over the TV show may be a cautionary tale of what can happen when an agency that once cared only about aiming for the stars makes...
...scoot around the solar system and return within a few years, you need a spacecraft that will cruise at 100 miles a second. At that speed you will get to Mars in 10 days, to Pluto in 16 months. We can imagine a spacecraft carrying a big area of thin film to collect solar energy, with an ion-jet engine to produce thrust powerful enough to boost a spacecraft to a speed of 100 miles a second. It is also possible to build a nuclear-powered jet to do the same job, if the political objections to nuclear spacecraft...
...other hand, the nearest star is about 10,000 times as far away as Pluto. A trip to the stars within a human lifetime requires a spacecraft that cruises at more than 10,000 miles a second and accelerates to this speed within 10 years. The engine would have to deliver about a megawatt of power for every pound of weight of the ship. There is no way an engine that small and that powerful could keep itself cool. Even if the fuel is something exotic like antimatter, carrying far more energy than sunlight or uranium, the problem of cooling...