Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go: If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit o...

Any actual engineer will probably find this comment painfully naive, but here we go: If it's infeasible to slow down to get into orbit or land on Pluto, what about the feasibility of designing a probe to impact Pluto at XX km/sec and survive well enough to send back data. Like, fire a (metaphorical) bullet full of scientific instruments directly into the surface of the planet. Is it simply that we have no way to build something that could both survive such an impact and be complex enough to do anything useful afterwards? Or might it create too much destruction on Pluto's surface? Or some combination of those? Edit: I mean, it worked when we went to the Moon: http://gallerytpw.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Georges-M%C3... Edit 2: Not literally a bullet. I'm aware of the speed difference between NH and a bullet. ;-)

Posted by chasing on Jul 14, 2015, 4:44 PM

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• reliability (Other)

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