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The Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun

(arstechnica.com)
164 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 20 Dec 24 11:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.486s | source
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FredPret ◴[20 Dec 24 21:04 UTC] No.42475004[source]▶
If KSP is to be believed, this is shockingly difficult to do
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beAbU ◴[20 Dec 24 21:29 UTC] No.42475235[source]▶
In order to 'land' on the sun, or any celestial body, you need to get rid of your orbital speed. Higher orbital speed means higher orbit altitude. Landing on earth is comparatively easy, because you can use the atmospheric drag to slow down. It is so difficult to land on Mars because of it's thin atmosphere. Alternatively you need a shitload of fuel to burn to kill that velocity.

Earth's orbital velcity is ~30km/s. So by extension, anything that comes from Earth will at least have that speed. So the probe needs to find 30km/s delta v in order to actually get close to the sun.

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1. FredPret ◴[20 Dec 24 21:58 UTC] No.42475468[source]▶
I wonder if you can use atmospheric drag to pull you into the Sun / a different star / Kerbol.

Long ago, playing Elite if I remember correctly, you could fly close to a star and scoop up a load of hydrogen for later resale. I'd be interested to see a graph of gas density vs tendency to melt spacecraft compared to distance from the core for a typical star.

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2. JumpCrisscross ◴[21 Dec 24 01:00 UTC] No.42476652[source]▶
> wonder if you can use atmospheric drag to pull you into the Sun

You can, and I believe this probe will. The Sun’s atmosphere is just much nastier than our own, which means your aerobraking destroys your spacecraft quicker.

3. anigbrowl ◴[21 Dec 24 01:43 UTC] No.42476846[source]▶
It was Elite. Once you had a fuel scoop there was no requirement to dock and refuel any more so it was much easier to be a pirate or privateer.

There was a bug (or was it?) in the very PC version where by if you had fuel scoops installed, set your view to looking out the rear of the ship, flew toward a star, and ignored all the warnings on your dashboard, you could fly right through the star. If you were being chased at the time you had the additional satisfaction of watching your pursuers' ships explode as they tried to follow you in.