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A comment on Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk?. Parent comment

Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by sp332 on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @03:25PM (#19202439)
Yeah, it's slow enough that we could catch up to it. One of the biggest mysteries about it is why it was moving so slowly. Voyager left the solar system at 17,000 m/s. ‘Oumuamua accelerated to a top speed over 87,000 m/s as it was moving toward the sun, but it's slowing down now, and will eventually slow to 26,000 m/s. It will pass the orbit or Uranus early next year.
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Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by jandrese on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @03:28PM (#19202462)
Note that the Voyager probes are only moving that fast because they got orbital assists. It would take a very big rocket already in orbit to attempt an intercept.
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Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by sp332 on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @03:30PM (#19202478)
Oh it would be crazy expensive. But we have the tech. (Wait, do we have tech for in-orbit refueling? Anyway we're developing that for Mars missions already so we'll have it soon.)
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Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by lucb1e on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @02:55AM (#19206374)
We resupply the international space station, so even if we couldn't carry great loads of fuel up at a time, orbital refueling is clearly within the realm of the possible.

More interesting would be if we could beam up energy to refuel, but for that we'd probably need yet-to-be-invented drives which use loads of energy per amount of matter to accelerate it further. Kind of like a particle collider but for propulsion.

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Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by rbanffy on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @10:43AM (#19208718)
My bet would be an RTG powering a dozen electric thrusters packing a lot of propellant and a relatively small probe.

Still, it'd mean reaching Uranus' orbit in about a year. That's a lot to ask for.

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Re:Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from ... by rbanffy on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @10:40AM (#19208679)
If we stop and think of it, it'd be a lot of energy to be able to reach Uranus' orbit by next year.

Big rocket or very small probe.

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