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Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by Polizeiposaune on Saturday November 23, 2024 @07:04PM (#42224913)
Would be very challenging to get there in time.

11AU is outside Saturn's orbit. With the high inclination of the orbit (95 degrees) it's coming in on a more-or-less polar orbit of the sun. You might need a Jupiter flyby along the lines of what Ulysses did to fling it out of the ecliptic plane, but Jupiter might not be in the right place in its orbit to make that work..

And you'd need a very light spacecraft (not much mass budget for instruments) launched very fast, and it's far enough away from the sun that you'd want RTG power rather than solar panels.

Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by TheSpiceIsLife on Saturday November 23, 2024 @07:57PM (#42225172)
I'm far enough away from the sun that I want an RTG rather than solar.
Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by TheSpiceIsLife on Monday December 02, 2024 @07:38AM (#42295601)
Eight days later…

13kW solar system installed today.

Finacial incentives eh

Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by Archelaos on Saturday November 23, 2024 @08:20PM (#42225249)
> With the high inclination of the orbit (95 degrees) ...

How can such a high inclination be explained?

Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by Polizeiposaune on Saturday November 23, 2024 @08:43PM (#42225349)
The observed distribution of inclinations of long-period comets are why it's called the Oort cloud and not the Oort belt..

Short period comets are relatively close to the ecliptic, while very-long-period comets have evenly distributed inclinations suggesting that the objects in the Oort are more or less spherically distributed.

Discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud#Development_of_theo...

Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by JoeDaDude on Saturday November 23, 2024 @09:12PM (#42225449)
I can't make a fair comparison between the object in TFA and Oumuamua, the presumed interstellar object that passed through our Solar System not long ago. For the latter, a "Project Lyra" study [1] posits a combination of Earth and Jupiter gravitational assists to catchup with Oumuamua. Could a similar approach work for this comet?

[1]. https://i4is.org/project-lyra-a-solar-oberth-at-10-solar-rad...

Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by vivzkestrel on Saturday November 23, 2024 @10:25PM (#42225715)
what would it take to build and accelerate an object to 295000 kms/s? Like seriously, would it take nuclear propulsion or is it antimatter engine or solar sail?
Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by lsllc on Sunday November 24, 2024 @09:16AM (#42228007)
The speed of light is 299792.458km/s so according to a quick Google search it takes 4.28x10^17J to accelerate 1kg to 0.98c.
Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by fecal_henge on Sunday November 24, 2024 @10:57AM (#42228541)
Thats nearly an entire camenbert.
Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by vivzkestrel on Monday November 25, 2024 @12:11AM (#42233423)
ok so obviously we cannot slingshot someone with that speed or even use chemical rockets to reach those levels. So are there newer propulsion systems being worked upon?
Re:Size and albedo of the largest detected Oort-cloud object by lsllc on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @06:42PM (#42251384)
Ion thrusters [0], solar sails [1], nuclear pulse propulsion [2] are all things that have real research being done on them. There's more esoteric stuff (theoretical) such as the Alcubierre Drive [3] (Warp drive!) that's more of the realm of sci-fi.

If you can maintain a constant 1g of acceleration, you'd get to ~0.99c in approximately 1 year -- but you need to carry/provide the energy to fuel whatever propulsion system you're using and the amount of fuel needed to maintain that 1g of acceleration increases as you get closer to c.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive