The Lucifer Project - (crashing the Casini probe into Saturn on 7/7/08)

This would nake a great sci-fi movie! Oh, wait, it's been done. Let's call Helen Mirren and Roy Scheider to see if they think it's plausible. Complete crap.

reply to post by Byrd

You are not very bright are you?? You talk about the spot on Jupiter taking so long to show up! That's what's ignorant...obviously you think the speed of light is instantaneous huh?? Of course it wouldn't show up right away. I have been studying this Lucifer Project for awhile now, and I am not sure what will happen, I am not a scientist or anything like that, but even I know that anything occurring in space, esp. that far out, would take quite some time to be noticeable from earth!!!!

reply to post by foreverunnamed


Byrd is actually quite bright

FYI, it would take light from Saturn around 64 minutes to reach Earth based on my back of envelope equations

Peace

You know, I see alot of people saying it's not gonna happen.

But I know fully well that they have no idea what they're talking about.

The first time we detonated a nuclear bomb we didn't know if it would destroy the planet or not.

The first time we use super-colliders to create mini-blackholes we are in the same situation.


People can sit back on their haunches and rely on mathematical theory to make them feel safe : they do not know .

In all honesty, a nuclear explosion in a hydrogen rich environment is just going to be plain ugly. Nobody knows what is going to happen.

I'm personally not sold on this notion of the atmosphere igniting. I can say this with relative confidence having a working idea of the mechanics of a nuclear weapon v. a basic reaction mass.

First: Is the Pu of a highly refined weapons grade, or comparable? I'm not doubting that critical mass can be achieved regardless of grade, but the answer to this question is very important to the yield. That is, if a definitive answer is to be had, which I doubt.

Next: Were there any other radioactive or exotic isotopes present in close proximity to the Pu? I'm not going into specifics, but something like cesium or beryllium...

Also: Does anybody have schematics of the Cassini? Let's get down to brass tacks here. I'm looking for "evidence" of a device, or a workable "rube goldberg" method.

Now, I digress to what I originally thought would be the focus of this thread. I am not attempting to derail, merely point out a potentially overlooked possibility.

What if the probe really is a nuclear weapon of some sort, and is in fact intended to detonate part of Saturn's atmosphere by design?!?

I only bring this up due to the recent Cassini photos of the "Large craft or object" that seemed to loom is Saturn's rings. What of this object(s)? No mention of them of late that I've seen.

What if this is recon by fire?

reply to post by NewWorldOver


Thank you...it's nice to know that there are intelligent people out there still. No one knows what will happen and I am glad to see someone else still uses the brain they were givin!!

I have been in countless arguments over this topic and the plausibility or feasibility of such a plan of turning a gas giant into a sun. IMO, igniting Saturn into a sun is possible given a large enough trigger event of fissionable material to get the fusion reaction of a sun going, hydrogen to helium reaction. However, this argument is now meaningless for at least another 2 years, as NASA announced (maybe 2 weeks ago) the extension of the Casini probes' mission through at least 2010.

firstly cassini's mission has been extended...

www.nasa.gov...

secondly saturns mass would not allow for a sustained reaction...and this would lead to us destroying a whole planetry system saturn.

Personally If nasa were going to destry cassini again i would think after two years they will aim for jupiter again as cassini is carrying more instruments which may allow for information about saturn to be retrieved here on earth.

Only problem with this is if they did cause a reaction at jupiter then years of research that could happen there at europa would nver happen....

no need to worry at the minute.

reply to post by ian990003100


Am I the only one who remembers the first time this argument went around, during the Galileo mission? Same exact discussion recycled again for everyone's enjoyment... For those who don't remember, Galileo was a lot like Cassini, only it was an older spacecraft launched in 1989 and it orbited Jupiter, not Saturn. Jupiter's an even larger gas giant than Saturn, and like with Cassini, the plan was to drop Galileo into Jupiter after the mission was over to avoid potentially contaminating any of Jupiter's moons with bacterial life surviving as spores on the spacecraft. It takes a lot of fuel to break orbit altogether, and neither Galileo nor Cassini have enough to do so by the end of their missions. Also like Cassini, Galileo had a plutonium power source, practically identical radioisotope thermal generators, the best way to get power that far out in the solar system without using much mass. Galileo had about 50 pounds of plutonium 238 on board, almost as much as Cassini. Galileo dropped into Juptier and what happened? Nothing, absolutely nothing. For one thing, the plutonium 238 was not weapons grade, for another thing, the process of the spacecraft's destruction as it burned up in jupiter's atmosphere means that the plutonium was dispersed throughout the atmosphere, not compressed to critical mass, as it burned up, and lastly, you need to heat and compress hydrogen to create fusion - even our entire arsenal of nuclear weapons lobbed at jupiter lack the energy to compress and heat jupiter enough to create a detectable amount of fusion. Even shoemaker levy 9 lacked the energy to pull it off. The trick with starting fusion is getting past the energy barrier of fusing the nuclei together, it doesn't require fissible material, it requires energy - heat and compression namely. This is the mechanism behind how our bombs start fusion, and it's also stars get started, but jupiter would have to be 80 times its current size to start its own fusion.

[edit on 23-4-2008 by ngchunter]

Originally posted by percievedreality
...this argument is now meaningless for at least another 2 years, as NASA announced (maybe 2 weeks ago) the extension of the Casini probes' mission through at least 2010.

Awww

July 7 is my birthday...I was hoping to get a new sun in the sky for my birthday.

A few things occur to me;

1. Plutonium 238 has a half life of 87.7 years, it decays to Uranium-234 and then further along the radium series to Lead-206. It's been in Cassini for nearly 11 years and it's now going to be looping about for at least another 2 years before it gets plopped into Saturn's atmosphere so it will have degraded somewhat. I would have thought that if the intent was to blow something up, the best approach would be to use nice fresh explosives.

2. There are loads of top secret milirary space missions where the cargo/payload is not declared. If you wanted to blow up a planet you would make a proper bomb that was designed to have a 200% chance of success and send it directly on a collision course. You wouldn't bother pretending it's the engine for a recon craft. The military don't put cameras and probes on daisy cutters do they? Reconnaisance and the delivery of Ordinance are two entirely seperate fields.

3. Let's say it is possible and it is achieved, if the reaction starts at one point surely there would be a thrusting effect that would alter the orbit of the target planet. If I was going to do it I would have at least two bombs that were guaranteed to detonate at exactly the same time on opposing points, say the North and South pole. This way the forces of the explosions would be in equilibrium and my lovely new sun-planet wouldn't immediately shoot off on a one way trip through the Oort cloud.

4. Let's say it is possible and it does work and it doesn't shoot off into space and the side efffects don't kill us all really fast or horribly slowly; We may as well go totally sci fi and accept that there are other intelligent life forms in the galaxy. If I was one of those Aliens I would probably notice the planet-sun conversion and I would realise it was no accident. I'd be thinking, "Squelab skook braak-sknib." which roughly translates to "Those guys have a bomb that can ignite a planet!" and the first order of business at my next military meeting would be "Squeb." which precisely translates to "Let's get these guys before they figure out we're here and give us all a really bad sun tan."

5. If the intent is to warm up the moons so they can support life it might also be a good idea to move them a bit further away. No-one can live on Mercury and it's a lot further away from its sun than those moons around Saturn.

6. It would really spoil those lovely rings.

This is probably a silly thought, but it is in accordance with the article this thread references.

What if the two year extension of the mission is a cover story. Next month the planet lights up like a torch, and no one associates the internet speculation with the cassini drop because we all buy the cover story that cassini was still out there when the planet went solar.

That's the great thing about a speculative story, you can always add a new twist to the plotline.

Even though this is complete BS (1. I know that and i'm as dumb as they come 2. Not ragging the OP as they admitted they were seeking info)

The explosion wouldn't "rip" through such an atmosphere, so to speak. No way.

But just imagine.. if it did.

What would happen if we had a second sun as close as Saturn?
What would the implications on Saturns characteristic belt?
What would Earth actually "gain" from such an event?