Lost In Space: Missing Cosmonauts

I liked Buck Rogers, especially that little robot guy with the dr/professor robot around its neck.

Originally posted by Mogget
The part about the dead cosmonaut on an interstellar trajectory is BS. It's hard enough to accelerate a relatively small unmanned probe to solar escape velocity, never mind a bulky manned spacecraft. The Voyager and Pioneer probes that are leaving the Solar System required gravity assists from the giant planets to gain the necessary kinetic energy (actually, Jupiter did the job on its own, but the planet's gravity was also used to direct the probes to their next targets).

In fact, the only spacecraft that has ever been accelerated to solar escape velocity by rocket propulsion alone is New Horizons, which is currently on its way to Pluto. That is only a tiny fraction of the mass of a manned spacecraft.

would it not be possible for a frozen cosmonaut to follow these trajectories and get thrown out of the solar system? or are the odds too long Serious question

Impossible. You would still need to accelerate him to solar escape velocity, and that's approximately 42kms per second at the Earth's distance from the Sun. To put that into perspective, the Apollo astronauts reached a velocity of 11kms per second to escape the gravity of Earth. That means that this poor guy would have had to have been strapped to a rocket booster that was already in Earth orbit (let's face it, he could hardly have been launched from the ground like that !), and then accelerated to a velocity nearly four times that of the third stage of the Saturn V......for no reason whatsoever

[edit on 23-7-2008 by Mogget]

I would thing the most likely scenario would be for such a cosmonaut to be caught in Earth's gravitational pull and end his life as a very brief shooting star as he burns up in the atmosphere?

Originally posted by Essan
I would thing the most likely scenario would be for such a cosmonaut to be caught in Earth's gravitational pull and end his life as a very brief shooting star as he burns up in the atmosphere?

Or even faster, to have a pressure equalization valve open prematurely and suck all the air out of the cabin. Sadly, this actually occured and killed the Soyuz-11 crew. Thereafter, they changed proceedures to make sure that the cosmonauts could wear pressure suits throughout launch and landing.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear....

“ am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.?

reply to post by MrMicrophone



I posted this several days ago and no one seemed to care... glad you're getting something for it. I thought it was damned interesting. Glad people are finally noticing the story....

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