It'd be cool if we launched several space telescopes on Voyager-like trajectories.
In 50-100 years they'd get a much better angular fix on stars that are too distant for Earth-orbit-sized angular measurements.
In 50-100 years they'd get a much better angular fix on stars that are too distant for Earth-orbit-sized angular measurements.
Lower power, but a telescope like this does not need constant power, so some kind of short term power storage (capacitor I would assume, or some kind of ultra long life battery) could handle that.
I believe that work on such a project would be interesting, even if it isn't ever done. It is something that if you worked on it as a grad student, and then became a professor and your grad students worked on it ... and they became professors and their grad students worked on it - they'd be the ones seeing the results.
Not so much a "this is a way to do things..." but rather a "thinking about research that spans generations and the problems that they solve in the process of doing that great project has useful spinoffs."
A mission out to 550 AU at New Horizons speed of 2.9 AU / year (it still boggles the mind of talking about those speeds and distances) is nearly 200 years from launch to primary science objective.
It's "only" been 45 years since Mariner 2 to New Horizons.
It'd be a nice use for falcon heavy - to get them the necessary delta-v. But the constraint isn't cargo space on launch. This isn't a starlink constellation, the orbits are necessarily massively different, meaning each spacecraft needs its own large delta-v so a single-launch, multiple spacecraft option is less attractive.
The constraint is budget, fuel, and ambition.
Now what you could do is get a telescope out around a far outer planet and use the orbital parallax like we do from earth. A Starship might have a bunch of extra cargo space for this. But I just don't see how it is better than a big faring on falcon heavy.
EDIT: You know what? I am completely mistaken here. I was not thinking about the diff b/w FH and starship correctly.
Once the thing becomes reliable there are zero missions the FH can do that starship can't with a payload equipped with a third stage motor.
Why: FH + Starship w/( rocket + payload)
And not: FH + (rocket + payload)
Falcon Heavy can lift a lot of mass but unless you’re launching tungsten into orbit you can’t fit interesting things into the fairing.
A full Falcon Heavy stack can take 63,800kh to LEO. A Starship stack can take 150,000kg to LEO. The available Δv is substantially higher.
Falcon 9 has payload to Mars of 4 tons, and Falcon Heavy has 9 tons to Pluto. I bet both would work.
I am sure there are calculations for this ...
PS. Of course, the rate of technological development is the unknown variable hete, I am sure.-
For example, say your calculations say that the optimal time for the mission is 10 years from now, once a currently in-development propulsion technology matures. You publish that, and the investors, government and the public, all motivated to support you by the dream of your ambitious mission, suddenly lose interest. Your funding dries out, as you're repeatedly told to call back in 10 years. The fact that the 10 year estimate, having been dependent on existing funding, is now "literally never", escapes them.
See also: "nuclear fusion is always 30 years away". It is, because original 30 year timeframe assumed continued funding that never happened, and it's not happening because "it's always been 30 years away".
> You publish that, and the investors, government and the public, all motivated to support you
Interesting how PR/culture indeed is a factor - a tangible factor in this. Indeed optimizing for "PR Goodwill" might be a thing ...