Oumuamua

[Jez]

I saw the 'UFO' in news thread in news and looked up whether Oumuamua had been mentioned in context. Only there, as far as I can tell.

When I first heard the initial details it struck me immediately as the most likely route to having any contact with extraterrestrial civilisation in our history. Of course it might be nothing at all to do with that, more likely than not, but if it were and we missed the chance to launch a mission to visit it, what a lost opportunity.

If intelligent civilisations tend to destroy themselves (possibly the explanation for why we don't see any?) a short time after they invent nuclear power and space travel, the next thing would be to send robotic probes, never knowing if they would still work on arrival. It's not that we missed a probable non-possibility of that which makes me a bit disappointed, but could we have sent a mission to chase after it and make sure it wasn't that?

[Genady]

1 hour ago, Jez said:

could we have sent a mission to chase after it and make sure it wasn't that?

I don't think it was a possibility, technically, financially, and logistically. Too fast, too short, too far, too late, too expensive ...

Edited June 12, 2023 by Genady

[swansont]

I takes years to prepare this kind of a mission.

[Jez]

The way I was looking at it is that, unless I am mistaken, which I might be, Voyager 1 is travelling twice the speed of Oumuamua wrt a solar orbital trajectory, and it took Voyager two years from launch to the Jupiter slingshot, so if we take that as the datum it'd catch up in 4 years from Jupiter, 8 in total (with Oumuamua's 4 year head start).

So 2 years to plan, 2 to get to Jupiter and 4 to catch up. could we not have been catching up with it before it even left the Heliosphere? 

Even now, the wasted 5 years doing nothing, say a slothful 5 years to plan, 2 to Jupiter and a 12 year head start would be a 24 year space mission. Which I think is still manageable.

Have I got the speeds wrong on that (I'm going by Wikipedia).

 

There's that rich guy with a rocket, whatshisname? He wants to colonise another planet but can't he afford just one rocket, at least, to have a go at catching a possible alien spacecraft up?

[swansont]

19 minutes ago, Jez said:

The way I was looking at it is that, unless I am mistaken, which I might be, Voyager 1 is travelling twice the speed of Oumuamua wrt a solar orbital trajectory, and it took Voyager two years from launch to the Jupiter slingshot, so if we take that as the datum it'd catch up in 4 years from Jupiter, 8 in total (with Oumuamua's 4 year head start).

The Voyager missions were approved in 1972 and launched in 1977. It takes time to build and test a space probe.

[Genady]

27 minutes ago, Jez said:

Voyager 1 is travelling twice the speed of Oumuamua

The numbers I find are: 38 000 mph for Voyager 1, 196 000 mph for Oumuamua. What are your numbers?

[Jez]

12 minutes ago, Genady said:

The numbers I find are: 38 000 mph for Voyager 1, 196 000 mph for Oumuamua. What are your numbers?

Ah, well, I thought it was going quicker actually, given it was higher than galactic orbital speed.

😆😆 I see my error, I read the wrong units, km/s rather than 1,000s mph. Sigh, nice idea, blown out of the water by reality.

I do wish we'd been able to study it, though.