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What Actually Happens If You Try To Land On Pluto — Transcript

by Flippo Explains · 2,312 words · 351 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00You are strapped into the top of the
0:01biggest rocket anyone has ever built,
0:03and the engineers have just told you
0:05something strange. Getting to Pluto is
0:07not the hard part. Stopping is. Then the
0:09engines light, and you stop thinking
0:11about anything at all. The shaking comes
0:14up through your seat, into your spine,
0:16into your teeth.
0:17Your body gets pressed down harder and
0:19harder, like someone is slowly stacking
0:21sandbags on your chest. A few minutes
0:23later, the blue sky outside turns black,
0:25the shaking stops, and your arms float
0:28gently up off the armrests like they
0:29have their own plans. You are in space.
0:32That was the easy bit.
0:34Here is the problem the engineers were
0:36talking about. In 2015, a probe called
0:39New Horizons flew past Pluto. It was one
0:41of the fastest things ever launched from
0:43Earth, and it still took more than 9
0:45years to get there. When it finally
0:47arrived, it was moving at around 14 km
0:50every second. It had no way to slow
0:52down. So, it took its photos, kept
0:54going, and it is still flying away
0:56today. If you did the same thing, you
0:58would spend 9 years traveling to Pluto
1:00and get a few frantic hours up close
1:02before it shrank behind you. To actually
1:05land, your ship has to kill almost all
1:07of its speed when it arrives. That means
1:09hauling a huge braking system across the
1:11entire solar system, and every kilogram
1:14of it has to be launched from Earth
1:15first. So, your mission makes a
1:17compromise. You go slower. You take a
1:20longer, gentler route, and you accept
1:22that the trip will take well over a
1:23decade.
1:25You are going to be a noticeably
1:26different age when you arrive. On day
1:28one, you cross the orbit of the moon. It
1:31slides past your window, gray and
1:33cratered, and you realize it is the last
1:36familiar thing you will see up close for
1:38a very long time. Weeks later, Earth is
1:41just a bright blue dot. Then, it is just
1:43a dot. Months in, you cross the orbit of
1:46Mars, then the asteroid belt, which is
1:49nothing like the movies. The rocks are
1:51so spread out that you will almost
1:52certainly never see one with your own
1:54eyes.
1:55Then comes Jupiter. Your ship swings
1:57close past the giant planet and borrows
1:59a little of its motion, like a
2:01skateboarder grabbing the back of a
2:03passing bus. Jupiter fills your window,
2:05striped, swirling, and enormous. For a
2:08few days, it is the most spectacular
2:10thing you have ever seen. Then, it is
2:13behind you, and there is nothing else to
2:14look at for years.
2:16This is where the trip starts doing
2:18things to your body.
2:19Without gravity, your body decides it no
2:21longer needs to hold itself up. Your
2:23muscles start shrinking. Your bones can
2:26lose mass month after month, especially
2:28in your hips and spine.
2:30So, every day, you strap yourself onto a
2:32treadmill with bungee cords and run
2:33nowhere for hours, because the
2:35alternative is arriving at Pluto with
2:37the skeleton of a much older person.
2:39Fluid drifts up into your head. Your
2:41face gets puffy. Your legs get thin.
2:44Some astronauts even notice changes in
2:46their eyesight after long missions.
2:48Then, there is the danger you cannot
2:50feel at all. Out here, far beyond the
2:52magnetic bubble that protects Earth,
2:54high-energy particles from the sun and
2:56from distant exploding stars pass
2:58through the walls of your ship and
2:59through you.
3:01Your shielding helps, but it cannot stop
3:02all of it. Over a trip this long, your
3:04total dose climbs far past what space
3:07agencies normally allow for an entire
3:08career. Nothing happens that you can
3:10see. The cost is a higher chance of
3:12cancer and other health problems later
3:14in life.
3:15So, you are running on a treadmill,
3:17slowly soaking up radiation inside a
3:20metal can with a small crew you have now
3:22shared every single meal with for 4
3:24years.
3:25This is technically a dream job. As you
3:27get farther out, the messages from home
3:29get slower. At Jupiter, a video from
3:32your family takes the better part of an
3:33hour to reach you. Near Saturn's
3:35distance, it takes well over an hour. By
3:38the time you are approaching Pluto,
3:40every message needs more than 4 hours to
3:42arrive, and your reply needs more than 4
3:44hours to get back.
3:46A real conversation becomes impossible.
3:48Birthdays happen without you. Friends'
3:50kids are born, learn to walk, start
3:53school, and you watch it all in recorded
3:55clips hours late floating in the dark.
3:59Meanwhile, the sun keeps shrinking. From
4:02Earth, it is a blazing disc. Out here,
4:04it looks more like an extremely bright
4:06star. It is still too brilliant to stare
4:08at, but tiny. And the sunlight reaching
4:10you is roughly a thousand times weaker
4:12than at home. Solar panels would barely
4:15work this far out, so your ship runs on
4:17a nuclear power source instead, humming
4:19quietly in the back.
4:21Then one day, after more than a decade,
4:23the dot you have been aiming at stops
4:25being a dot.
4:26Pluto grows into a small disc, then a
4:29pale reddish-brown ball with a huge
4:31bright patch on one side shaped like a
4:34heart. Next to it hangs a second gray
4:36ball about half its width.
4:39That is Charon, Pluto's biggest moon.
4:41The two of them always keep the same
4:43faces turned toward each other, circling
4:45a point in empty space between them like
4:47two dancers holding hands.
4:50You have made it all the way here. Now
4:52comes the part that decides whether any
4:53of this was worth it.
4:55Your ship is still moving fast, much
4:57slower than New Horizons was, but far
5:00too fast to simply drop into orbit. So,
5:02the main engine has to fire, pointing
5:04forward, and burn for a long time to
5:06shed speed. And here is the unsettling
5:09part. Nobody on Earth can help you with
5:11this.
5:12If something goes wrong during the burn,
5:14mission control will not even find out
5:16until more than 4 hours later. The burn
5:18is run by the ship's own computers, with
5:21you and your crew watching the numbers,
5:23the engine lights.
5:25You get pressed gently back into your
5:26seat, the first real weight you have
5:28felt in years. Your arms feel strangely
5:31heavy.
5:32Your stomach is not sure about any of
5:33this. Minutes pass. The speed on the
5:36display keeps dropping. Then the engine
5:38cuts off, and the ship goes silent. You
5:40are in orbit around Pluto.
5:424 hours later, back on Earth, a room
5:45full of people will start cheering about
5:46something that already happened.
5:49If you're enjoying this video, please
5:50hit the subscribe button. It genuinely
5:52helps keep the channel alive.
5:54From orbit, Pluto looks nothing like a
5:56dead frozen rock. It has mountains, huge
6:00jagged ranges, some of them several
6:02kilometers tall.
6:03They are made of water ice, but at these
6:05temperatures water ice is as hard as
6:07stone. On Pluto, it basically is the
6:10bedrock.
6:11The bright heart is something else
6:12entirely. Its western half is an
6:14enormous smooth plane of frozen
6:16nitrogen, roughly a thousand kilometers
6:18across.
6:20The surface is split into giant cells,
6:22like cracked floor tiles, each one tens
6:24of kilometers wide. Over enormous
6:26stretches of time, warmer nitrogen ice
6:29slowly rises in the middle of each cell
6:31and sinks back down at the edges. The
6:33whole plane is a glacier that is gently
6:35churning itself over.
6:37It has almost no craters, which means
6:39its surface is young and smooth. That
6:42makes it the obvious place to land.
6:44There is a catch. When a probe lands on
6:46Mars, it uses the air to slow down,
6:49first with a heat shield, then with a
6:51parachute. Pluto does have an
6:53atmosphere.
6:54It is mostly nitrogen with thin layers
6:56of bluish haze, but at the surface, it
6:59is roughly a hundred thousand times
7:01thinner than the air you are breathing
7:02right now. A parachute would do
7:04basically nothing.
7:05So, the engines have to do all of it,
7:07from orbit all the way down to the
7:09ground.
7:10You begin the descent. The heart grows
7:12larger beneath you, then fills the whole
7:14window. The cells stop looking like a
7:16pattern and start looking like a
7:18landscape. The ridges between them
7:20become long, shallow troughs. Your ship
7:23tilts upright, engines firing straight
7:25down.
7:26A few dozen meters above the surface,
7:28the exhaust hits the ice. Frozen
7:30nitrogen does not melt here. It skips
7:33the liquid stage and turns straight into
7:34gas. A pale cloud bursts outward around
7:37the ship, and for a few seconds your
7:39cameras can barely see the ground.
7:41Then, a thud. The landing legs settle.
7:44The engines stop.
7:46You have landed on Pluto, more than 5
7:48billion kilometers from home. Now, you
7:50have to go outside.
7:52The suit you climb into is the most
7:54important object you own.
7:55Outside, the temperature is around minus
7:58230° C. That is cold enough that
8:01nitrogen, the gas that makes up most of
8:03the air on Earth, lies around as solid
8:05ice. But, here is the counterintuitive
8:08part. The air is so thin that it barely
8:11steals any heat from you at all.
8:13The real threat is what you touch. That
8:15is why the thickest insulation on your
8:17whole suit is in the soles of your
8:18boots. The ground is the thing that
8:20wants your heat. You step down off the
8:22ladder, and you keep going.
8:24Pluto's gravity is about 1/15 of
8:26Earth's.
8:28Your first step, which your legs planned
8:29for Earth, launches you forward in a
8:31long, slow, floating bounce. You land,
8:34overcorrect, and bounce again.
8:36A normal jump here could lift you
8:38several meters into the air.
8:40Your entire body, suit included, now
8:42weighs about as much as a heavy bag of
8:44groceries.
8:45Under your boot, the frost crunches, but
8:47you cannot hear it. The air is far too
8:50thin to carry sound. Where your boot
8:52presses down, a faint wisp of gas can
8:54drift up as the tiny amount of heat
8:56leaking through your suit turns frozen
8:58nitrogen back into vapor.
9:01Now, you look up. The sky is black, even
9:03though it is the middle of the day. The
9:05sun is there, a tiny, brilliant point,
9:08far brighter than any star, but much too
9:10small to warm anything. The light around
9:12you is about as dim as an evening on
9:14Earth, just after sunset. Everything has
9:17a faint reddish-brown tint, stained by
9:19chemicals that formed when sunlight and
9:21radiation hit methane and nitrogen over
9:23millions of years.
9:25On the horizon, beyond the flat nitrogen
9:27plain, jagged mountains of water ice
9:30rise into the dark.
9:31You look around for Charon.
9:33It is not there.
9:35Because Pluto and Charon always keep the
9:37same faces turned toward each other,
9:38Charon never moves across Pluto's sky.
9:41From one half of Pluto, it hangs
9:43perfectly still, never rising and never
9:45setting, several times wider than the
9:47moon looks from Earth. From the other
9:49half, it never appears at all. The heart
9:52you landed in is on the wrong half. You
9:54flew 5 billion kilometers to stand in
9:57the one famous spot on Pluto where its
9:59giant moon never shows up. Time drags
10:02here, too. A single day on Pluto lasts
10:04about 6 and 1/2 Earth days. So, the sun
10:07crawls across your black sky so slowly
10:09that you could sleep through several
10:10Earth nights before it sets. You set up
10:13a camera, take a photo of yourself
10:15standing on the ice, and send it home.
10:17Then you wait. More than 4 hours before
10:20anyone on Earth sees it. More than 4
10:22hours before their reaction reaches you.
10:24You are standing farther from another
10:26living thing on a planet than any human
10:28has ever been. You can stay for a while,
10:30but not forever. Your food, your power,
10:33and your body all have limits. And every
10:35extra week out here is another week of
10:37radiation and weakening bone before the
10:39long ride back. Leaving Pluto is
10:41surprisingly easy. It's gravity is so
10:44weak that escaping it takes only about a
10:46tenth of the speed needed to leave
10:47Earth.
10:48The hard part is the trip home. Another
10:50long stretch of years with the sun
10:52slowly swelling from a star back into a
10:54disk. When you finally come home, you
10:57have been gone for something like a
10:58quarter of a century. Phones have
11:00changed, prices have changed, your
11:03friends have gray hair. The people who
11:05waved you off at the launch pad may not
11:07all be there to meet you. Then Earth's
11:09gravity lands on you. After more than 20
11:12years of floating and bouncing, your
11:14full weight comes crashing back all at
11:15once. Your legs, your heart, and your
11:18sense of balance all have to relearn it.
11:21Walking can feel like wading through wet
11:23concrete. Astronauts coming home from
11:25just 6 months in space often need weeks
11:28or months of rehab. You would likely
11:30need far longer, and some of the bone
11:32you lost may never fully come back. The
11:34radiation leaves no visible wound at
11:36all, just a raised risk that doctors
11:38will watch for the rest of your life.
11:41So, what actually happens if you try to
11:42land on Pluto? With today's technology,
11:45nobody can do it yet. But if you could,
11:47you would spend a huge part of your life
11:49getting there and back. You would trade
11:51years of your body's health for a few
11:53weeks on the surface.
11:54And you would stand in dim noon light on
11:56a slowly churning glacier of frozen
11:58nitrogen under a black sky looking for a
12:01moon that will never rise.
12:03The first photo of a human standing on
12:05Pluto would reach Earth hours after you
12:07took it. And by the time anyone sees you
12:09there, you are already missing home.

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