• Question: Do u think someone is ever going to walk on pluto?

    Asked by jackwills to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Marcus Gallagher-Jones

      Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I’d like to think so but there are a few challenges we’d need to get around first. One is that we’d need to find a better way of fuelling spacecrafts. Pluto is about 3 billion miles away at it’s closest so thats a 6 billion mile return journey. If by the time we can get that far out there are fuel stops then I think now problem but in one go I think it would be difficult.

      The next challenge is living in space for a long time. You’d need a means of renewing food and oxygen supplies since you’ll be flying for a long time. Given that with todays technologies the maximum speed of a space shuttle is about 25,000 miles an hour you can guess it will take a while to get out as far as pluto (around 2,700 years in fact) we need to go faster or find a way to survive on there for longer.

      Challenge three is making protective gear to survive the harsh conditions of pluto. It’s about -230 degrees Celsius at it’s warmest so you’ll need some good woolies to stick around for long ;).

      I don’t think it’s impossible though but it will take a fair amount of hard work.

    • Photo: Suzanne McEndoo

      Suzanne McEndoo answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      Maybe, we’d have to figure out all the stuff Marcus mentioned. Technically Pluto isn’t a planet anymore, but I think enough people are still fond of it that we might want to walk on it anyway. I’m not sure how practical it would be to live there though. Being so far from the sun it will be very cold and very dark, so very far from where we, and our plants and animals, evolved to live.

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