will there be a manned mission to the sun in our generastion?

Answer 1

Yes, as long as we make sure we land at night.

Answer 2

There will never be a manned mission to the Sun. It's a star with surface temperatures around 5500 Kelvin (9444 F). If humans even approached the Sun, within the orbit of Mercury, they would probably expire and the spacecraft would be destroyed by the heat.

Answer 3

If you are talking of a mission to go around the sun from a close orbit (like even closer than mercury), it is possible if really needed. If you are thinking of a mission to reach Sun, no, manned or unmanned. The spacecraft will vaporise.

Answer 4

Not in our lifetime. Some sci-fi stories have posited that solar surface skimming might be possible. (This begs the question of where the surface of a non-solid body is, but let's just say, closer than any of us would care to be). One idea was that a space craft could skim the surface of the sun by riding a bubble of vaporizing graphite that would be burning off the outer coating of the solar craft. Sort of like a drop of water skittering on a hot frying pan: the drop can keep skittering as long as there is more water to vaporize and provide a cushion for what is left of the droplet. The space craft could last as long as it had a thick graphite layer to volatilize.

Nonetheless, you have to finesse certain issues like crushing gravity, crushing atmospheric pressures, in addition to the extreme heat. And how to maintain a communications link in the ultimate high radiation high noise environment, with magnetic forces that could probably by themselves fry any electronics we currently have, even without the help of the crushing gravity and extreme heat.

As an engineering proposition, it sometimes helps to pose the question in a different way. Consider that all of the following three types of missions are EASIER:

1. The technical difficulties of getting a satellite to operate on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan in extreme cold are considerably less than getting a probe to work on the surface of the sun in extreme heat. But we could only keep the first satellite probe of Titan going for a few minutes.

2. Callisto and Europa are the icy moons of Jupiter thought to have salt water oceans underneath perhaps dozens of meters of ice (kilometers for Callisto). Getting a probe to land on either moon and either drill or melt its way through ice would be "a new frontier for our current technology." And once it got through the ice it would need some means to transmit back what it was up to. After all, you'd want the thing to do some useful work when it was down there. What would be a good test? Maybe have a similar craft dropped from 60,000 feet on an Antarctic ice pack, have it melt its way through, then work on its own under the ice for a week, report the results back via a radio that somehow has an antenna to the surface. It would be a tough thing to do right here on Earth, but nonetheless, easier than a probe to the sun, much less a manned mission.

3. Venus is extremely hot and also a hostile environment for landing craft, but a day at Malibu beach compared to the sun. The record for a craft's operation on Venus is about 2 hours, most failed before one hour, and the first two or three failed as they were parachuting towards the surface. Since the current Venus surface record is only a couple of hours, some kind of conceptual and engineering breakthrough would be needed to operate on Venus for extended periods, and then perhaps revisit the issue of the sun.

It goes without saying that any traversal of the solar environment by live humans would have to first be tested by robotic craft, as has been the case with the Moon. Venus and Mars have been similarly tested but I think they'd want a "robotic version of the manned craft" tested before we ever go there.

Personally I think it would be easier to send an interstellar probe with a mission life of 10,000 years to the nearest star system than it would be to send a probe to the sun....unless the solar probe were just designed to function as long as it could before it vaporized. Perhaps the last pictures might be of the lens on the camera melting.

hope that helps, GN

Answer 5

Absolutely not.

The surface temperature of the Sun is 10,000 Degrees F.

The surface of the Sun is molten gases, mainly hydrogen and helium with no solid crust.

The nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium which produces heat and radiation would incinerate and burn up anything that even comes close to the Sun. For example, I think (am not near my books at this moment) that the mid day surface temperature on Mercury is 850 Degrees F because it is lots closer to the Sun than the Earth is.

The Sun produces tremendous amounts of X Ray and Gamma ray radiation which is not normally obvious to us because we are protected by our atmosphere. Up in space there is no atmospheric protection and each increment of movement closer to the Sun would increase that radiation, until finally it killed you, then fried your remains to a crisp.

Answer 6

No. It would be far too dangerous to go to the sun. Fortunatley the sun is so huge we can study it in great detail from earth at a safe and comfortable distance. So there really is no need to send humans there.

Answer 7

Not in our generation, nor in any other. It would be a one-way trip. Even an unmanned probe is problematic; it would require a velocity change of 2.5 times as much as a mission to the moon.

Answer 8

No, and I don't imagine that any mission to any thermonuclear star is going to be anything but a safe-distance fly-by. There are issues of 40 million degree F heat and dangerous radiation to over come. Then, what would be the purpose?

Answer 9

No. It is far too hazardous to try and the gains of getting in closer are not all that great.

Answer 10

Nope