It has a solid surface and we actually, thanks to New Horizons, have mapped a large part of it. So it is actually possible to land there, unlike some of the stupid questions asked on here about landing on one of the giant planets. That is not possible, due to their not having a solid surface, insane weather by our standards, and crushing gravity.
The main problems with landing on Pluto, setting aside just getting there, involve decelerating enough to make a soft-landing possible, and the bitter cold. Even at perihelion, and Pluto is not too far past this in its orbit, the “high” temperature there is is about negative 369F (-233C). It is so far away from the Sun that it receives very little light and heat.
Basically, humans cannot visit Pluto and definitely can never land there for a visit unless we develop technology that can protect humans from such temperatures, and propulsion systems that can get there on a reasonable timescale and also be able to decelerate. We can reach Mars on a simple Hohmann transfer orbit in a few months; it took New Horizons nine years to reach Pluto. Some sort of fusion propulsion system will be needed to explore the outer Solar System, and we’re still a very long way from developing such a thing unless we decided to revive Project Orion.
With that said, if these technologies are developed and man-rated, and we used them to land on Pluto, it should be fairly straightforward. We’d probably touch down in Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped feature that is relatively smooth. A lot of Pluto is made up of craggy mountains of rock and frozen nitrogen. But once you’ve landed, it shouldn’t be too hard to leave. Gravity on Pluto is only 6.3 percent of Earth.
For starters, anyone who participated in a manned mission to Pluto would be 10 years older than they were when they left Earth. That’s assuming the person in question (and the rocket) survived the flight.
Hmmm… impressive, but not exactly Miami Beach.
Taking the long view: Don’t you agree that, on one’s first visit to Florence, one must have a room with a view?
Pluto is 5.3 light hours from the Sun. It would take 10 years for a ship to get there from Earth. By comparison, it would take 2,958 years for a ship to travel one light year. By way of reference, Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years from our Sun. It’s one small corner of our gigantic galaxy…
Space is vast. Even with visual aids depicting the distances, our default is to imagine light speed and warp drive, Federation star ships transporting us effortlessly to Risa or Betazed or to the Klingon Empire, one glorious episode after another. It’s easy! Just make it so and boom, we’re there. Except we’re not.
To put this into perspective:
If the Sun were reduced to the size of a golf ball, Earth would be approximately 15 ft. away (4.5 meters), Pluto would be out some 200 yards (600 ft. or 183 meters), and Alpha Centauri would be About 791 miles (or 1274 Km) away.
Just the scale of our solar system and distance to our nearest neighboring star is mind boggling.
There is nothing in our biology, evolution, perceptions, or perspective that has made us ready to fathom, in any way other than in the abstract, the enormity of what we are existing in.
The planet that wasn’t. On a cosmic scale, Pluto is small potatoes.
Pluto is small… exceedingly small, smaller than Earth’s moon. It is a part of the debris that forms the Kuiper Belt, a ring of bodies out beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Gravity weighs in at 7% of Earth’s. If you tripped and fell, you could tumble ass over teakettle football fields away before stopping.
Pluto is incredibly cold, holds only a trace of an atmosphere, has low gravity, no resources, and is years beyond even the most resilient, stoic, and seasoned space traveler.
A to Earth and back to Pluto transmission would take 9.2 hours, more than one third of a 24 day just to send and then receive back one single signal. Expect your long distance bill to be a whopper.
Pluto on average is 39 AU from the sun (that’s 39 times the distance from the Sun as is Earth). It takes Pluto 90,530 Earth days to orbit the Sun (compared to our 365). Pluto is way, Way, WAY out there.
10 years. Ten years of being cramped into a space rocket. No sunlight. No real food. Everything recycled. No walking. No smoking. And no shower (eeewwwww). One bitch-slap and the mission could be over.
Obviously, we are not evolved for such conditions. No one would ever likely make there, and certainly no one would make it there and back.
