A Realistic Way to Intercept An Interstellar Visitor 

What a delightfully eccentric math genius. Glad to know there are people like that out there and that they are having a good time.

I loved Damon’s enthusiastic responses as when Fraser started throwing out all these “what if” scenarios. Fun interview!

As somebody currently planning a trip, the opening statement was the most relatable thing ever.

This was an incredible episode. I never thought I could be interested in orbital mechanics! Great questions, Fraser. And great responses from Doctor Landau.

What a friendly positive centered guest. One of my favorite interviews.

Mission overlap at about 1000 AU ... then we get "opportunistic science." That's where the real fun of learning begins. When you look at stuff you hadn't planned for, you learn stuff you didn't expect. Yay, Team! This is one of your best episodes.

Thanks Fraser, your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites with all the new quality content you continue to put out.

I loved this interview! The "journey" part of space travel fascinates me. The fact that someone like this can map out a journey that takes years, or even decades to get from one place to another is amazing

Fraser always does a great job steering the conversation away from explanations of how *quote*"delta V"*unquote* is useful to get to a *quote*"moon of Jupiter"*unquote* called *quote*"Europa"*unquote*

I first learned Orbital Mechanics when i wrote a lunar lander game. Later i had to solve rendezvous and finally planet to planet. Sometimes you can learn a lot simply by solving your own interests. Yoqu may be the only one playing the game but the lesson comes in solving problems and putting it into code.

Great interview! Thank you, Damon. Stimulating conversation and to me it's not only the science, but the personalities surrounding these fascinating problems. You are both tops. Anton Petrov is also on my menu - such a soothing element to his videos. At 76, I'm starting to see things on a short time frame. It's frustrating, but the Internet has opened up my world beyond my childhood dreams and thirst to learn.

This is one of the best interviews I've seen on Space Travel here on RU-vid.

Man that was a good interview...You should definitely have him backno

Great video, Fraser & Damon...👍

30:50 That is actually a double-edged sword. Yes, it is easier to "land" in a smaller gravitational well, but it is easier to match velocities with a bigger gravitational well as gravity naturally acts in a way that restricts your relevant component. So it seems that there might be a sweet spot of asteroid that are big enough to excert enough pull to easily match velocities by using as much gravity as possible, yet small enough to not hinder take off and landing

Hi Fraser, I'm sure you'll never read this but thank you for answering my Hubble Tension question earlier tonight!! 🧡 I hadn't ever heard that the two different Hubble constant value measurements ('error bars' if you will) were normalized in comparison to one another-I was only offering confusion, not armchair knowledge 🤣 Before you told me I was stumped. Would have thought more people would have been explaining that...

Super video. Great guest. Loved it. Thanks!!!

Great discussion guys, thank you

Thank you, again, for putting science in our brains.

Fascinating interview. Thank you so much for the work you put into these Fraser. It's clear that you spend a lot of time preparing and nothing's better than when your guests light up with excitement to answer one of your questions.

another great interview! they seem to be getting better and better! Congrats to Fraser and Damon! Super interesting, great questions and contagious enthusiasm from Damon.

Great interview! Just what I could wish for! Thanks!❤

I enjoyed this interview a lot! Thanks to both for it!

That was awesome

This was a great interview. One of my favorites!

Fantastic interview, really enjoyed listening to Damon.

Ok, this is my third time watching this incredibly interesting interview. Star Trek definitely has severely distorted my ideas of what is currently possible. This is one of my favorite interviews on this site.

Great interview 👍. Very interesting ! Thank you

Thanks for doing this interview.

What a great interview.

I really enjoyed this interview! I'm always interested in anything about orbital mechanics and how orbits are found and used to get places as efficiently as possible.

He has his own math program on his PC that calculates trajectories. Cool! And he "tweaks" it for improvements. I love it! It's like a chess player program that can learn from Bobby Fischer! He even mentioned Hermann Oberst's idea to multiply Delta-V at perihelion with a minimal burn. I swear, he must have memorized the playbook!

I like his enthusiasm. Interesting subject too.

Amazingly! Thx.

Quite interesting, thks.

Very interesting.

How a realistic mission would look. What a realistic mission would look like.

More of this guy.

Being an artist, and having love of drawing patterns, geometries, kaleidoscope, mandala, and fractal ... I have always had an interest in orbits, and navigation/ orienteering specially... what goes into each move, where that puts you, the lay out of that [flight] and [orbit] ... a symphony coming together ....

I hope to see a proper use of the Oberth effect some day, powered flyby of Jupiter most likely. We should be able to get to Eris or Sedna in 10 years with a New Horizon type space craft if it had a kick-stage to use when flying by Jupiter.

man thanks for so many awesome interviews so often FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"People will make things as complicated as possible until they are too complicated to work with" (c) Universe Today, 2023

Fantastic interview. With all our brilliant technology it’s our comparatively weak propulsion tech that needs the genius of orbital dynamics to swing us around the shoulders of giants.

Thank you Fraser for this interesting interview. I wonder how many people are out there with interesting jobs that we don't know about. Als the GTOC competition is real and has website, and to no-one's surprise JPL is the competition leader.

Lets get all this done. No more wars, c'mon people!

Is there some sort of solid propellant that could be used in space. If so could you use that on a second stage as a booster to gain the majority of the speed needed to catch up to an extraterrestrial object coming through our solar system? Once you catch up then using an electrical or thermonuclear engine for staying with the object for scientific research.

With the InterSteller stuff - I would hope that our technology would advance somewhat first !

Fraser, do scientists think all stars with solar systems, have some kind of Oort cloud surrounding them, or is our solar system the only one?

40:00 Very important questions: so the sun is flying thru space - what direction are these interstellar objects coming from (i.e. is the sun in effect flying by then as they are floating in space ahead of our system)? It seems if we want to explore other stars, we'd want to leave our system away from the direction of travel of the sun - what's the closest stars behind our sun's direct of travel? What direct is Alpha Centauri from our direction of travel? Can we leave probes behind our direction of travel so eventually other stars sweep them up one day as they come by? Hope that makes sense - hehe is this how the interstellar orbital mechanics work?

Have a thumbs up, number 1,000. 🎆🎇

I think it is possible that Zuma is/was a classified probe to investigate Oumuamua.

if i may: 'how a realistic mission will look' or 'what a realistic mission will look like'

Quick question SETI or METI?

I'm surprised there was no mention of an e-sail or plasma sail when talking about possible propulsion methods to intercept Oumuamua, both methods are somewhere on the order of 5-10 AU per year - perfect for a fast rapid flyby! (can't sail into the solar wind though so no sample return possible)

He did a great job. You could tell he was a little nervous but he worked through it. Great insights

It always saddens me when I see a super interesting scientist, I look for them on social media, and I can't find them. I want more of this guy's perspective. I also kind of want to set him in front of Kerbal Space Program and see what happens!

When this guy learned to play Kerbal, it was easier than when I learned to play chess. I loved Frasier's question, "Was there a time when you began to think in elipses?" "Yes." Multiple Objective Optimization project... LOL

can a spacecraft orbit a moon - like one of Saturn's moons - or do we just orbit the planet and try to orbit the planet in the best way to encounter the moon?

How can the Fundamentals Constants in Science not actually be constant and are in fact standardized? Would this not mess up all the math and science or could there be something we are missing?

No mention of a light sale to reach an interstellar object.

JPL appears to be clueless about solar sails, never mentioned once.

Can a rogue planet be captured by a star and start orbiting around it?

But it's ALL done in a vacuum! 😃 (37:20)

Wait. A travel agent? I thought they went the way of the telephone operator about a decade and a half ago.

Ain't Methane ice ubiquitous in outer space? Besides, rather than chemical candles, ion thrust will be King. Velocity? A path Could be devised to keep the spacecraft bouncing from planet to planet, using "planet" boosting as well as energy from a stationary tracking facility, so's the equivalent of an electric locomotive powered by a stationary generator over overhead wires, unlike a diesel locomotive that has to lug around its fuel and throw away more than half on heat and inefficiency 0

IS HE RELATED TO LEV LANDAU?

But does he play Kerbal Space Program?

The sun is orbiting the Milkway Galaxie so if you go to the backside of this orbit you should increase your velocity therefore you have increased your velocity . It isn't difficult getting to the sun the ,difficult is orbiting the sun.

When will someone tell Elon Musk that riding an asteroid is the best way to get to Mars? The problem is not feeding the crew or providing oxygen. Given enough volume in the spacecraft, you can grow food. Oxygen may require electrolysis too, but that's a detail. What is not a detail is radiation. You can deal with solar radiation if you have enough mass between the sun and the crew. But galactic cosmic rays come in all directions, and at energy levels that make insufficient shielding worse than none. So use an asteroid to provide shielding and extra volume for living space. How do you get an asteroid to take you to Mars? Easy, there are already asteroids that pass close to Earth, then visit the vicinity of Mars. The choice is either a relatively large asteroid, where deflecting its path may take lots of thrust, or a smaller asteroid that can be placed on any trajectory you like. What are the choices? I have several favorites, but there are over 1,000 Amor asteroids, asteroids that come very close to the Earth's orbit but do not cross it) and a similar number of Apollo asteroids which do cross Earth's orbit. Objects in either class can have aphelions near or beyond Mars. How do you get home? One plan is to use electric propulsion to put the asteroid on a path that gets it trapped in a Martian orbit. When you want to go home, you climb to your asteroid habitat and head for Earth. Why climb? Anyone wanting to get to the surface of Mars should consider space elevators or perhaps tethers. A tether down from the asteroid to one of Mars's moons and an elevator from there to the surface. (Actually, a bit above the surface in use and a few miles up otherwise. Ride down in your spacecraft, let go and do a landing burn to cover the last few hundred meters.) To get back up, you might want to have an electromagnet on the end of the elevator. Once in physical contact, connect a different anchor. Then up you go.

i i i i get get get lost lost on on on what what what he's he's he's saying

When someone is looking to their right, they are imagining things that never happened.

Total rehasher

Just throw rocks and yell

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.

Time and gravity are caused by pressure mediations.

How x will look. What x will look like. NOT How x will look like. The latter is redundant.

I was able to make it to the 10 minute 23 second point before I could no longer go forward. I tried. It's me, I'm sorry. It's me. The blame is on me. But, I just could not pay any attention with that massive stutter that he kept doing when trying to explain anything. It made it so extremely difficult to follow with a nonstop stuttering. Again, it's me, I do not blame him.

I'm not sure about this.

Silly, It DEPENDS how your ET craft is propelled. Obviously ET doesn't use rocket to get around out there.

Because if you don't contact NASA about your lunch the bite in menstruation may shoot you down

Bro needs to drop the intellectual stammered.

Too much stuttering. Unwatchable.

Its so amazing how we as a species worked out all this, its so awesome we know this, it's way above my level but I'm glad we have smart and determined people that worked it all out so laymen like me can enjoy science, Again thank you for amazing content, I don't understand why you don't have millions of subs when you do so much for the space community and morons that do pointless boring pranks have 10million shows the mess the snowflake human population is in.