3029: Sun Avoidance

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Sun Avoidance

Title text: C'mon, ESA Solar Orbiter team, just give the Parker probe a LITTLE nudge at aphelion. Crash it into the sun. Fulfill the dream of Icarus. It is your destiny.

Explanation

The comic humorously ranks space missions based on their ability to "avoid" the Sun, presenting it as a "Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard." Most space missions remain relatively far from the Sun, with distances in the tens of millions of kilometers. However, the Parker Solar Probe is listed at the bottom of the leaderboard because it has come significantly closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, at just 6.17 million kilometers. The joke lies in framing this incredible scientific achievement as a "failure" in avoiding the Sun.

The missions listed include notable solar and planetary exploration spacecraft like Mariner 10, Helios 1, BepiColombo, MESSENGER, and Solar Orbiter. These missions, designed to study the Sun or its surroundings, are ranked by their closest approaches to the Sun. The comic highlights the vast difference between the Parker Solar Probe and all other missions, emphasizing its unprecedented proximity to the Sun as part of its mission to study the solar corona and solar wind.

The inclusion of "All Other Expeditions in Human History" at the top of the leaderboard adds to the humor by lumping together all non-Sun-focused missions, which obviously maintain much greater distances from the Sun. The comic concludes with a sarcastic congratulation to the Parker Solar Probe for its "worst job avoiding the Sun," humorously subverting the intention and achievement of the mission.

The caption text further expands on the joke by mockingly framing the Parker Solar Probe's proximity to the Sun as a skill-based failure. It suggests that its operators have demonstrated the "worst Sun avoidance skill" ever. This playful jab contrasts with the reality that the Parker Solar Probe's engineers and scientists intentionally designed the spacecraft to approach the Sun closer than ever before, enduring extreme heat and radiation to gather groundbreaking scientific data.

The title text references the Greek legend of Icarus, whose father crafted artificial wings so the two of them could fly out of the open-topped prison they were in. Icarus, despite his father's warnings, flew too high which, according to the myth, got him appreciably closer to the Sun where it was much hotter, hot enough to destroy Icarus's wings, which caused him to plummet from a very high altitude to his death. The comic reframes this from an unfortunate consequence of his overreaching, to a glorious failure of an attempt to destroy himself by reaching the Sun itself. (As humanity has learned since then, the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere are cold, not hot, and the distance from Earth's surface to the upper reaches of its atmosphere is only a tiny fraction of the total distance from the Earth to the Sun.) The caption text urges the operators of another satellite to use their satellite to alter the Parker Solar Probe's orbit to send it into the Sun, which would by definition lower the Parker Solar Probe's distance from the Sun to zero. Unfortunately, the Parker Solar Probe was only designed to get close to the Sun, not into it, and would be destroyed soon after entering the Sun if not before. Being destroyed would prevent the Parker Solar Probe from transmitting any further data, terminating its mission. Its operators would probably object to this.^{[citation needed]}

Transcript

[Header:] Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard

[A table with three columns, all with underlined headers.]

Rank

Mission

Sun Nearest Miss

[First 'row', 'Rank', is of extra height and over several lines, using vertical and horizontal ellipses between the two endpoints to indicate a range of ranks in the first column, the first visible digit of the larger number being cut off by the left frame edge:] 1. ⋮ … ⋮ 4303857.

[Across both the 'Mission' and 'Sun Nearest Miss' columns, the first row has some text spread across two lines, within a framing pair of large square brackets to match the Rank range:] All other expeditions in human history

[A simple row, with all three columns separately populated, the first column's Rank number is also cut off across the first visible digit.]

4303858.

Mariner-10

69.0 million km

[Another row, likewise.]

4303859.

Helios 1

46.4 million km

[Another row.]

4303860.

BepiColombo

45.8 million km

[Another row, with a yet more significant Ranking digit now partly visible due to non-proportional spacing, itself being cut off in the stead of the now fully visible next digit.]

24303861.

Messenger

45.3 million km

[Another row, back to the original pre-cutoff.]

4303862.

Solar Orbiter

43.8 million km

[Another row.]

4303863.

Helios 2

43.3 million km

[Final row.]

4303864.

Parker

6.17 million km

[Caption below the panel:]

Congratulations to the Parker Solar Probe for setting a new record for "Worst Job Avoiding the Sun."

Trivia

• This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas.
  • This year marks the first time in xkcd's 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no Christmas comics released during those days.
  • Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.
  • If Randall found the accomplishments of the Parker Solar Probe more interesting than Christmas itself that might explain why this comic was released on Christmas Day instead.
  • It is not the first space exploration accomplishment mentioned during Christmas, however, in the previous case 2559: December 25th Launch from 2021, the comic was give seasonal spin.

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Discussion

My first time editing the BOT name. Barmar (talk) 01:39, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe change it to BOT GETTING NOTHING BUT SUNBURN FOR CHRISTMAS? 198.41.227.177 03:47, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Nothing for Christmas? xkcd has fallen Pie Guy (talk) 02:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Comic 3000 didn't have anything special for it either. Lame! 172.70.210.68 03:44, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, Hannukah is the feast of lights, and Christians say Jesus is The Light, so it kind of fits. Kind of. 198.41.227.177 03:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Well it is kind of sad when he doesn't post an x-mas comic. Maybe this achievement of Parker outshone x-mas (like the sun outshines) in Randall's view. But it only happens on a few years he completely misses the chance to acknowledge x-mas. ;-/ --Kynde (talk) 10:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I have made a mention of the strange thing that this release was not about Christmas and also made several notes about in on the Category:Christmas. It is a 20 year and a ten in a row streak that ended at 19 and 9 for years in a row with x-mas comic at Chirstmas and times in a row when a 25th December release was about x-mas. --Kynde (talk) 11:31, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Given the election of 47 (Randall's opinion of which can be guessed), and its dependence on, and promises to, those who call themselves "Christians", Randall's silence about the holiday can perhaps be understood, and maybe accepted as a better option than screaming. There is an awful lot of "la la la ..." going on in the USA during this transition season ... rather like in Berlin in the year 1933 CE. 108.162.246.47 16:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I find it implausible that Randall would decline to do a Christmas comic based on Trump being elected. Most of his Christmas comics focus on secular elements of the holiday anyway. --172.68.55.81 01:54, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes last time DT was elected he made this jolly comic: 1776: Reindeer :-D but then he made this New Year comic: 1779: 2017. That he did not feel to celebrate at the moment is quite certain. But I do not think he or anyone else actually think that either side of the political field have priority over x-mas! So I really think he was so focused on the record that he took this instead. Still looking foward to Fridays comic to see if he might mention Christmas there. I do not think so, but if he did he would not break the 19 year with x-mas comics in a row streak. Only the one with not posting one on the 25th. --Kynde (talk) 13:35, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

None of us (presumably) is Randall, so unless the correct horse speaks, we won't know. To those who found it incredible that there was no xkcd Xmas comic in 2024, I responded that I found it very much not incredible. And as for saplings growing in a fallen forest, I can only hope that the USA's take on the Beer Hall Putsch doesn't turn into the Capitol's take on the Reichstag ... or the Brandenburg Gate, anno 1945 CE. 108.162.245.39 16:06, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

XKCD wishes you a merry NOTHING and a happy new NOTHING. Hope you get lots of NOTHING this NOTHING! Remember to spend lots of NOTHING with your NOTHING! 172.70.211.233 03:34, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

"This would be difficult, since at Parker's aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun in its orbit) it's still only about 7 million km, 35 million km from Solar Orbiter's orbit (and the probes would be much further apart if they're not on the same side of the Sun at the time)." -- What does aligning the probes have to do with the title text? Isn't the nudge at the aphelion meant to lower the perihelion into the Sun? (and not have anything to do with the proximity of the two probes) --Sophon (talk) 05:22, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

This explanation is not correct: at aphelion (further's point to the sun) Parker's is close to Venus orbit (~100 million km). Solar Orbiter's perihelion (closest point to the sun) is well below Mercury's orbit. There will regularly be at the same distance from the sun but very likely on different sides of the sun making virtually impossible any interactions between them as suggested by the title text. --162.158.39.165 06:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Ahhhh.. I (and perhaps others, like the comment currently immediately above?) had not properly understood the TT. Selective reading meant I had not realised that both probes were mentioned there, and that SO was therefore going to deflect PP (not either SO or PP changing their own orbit for themselves). Might need to edit something about that in... 172.70.163.130 16:44, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

My mistake. I misread Wikipedia, thinking that it said Parker's aphelion was 7.26 million km, when that was actually a previous perihelion. Barmar (talk) 20:23, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Would the top five of the Sun Avoidance leaderboard be Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons Take The A Train To Watertown (talk) 08:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

If they at any point got closer to the Sun than Earth ever is, they would end below all human missions on Earth. It do not say that it is space related missions. Also there are not that many missions to space and can be seen in the part of the number that are shown, and we cannot even see how big the actual number is... --Kynde (talk) 10:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

To directly answer the question, they may be 'more avoiding' the Sun right this moment, but their closest pass was all equally Earth-distant, due to coming from Earth.

Assuming it's been checked that no further outer-planet-and-beyond missions used a slingshot into 'down orbit' from Earth, either for a particular pop back out to the right ejective up-orbit route or even to use a Venus-fly-by slingshot to enhance it. Otherwise, though, their location in the vicinity of Earth is their 'record worst', whatever they're doing now. Practically indistinguishable, in that regard, from Columbus (the sea-going one) or any Apollo mission. 172.70.163.130 16:44, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

By the logic of where their mission started, one could argue that cube sat LICIACube might qualify as our best attempt at avoiding the sun, AND our second-worst attempt at avoiding Dimorphos! 141.101.98.7 14:16, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

(For this editor's, and others', reference: []s for URLs use space-delimiter, but you can streamline wikilinks with this site's {{w}}-template, using pipes, as {{w|LICIACube}} or {{w|LICIACube|aternate text, if different}}. If in doubt, see what others have mostly done.) 172.70.90.8 15:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

...completely forgot to make my main point, in that (by that specific nterpretation of metric), there's probably even better candidates. 172.68.186.133 15:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

"approximately 17 metric tons directly to an orbit crossing Mercury requires a rocket the size of the Saturn V stack. Parker masses about forty times that" so ~680 tonnes - pretty sure you're out by three orders of magnitude there, perhaps substitute 'kilograms' or 'kg' for 'metric tons'? 162.158.168.151 (talk) 23:03, 26 December 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)