Revision as of 19:55, 27 December 2024

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

This is one of 57 incomplete explanations:
Created by a SANTA BOT FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (SKILL ISSUE). Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

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 title 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.

Transcript

[A table is shown with three columns, all with underlined headers. Above these there is a header for the entire table.]

Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard

Rank Mission Sun Nearest Miss

[The top of the table is not filled out regularly. It starts with giving the first number in the first column. But then instead of text in the next two columns there is a pair of large square brackets that covers about four lines with text in between that do not align with the table lines. In the first column beneath the first number along the bracket to the right there are three vertical, three horizontal and three vertical ellipses to indicate that the large bracket covers more than just the 4 first lines. At the bottom of the bracket the first visible digit of a larger number is shown. It is clearly cut of so the first number is partly outside the left frame edge. After the bracket ends, the next seven lines are normal tekst in all three columns. The numbers continues to increase from the first at the bottom of the bracket, but as for that number the first columns number is always cut partly off across the first visible digit to the left. The first digit can be read though, and in one of the middle lines, one more significant digit is partly visible at the front of the number due to non-proportional spacing, this new number itself being cut off instead of the now fully visible digit partly visible in the other rows]

1.

⋮

… [All other expeditions in human history]

⋮

4303857.

4303858. Mariner-10 69.0 million km

4303859. Helios 1 46.4 million km

4303860. BepiColombo 45.8 million km

24303861. Messenger 45.3 million km

4303862. Solar Orbiter 43.8 million km

4303863. Helios 2 43.3 million km

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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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 ~~~~)

this is the comic that breaks the rss - Bb777 (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

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@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 ==Explanation==
 {{incomplete|Created by a SANTA BOT FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (SKILL ISSUE). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
-The comic shows an extreme summary of a table of human missions (apparently at least 24,303,864 of them, possibly with hundreds of millions or more), that must include both terrestrial and space-based ones, ranked by how far they stayed away from the {{w|Sun}}.
+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 {{w|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.
-This comic was posted on Christmas Day in 2024, the day after the {{w|Parker Solar Probe}} made its closest approach to the Sun. As a result, it has set a new record for the worst failure in solar avoidance. This mission needs to be really close to the Sun so it can make close-up analysis of its corona and magnetic field. It has been engineered with special solar shields to protect it from the extreme heat and radiation. as it is entirely on purpose it gets this close to the Sun. As such, the 'failure' actually describes its success, and it was later confirmed to have successfully survived its record-breaking passage through the edges of solar atmosphere.
+The missions listed include notable solar and planetary exploration spacecraft like {{w|Mariner 10}}, {{w|Helios 1}}, {{w|BepiColombo}}, {{w|MESSENGER}}, and {{w|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.
-Almost all types of human endeavors (which includes many types of "mission"), have been on Earth. Comparatively few have been to space, such as in Earth orbit, to the Moon or outwards into interplanatary space, but will have started (or remained) at approximately the same distance from the Sun, thus 'avoiding' the Sun by approximately the same amount. This means that almost all missions have occurred on Earth's surface, or very close by it, as compared to the distance to the Sun, which is on average 150 million km (93 million miles, or 1 {{w|Astronomical unit|AU}}), although the distance around {{w|Earth's orbit}} to the Sun can vary from 147 to 152 million km. Thus any two missions on Earth that only take a few days could technically vary in distance from the Sun for up to 5 million km, even if they were conducted in the exact same locations on Earth surface. (Parker's own closest distance only slightly exceeds that variation, but is a very small proportion of average figure for all other.)
+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 table gives a positional number for how far away from the Sun the mission has 'successfully' managed to stay, but with the first digit conspicuously cut off in all examples. The ranking number is fairly unambiguously cut off at the "4 million" level for most of the ranks, which is further confirmed by the one number in the sequence that partly shows the next most significant digit (a "2", as in "20 millions") and therefore the whole of the "4" in the millions place. It is entirely possible that the total count extends into hundreds of millions (or even greater magnitudes), but we are already far beyond the tally of only space-based missions, hence we're possibly even supposed to be enumerating all of humanity's actions throughout all human history. Whether it must have been actively refered to as a mission (rather than a journey, expedition or exploration) is unknown.
+The title 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.
-Fortunately for our ability to read the list, all but the final seven rows have been combined into a brief cover-all row in which "All other expeditions" are clumped together. If fully expanded, the very top of the list will be all short missions on Earth undertaken on a day in which the Earth was farthest from the Sun (and possibly only during the night). It is not recorded how far away the mission goes away from the Sun, only how close it has been at closest approach counts, since it is that distance which is shown for the Parker probe. Voyager 1 is now in excess of 165 AU from the Sun but, like various other ongoing or concluded missions, are clearly given a ranking and 'avoidance' distance as of their 'least avoiding the Sun' distance, i.e. on or soon after their departure from Earth.
-All probes destined to visit to target the inner planets (Mercury and Venus), and/or more closely approach the Sun in their own solar orbit, are therefore distinguishable from those that either never left Earth or did so in an outwards direction, and are explicitly listed by how bad they are at staying away from the Sun. (At least one conspicuous absence from the list, however, is the {{w|Cassini–Huygens}} mission to Saturn, which travelled there by way of using two Venus fly-by maneuvers<!-- Fairly sure there's other outer-planet missions that did similar, but not yet checked them all -->, but seems not to have been considered.)  Space probes that try to get close to the Sun will find that it can be extremely dangerous to their equipment (especially the electronics) and they might heat too much up as they are not designed to work at such temperatures and radiation levels that would occur. If they have to venture into the inner Solar System, either as a destintion or perhaps to use {{w|gravity assist}} of Mercury or Venus, mission planners will not use a trajectory that is uncomfortably close to the Sun, to minimize the Sun's effect on the spacecraft.
-Obviously the joke is to mischaracterize Parker's impressively close approach to the Sun as a failure to avoid it. Earth and everything on it travel at an {{w|Earth's orbit|average of 29.78 km/s}} in a direction 90 degrees to the direction of the Sun, and the majority of this "sideways" relative velocity must be shed to bring Parker's orbit closer to the Sun. Just to bring a mass of approximately 17 metric tons directly to an orbit crossing Mercury requires a rocket the size of the [https://launchercalculator.com/?rocket=NS1 Saturn V stack]. Parker masses about forty times that and its Christmas 2024 perihelion was just 6.1 million kilometers versus Mercury's 46 million kilometers. The Parker mission designers needed an extremely ''high'' degree of skill to plot a course with very minor adjustments that resulted in the seven gravity assists from Venus that were needed to get this close to the Sun — and should rank well above all the missions that went nowhere near the Sun and therefore showed no skill avoiding it.
-The next closest mission that's still in operation (the {{w|Helios (spacecraft)|Helios}} missions ended in 1985) is the {{w|European Space Agency}}'s {{w|Solar Orbiter}}. The title text jokes that it should nudge Parker so it crashes into the Sun fulfilling the supposed dream of {{w|Icarus}}, a character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the Sun using wings crafted by his father {{w|Daedalus}}, and fell into the sea because the beeswax in the wings melted. Flying too close to the Sun is a saying that relates to Icarus, whose dream may have been to fly even closer to the Sun (or just so high that he was), but the 'reality' was instead a fall ''out'' of the sky and into the sea, making the title text somewhat metaphorically mixed.
-The title text additionally suggests that the Solar Orbiter could be repurposed to nudge the Parker Probe into a Sun-striking trajectory, as their orbits do technically overlap, although it would take some time (and very precise operation) to coordinate the Orbiter such that it could somehow send the Probe into a full terminal Sun-dive to cement its position as being the closest mission to the Sun (or, in terms of the comic, acquiring a "last place" position in Sun-avoidance that can only ever be equaled, and never overtaken). But it would be difficult to accomplish the feat, as the mission had not been designed with this degree of capability in reserve, and it would not be easy to give the amount/timing of nudge needed without potentially damaging/destroying both craft.
-Note that falling into the Sun, starting from Earth, needs almost as much effort as it would take to launch a probe ''from'' the surface of the Sun (assuming one could be) and out into Earth's orbit, which might involve reversing the {{w|Gravity assist|gravitational slingshots}} used to save some effort. The possible advantage for a Sun-destined probe is that it can end by taking advantage of {{w|aerobraking}} in its {{w|Stellar atmosphere|thickening atmosphere}}, but this would mean surviving higher temperatures for even longer than Parker probe is designed to hopefully withstand; it would take further development to have a probe with a good chance of surviving long enough to make useful studies all the way up to not missing the Sun at all, or could only be considered as beyond the end of any practical mission.
 ==Transcript==

Difference between revisions of "3029: Sun Avoidance"

Revision as of 19:55, 27 December 2024

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