Travelling Near The Sun

[magpie]

how near to the sun could you travel in a space ship before the inside becomes too hot to survive? forgetting about gravity! you see these sci-fi ships almost grazing the sun/star, i wouldn't have thought it possible.

[Buenchico]

Some hints here
http://www.mrscienceshow.com/2010/09/how-close-could-average-spaceship-get.html
and here
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/35225/how-close-can-spaceship-get-to-the-sun

As has been mentioned there, it's not just heat that you'd need to worry about but other forms of radiation as well.

[fiction-factory]

I'm no expert but I suppose it depends on how good the insulation is. Maybe a good reflector could help it withstand great temperatures. It is very hot though so maybe nothing could survive withi a million miles or so

[weecalf]

The moon is to hot to go near so imagine the sun

[gingejbee]

I wouldn't have thought it possible....you said yourself that it was sci-fi.
The emphasis is on the "fi".

[Old_Geezer]

According to some Sci Fi, in the future you will be able to dip into stars and return back out again. Sorry I don't know how close we could theoretically get today. I'm unsure anyone has bothered to work it out.

[New Judge]

The temperature at the equator on the planet Mercury (average distance from the Sun, around 35 million miles) reaches well over 400 degrees Centigrade. It has no atmosphere to speak of so those temperatures are probably down to direct radiation. I would think a spacecraft at that distance from the Sun would suffer badly.

[Buenchico]

>>> The moon is to hot to go near so imagine the sun

That might be a bit of a surprise to all those who watched the moon landings!

The maximum temperature on the moon's equator is around 115C, which is certainly 'hot' but not 'mega-hot'. The minimum temperature on the moon's equator is actually much harder for humans to deal with, as it's around -180C.

[Hymie]

Back in the 70s, the Irish had plans for a manned space mission to the sun.

When asked about the potentially lethal temperatures – the chief project engineer announced that they planned the mission to take place at night.

[alavahalf]

Are you taking the Mick Hymie .. ?

[Postdog]

Stupid answer above! The sun is turned off at night and they wouldn't be able to see where they are going...

[Baldric]

Oh, surely they leave a Pilot Light on?

[CrapAtCryptics]

Most of the fictional spaceships that do that sort of stuff have shields to negate the heat / radiation.

[Togo]

Lol @ Baldric. Is that what you mean by plans in the pipeline?

[ToraToraTora]

In Sci Fi they always have some sort of shield tech to explain it.

[whiskeryron]

You would never be able to walk on the sun because the heat would melt your shoes.

[douglas9401]

One of the major drawbacks for me is the restricted choice of beers.

Only Sol and Corona seem to be available.

[jim360]

The current record is, I think, about 0.3 AU or 45 million kilometres, so not exactly that close. There are plans to get a probe to within about 6 million kilometres (Solar Probe Plus, due to launch at some point next year apparently). Even at that distance conditions are pretty awful. I suspect that it will be a while before we can get closer still -- in part, at least, because most solar observations are made better at a fair distance anyway, so there's little incentive to solve the technical problems that are required to get, say, within the Corona.

All the same, given enough time, it might be plausible to do Star-Trek like runs to within tens of km of the surface. For the time being, the closest distance we can access is measured in millions of miles/ kilometres.

[Bazile]

All pretty standard stuff for me and the crew of the enterprise