Rebecca and Karl: *discussing and deciding destination*
Meanwhile...
After our (hopefully) successful launch, our lander unit needs a source of electric power to run electric instruments. In order to generate an electric source, we nee-
Rebecca: AN EXTENSION CORD
Karl: No, you dumbass. There are no electric sockets for us to plug them in. Calcifer will supply us with needed energy. All we have to install are:
SOLAR PANELS!
The solar panels installed on our lander unit has an efficiency of 12%. In order to produce enough energy for our equipment, we need to calculate needed area on our solar panel to achieve this.
Karl: TO THE NOTEBOOK!!
To calculate the area we need the temperature and radius of the sun, as well as the distance between the sun and our destination planet.
Which brings me to the question...
WHICH PLANET DID WE END UP CHOOSING???
Rebecca: ROLL THE GAME!
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REBECCA AND KARL: WHO'S THAT PLANET?
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YOU: IT'S PIKACHU!!
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REBECCA AND KARL: IT'S LAJALAND!!
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YOU: FUCK!!
(Just in case you didn't catch the reference: click here)
We chose Lajaland because blue moist, rocky bad… bleh.
In all seriousness, we chose Lajaland becuase it looks more moist and less rocky. We also like a nice challenge, other than just "jumping" over to Bidd which is almost next to us.
Not only did we choose a cool planet with cool rings. It also has a very COOL aspect. No worries, we are cool enough to handle it.
Ps. it has a surface temperature of -22 celcius degrees heh.
Now that we know the distance between Calcifer and Lajaland, we can calculate needed area for our solar panels.
Karl: TO THE COMPUTER!!
Okeyy we need an area of MINIMUM 0.5 m2.
Does it seem reasonable? This depends on how much energy is needed and how close Lajaland is to the sun.
A regular household light bulb has about 60-80W. Our panel only need is 40W, which is a small amount of energy. Low energy = no need of big solar panels
What about the distance between Lajaland and Calcifer? It is only 0.324 AU or 48469775.6 km. It's like 8 times less than the distance between Mars and Earth aka. very close to the sun. Short distance = no need of big solar panels
Conclusion: = 0.5 m2 seems just right!!
We can now go ahead and start preparing (JUST PREPARING) for an actual launch.