Posted by
emmett
on from the all-these-worlds-are-yours-except-europa dept.
rhet writes, "NASA may deliberately crash the $1.5 billion Galileo spacecraft which is exploring Jupiter to avoid contaminating the moon Europa. Scientists believe simple life forms may exist on Europa. There is evidence that Europa has an ocean beneath its ice crust. Read more about it here."
NASA And the PR Fiasco.
by
PureFiction
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· Score: 4
I suppose given their current track record with crash landing expensive satelites and recon vehicales, they figure this is one operation they cannot screw up.
I just hope they dont miss and send it flying off into deep space.
Re:NASA And the PR Fiasco.
by
Bryan+Andersen
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· Score: 2
I suppose given their current track record with crash landing expensive satelites and recon vehicales, they figure this is one operation they cannot screw up.
I just hope they dont miss and send it flying off into deep space.
Murphy will intervene...
No! Crash it into Europa!
by
grytpype
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· Score: 3
I say we crash Galileo into Europa! Show those European fuckers we mean bizniz!
Before everyone goes off on wasting the money
by
SgtPepper
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· Score: 5
Keep in mind that this craft is 11 years old...it's ancient in terms of spacecraft. It's original 2 year mission was extened another 2 years and is AGAIN being extened 2 more years...so we definatly got our money's worth out of it...and then some. we got 4 extra years out of a space craft that traveled a great distance, don't complain, we should retire it with dignity and honour.
Sgt Pepper Lame Sig Shamelessly Ripped from Fortune:
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
Re:Before everyone goes off on wasting the money
by
Shadowlion
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· Score: 5
How much is science worth to you?
NASA spent that money to design a spacecraft that would spent several years in deep space, resist incredible amounts of radiation (the probe has already managed to go well over twice the amount of radiation it was designed for without serious glitches), computers and software on board the craft to manage all of its systems as well as do diagnostic and preventative capabilities (recongize when an overload of radiation causes the computer to reset itself and automatically correct it), and a vast amount of sensor and communication equipment. Further, it was designed to not explore just *one* world, but Jupiter and many of it's moons - a more complex logistical problem than just dropping an orbiter around, say, Mars.
Given the complexity of the task, NASA built a spacecraft that would be able to do all of the above. They really over-engineered the thing, and then put a *reasonable* cap on the lifespan of the thing (2 years). They were being conservative on the lifespan, and weren't too surprised that it was able to go for another extended mission. That it has lasted this long, though, as they've exposed it to more and more radiation, and has returned the amount and quality of data it has returned, has amazed NASA.
Galileo was one of the last of the big-money space probes, designed to last in inhospital environments and to be quite self-sufficient in case of an emergency. The newer probes, such as the various Mars probes, are much cheaper, but don't have nearly the capabilities as Galileo does - and hence we lose them when a more expensive craft, with redundant systems, diagnostic capabilities, and smarter computers would've survived.
Yes, I think what else could've been done with the money. We could've spent it on the war with drugs, which has turned out to be an exceptional failure that many question was even necessary. We could've spent it on law enforcement - and yet, with places like the LAPD, NYPD, and New Orleans, it doesn't matter how many police we have when the ones we hire are crooked in the first place. We could've built a couple of more fighter planes to add to the military - or maybe we should've just blown that money building a single B-2 bomber.
So maybe you're right - we should've spent that money hiring crooked cops, building implements of destruction, and trying to solve a non-existent drug problem.
I mean, hey, why bother *learning* anything when you can build an aircraft with the radar signature of a bumblebee?
Re:Before everyone goes off on wasting the money
by
kevlar
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· Score: 2
We did get a lot of usage out of it, but remember, it did cost $1.5B also. An enormous amount of money considering Pathfinder was in the millions. Of course Pathfinder was a completely different mission in itself. I still think it was worth paying that much for Galileo. Of course they didn't use any cost-saving measures though.
Re:Before everyone goes off on wasting the money
by
slashdot-terminal
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· Score: 2
Galileo has given us invaluable data about our solar system: it's formation, history, what planets are made of and what they look like up close. Pretty much everything we know about our solar system outside of Earth can be attributed to this little space craft. It's well worth $1.5 billion for this knowledge.
I thought that the Voyager probes I and II did more than Galileo did. Do you have some references?
The original Voyager probe is actually still transmitting data to stations back on earth and giving some interesting data about solar wind dynamics and the structure of deep space.
-- Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Re:Before everyone goes off on wasting the money
by
Esperandi
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· Score: 3
Ahh, but by choosing to remain in America, he also chooses to participate in a democratic republic which requires a certain amount of people to do some bitching. So to him I say, bitch on!
Esperandi P.S. Yes, your tax money is stolen from you, there is no other word for it. Even if you WANT to pay, it is taken involuntarily with the threat of removing your freedom behind it. This is required to maintain a democratic republic, you change it so that if you don't pay the taxes, you get absolutely no benefit from anyone elses payment either.
I think they should try put it into a solar orbit, so that it could be salvaged and put on display a century or two from now. Let's face it: Galileo is one of the most successful space probes ever built. Sure, it was expensive, but look at what we learned from it, despite the major malfunctions it faced early on.
And let's not forget exactly where all that money it cost goes to: paying people's paychecks. The dollars aren't used as rocket fuel, y'know.
I'm impressed that they're considering that course of action - it shows some real foresight. Europa, if inhabited (by any life) could be enormously useful ('uncontaminated') by virtue of being a huge, somewhat isolated biosphere. In addition, this is some real respect for the universe, a big thing we don't quite understand. Let's not mess up another rock if we don't need to. And why would we need to?
--
[|]
Crash Galileo into Europa as Pre-Emptive Strike
by
Savage+Henry+Matisse
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· Score: 5
Scientists warn we shouldn't rev ourselves into a tizzy over this. Any life on Europa, they assure us, is of the single-celled variety, at best. Of course, such a declaration is clearly just a smokescreen to prevent us from reaching the obvious conclusion: At this very moment, super-intelligent giant squid have their siege-rockets poised beneath Europa?s half-mile ice shell, ready to launch their imperialist onslaught. These sub-mariner beasts intend to take control of our peace-loving planet and mine us for the rich iron supplies stored in our hemoglobin. Yes, the jovian devil-fish plan to render our blood for precious structural iron, needed to build more of their planet-hoppers. Their ultimate plan: To flood the canals of Mars as a space-squid vacation resort.
At night I can hear the transmissions from their communications satellites resonating in my fillings; the hideous, scheming clacking of their beaks has rendered sleep an unattainable fantasy. They intend to devour our dogs whole and use our sports-utility vehicles as punch-bowls for their post-conquest banquet. They monitor our radio transmissions, love our mariachi music, and yet despise our hip-hop. These are truly monsters.
How long will the scientific community continue to feign ignorance of this exo-cephalopodic threat looming under Europa?s dark plutonian shores? And how long will it be until our own squid-- trusted friend and snack-- turn on us? As the first earth-dweller to fully recognize the very real threat of worldwide Europan conquest, I enjoin you: We must take up arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end it.
Who's with me?
-- Much Love, "S"HM ***** (I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
Re:Crash Galileo into Europa as Pre-Emptive Strike
by
Acy+James+Stapp
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· Score: 2
To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler at this time to suffer the squids and rockets of Europa's oceans, or take arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end it.
-- --
Too lazy to get a lower UID.
This Headline implies that NASA it wasting....
by
Tenement
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· Score: 5
This Headline implies that NASA it wasting money on 'shooting' probes out just to crash them now.
Remember that Galileo has done it's purpose and to avoid a possible extraterrestrial contamination of another celestial body that possibly may supporting life, they decided to crash it into another planet that (most likely) does not support any life.
NASA isn't in the habit of building something just to throw it away for no good reason. Sure, they make mistakes, but NASA is still ran by humans, and humans make 'human errors.' The technological feats that they have done (and are still doing) boggles the mind. (I'd like to see you calculate the exact vector to break orbit and travel to Jupiter over the course of 2 years with only 2 minutes of burn-time)
NASA is still going strong and I feel quite happy that my tax-dollars are being pourned into it. (Besides they brought us TANG!;-) )
Cheers. --
Re:This Headline implies that NASA it wasting....
by
rde
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· Score: 2
what DID V.I.N.C.E.N.T stand for again...
Vital Information Necessary, CENTralised. Twenty years later, and I still remember one of the worst acronyms ever.
Re:This Headline implies that NASA it wasting....
by
El+Kevbo
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· Score: 2
I'd like to see you calculate the exact vector to break orbit and travel to Jupiter over the course of 2 years with only 2 minutes of burn-time
Would you like that answer in metric, english, or an odd mixture of the two?:)
Re:This Headline implies that NASA it wasting....
by
JerkBoB
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· Score: 2
You're silly. They want to avoid contaminating Europa so that if they DO find lifeforms, they can say that they didn't get there when Galileo crashed into Europa.
Posting before thinking again, are we?
-- A host is a host from coast to coast...
-- A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Why couldn't they just redirect it when the Millennium Mission is complete in February 2001? With such a success, (NASA needs a few) why crash it in to Jupiter, there has to be some value the old warhorse can provide. It'd be a shame to end this program.
--
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Nice to see that NASA has finally woken up to the problem of space rubbish around other planets. If Gallileo does have Earth-born bacteria on it which have survived in space (there are various theories about life spreading from planet to planet by this method) it would be extremely frustrating to disrupt any current ecosystem on Europa. On the other hand, this concern will make the job of examining Europa in the future more tricky, regardless of what they do with Galileo (dropping it into the Jovian atmosphere or crashing it into Io both sound like possibilities to gain interesting data on either planet/moon). If we are going to go explore Europa for signs of life, we are almost certainly going to have to do it remotely with 'sterilized' equipment - sending a few astronauts down to have look isn't going to help in the attempts to not disrupt any life already there.
Of course, our own orbit is now strewn with bits of satellites and rocket boosters - thankfully it all tends to wander around at the same speeds as the spacecraft in orbit, but it gets a little bit unnerving to wonder about the future of colonizing the galaxy when you have to dodge the last 100 years of waste products in getting started.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
-- Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Wow... an amazing short-sighted look at the space industry and government. Let's see... if we give money to the space industry, they'll start more projects. As a result more jobs are created. This lets people work and possibly get off wellfare to do the factory work created either directly or indirectly by the NASA projects. Helps our economy and therefore pays for itself. It's people like toofast that should be strapped to next rocket and get a firsthand look at the wonders of outer space.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER, USE THEM IN PEACE.
thank you.
Re:Cosmic Radiation Sterilisation
by
Bearpaw
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· Score: 3
Wouldn't any microbes from earth that made it onto the spacecraft by now have been killed by cosmic radiation? The craft has been in space for several years now. Even the most hardy microbes should have perished by now?
We don't know. That's the point.
Even if microbes did make it through space and survice an impact what is the chances that any alien life would be compatible with ours?
We don't know. That's the point. There is no basis (yet) on which to judge those odds. Anyone who says otherwise is indulging in a WAG whether they admit it or not.
Why take any chance? Though it's functioned way beyond it's expected time, the craft is nearing the end of its usefulness. It's time to clean up after ourselves. For a change.
Oh come on we all know what happened
by
MosesJones
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· Score: 3
Nasa Scientist A: I'm getting bored at looking at Jupiter
Nasa Scientist B: I know what you mean, same old same odl
A: Mind you those comets that smashed into it were pretty cool B: Yeah, 11 years watching and its all clouds and methane, where is the fun in that ? A: We need to do something exciting.
Enter Military Man C
C: Hi Guys, anything new ? A: Nope, just a big red dot and a possible ocean. B: And of course the black bits. C: Okay I'll be off. A: Hang On, we're just wondering how to make this job more interesting, any ideas ? C: Well you could take the military approach... B: Which is ? C: If it costs over a billion dollars, make sure it crashes, we did it with the Stealth Fighters and Bombers, its the whole purpose of the ICBMs. And they make WAY cool noises and pretty lights when they go up. A: You mean you crash these things on purpose ? C: Sure sometimes, but we video everything just incase we get lucky by accident.
And that ladies and gentlemen was how the plan was formed.
I know, I was coffee mug D.
-- An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Does anyone else think that country is worthy of ridicule, that will crash $1.5 billion of equipment to avoid even the remote chance that it might hurt some single-celled bacteria, and then legalize the destruction of millions of unborn babies? Do those mythical one-celled motes from outer space have more rights than human children?
Well, first of all with the cost argument, the space craft is 11 years old, was only intended to be used for 2 years, so in essence, you got 9 years free, can't beat that deal...
I know you're going after the abortion deal, which is really disturbing, whether or not you believe abortion should be legal (I really don't, with some exceptions) you must keep in mind, these are OUR offspring, any life on another planet is NOT ours, and therefore we have more right to destroy our stuff then their stuff. I know it sounds draconian but really thats the way it is.
There are no life forms on any of those moons. This is incredibly stupid.
A member of the Galileo imaging team says NASA are considering crashing the spacecraft into Jupiter or one of its icy moons in 2002 because it might still contain microbes from Earth.
Great. So those microbes take a plunge on to a new planet. Fast forward 5 billion years, and those microbes have populated Jupiter and have created life on an otherwise lifeless planet. We've just infected Jupiter!
"Just to be sure, they want to get rid of it and make sure it doesn't go into Europa, where we have a possible habitat of some kind of extraterrestrial life."
Soooooo.....What happens if the crash site is currently occupied with Life Forms that we DON'T suspect, hmm? So in an ironic ending to the life of Galileo, it crashes into a planet with life forms and introduces extra-Jupiterian life to divide and conquer.
Or, we could send it off into deep space, and discover it 300 years from now as a tremendous space probe named G'leo.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
--
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.:P)
If your post was meant to be funny, it didn't contain enough hyperbole to be blatently tongue-in-cheek. So I'll just treat it as ignorance.
You know what Jupiter's made of, right? 92% hydrogen, 7% helium, mostly methane for the rest, those sorts of things. At the upper atmosphere, it's more than a thousand degrees celcius, and it's all whipping about rather harshly. And oh yeah, no water. If there is life there, it doesn't resemble anything we have on earth, and whatever we bring from earth wouldn't be able to survive if it got there. And then there's the little problem about how the spacecraft will burn up once it enters the planet's atmosphere, which is after all, all of it (except perhaps for the metalic hydrogen core, which if it exists wouldn't make a lick of difference here). This is in stark contrast to Europa, which doesn't have an appreciable atmosphere and so if we lob something at it, it'll remain intact until it hits the surface.
Soooooo.....What happens if the crash site is currently occupied with Life Forms that we DON'T suspect, hmm? So in an ironic ending to the life of Galileo, it crashes into a planet with life forms and introduces extra-Jupiterian life to divide and conquer.
Yes, it'd be perfeclty ironic, since it'd crap all over lots of our biological and astronomical theories, but that doesn't mean it's possible. You're also forgetting the little bit about how there is no "landing site" per se -- just a spot floating in the outer atmosphere.
Or, we could send it off into deep space, and discover it 300 years from now as a tremendous space probe named G'leo.
Except the whole problem in the first place is that this thing doesn't have any extra fuel lying around for such a purpose. If we could just go ahead and send it off into deep space, it'd still be useful and we'd use it for that. Heck, the Voyager 2 is still sending back data from outside the solar system, and we're praying it'll last another twenty years and make it to measure the helioshock out there. But escaping the gravity of Jupiter is not a simple thing to do without any propulsion. Have you stopped to wonder why Jupiter has so many moons and trojan asteroids in the first place?
--
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Re:Okay, so what if......
by
Accipiter
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· Score: 2
You know what Jupiter's made of, right?
Yes. It's mostly gaseous. (Which if you consider it, would kind of eliminate the idea of 'crashing')
If there is life there, it doesn't resemble anything we have on earth
Of course it doesn't. Which is why the search for life shouldn't be based SOLELY on the search for water. Yeah, it's a great starting point, but there is no guarantee that life everywhere NEEDS water to survive.
whatever we bring from earth wouldn't be able to survive if it got there.
Prove it. Do you know for sure? If you do, what do you base your proof on? How do you know 100% that Earth-based life would not/could not survive on Jupiter?
it'd crap all over lots of our biological and astronomical theories
There are only 2 absolute results to all theories. They're either proven, or broken.
that doesn't mean it's possible.
It doesn't mean it's impossible either.
By the way, that last part was a joke. Haven't you ever seen Star Trek: The motion picture? (God, I HATE explaining jokes.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
--
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.:P)
I can see the conversation between NASA and the spacecraft now:
Galileo: Well, I've put in my long hard years for the company, and after having put it off for a few years, I think it's time to retire and start collecting social security.
NASA: That's good, because we were coming up with a spectacular retirement package for you.
Galileo: Great, so what does my golden parachute look like?
NASA: [whispers into Galileo's ear]
Galileo: A MASSIVE HELLISH FIREBALL?!?!
--
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Yep, I think the problem is that they will soon not be able to control it at all and they'd rather just make sure it crashes into Jupiter or Io rather than try to put it into some kind of 'stable/permanent' orbit that might decay over time for some unforeseen reason (passing of an unknown comet) and end up falling into Europa and possibly causing biological contamination. (Yeah, I know but someone already said there is a theory which says it might be possible for bacteria to still be viable, even after 11 years in the frozen vacuum of space.)
Makes sense to me. It's already performed it's original mission and then some so it's not like wasting billions of dollars when this craft is 11 years old and has reached the end of it's useful life anyway. Rather than letting this thing float around as so much space junk, they are thinking about of 'disposing' of it as best they can at this point. Plunge it into Jupiter, take a few snapshots on the way in for the evening news. So what's the diff? Option A) have a dead spacecraft floating around with the extremely small possibility that it might mess up Europa someday, or B) use the remaining fuel to send it into Jupiter where it won't cause any trouble and you might just eek out the last shred of science out of a very successful program. No contest.
--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John. Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Everyone know Pionner 10, well, this "old" thing has been launch in March 2nd, 1972, so it has 28 years old today, happy birthday Pionner 10! -- BeDevId 15453 Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
-- "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Why can't they just leave it up there orbitting and taking pictures? Is it running out of fuel?
Yes. It's also running out of radiation tolerance, RTG power and a number of other things. Maneuvering fuel is apparently set to run out first, but the vehicle is not going to last much longer regardless. To prevent it from contaminating Europa (and throwing off any search for life we may do there in the future), it has to be prevented from crashing there. One certain method of doing this is to crash it somewhere else. Crude, but highly effective. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Whether it's running out of fuel is not a question of if, but when. It takes numerous bursts of propellant to keep a craft in any kind of decent orbit when dealing with not just the gravity of Europa, but also Jupiter, Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and the other 10 or more smaller satellites of Jupiter. These tend to pull it in so many different directions that it WILL fall out of orbit if not maintained, (though there is a tiny chance it could actually be propelled away by sheer luck). In addition, this project has been extended beyond its original life, and it costs money to maintain a group to monitor & control the satellite. Once it can no longer take pictures, something must quickly be done to avoid wasting money maintaining what has become a piece of space-junk some 45 light-minutes from Earth.
-- These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Microsoft may Deliberately Crash Windows
by
xant
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· Score: 3
Microsoft may deliberately crash the $200 Windows 2000 OS which is exploring software stores and computers worldwide at this moment to avoid contaminating system memory. MS Programmers believe simple life forms may exist in your motherboard, as evidenced by the system "bus" which they obviously must use for transportation. An MS spokesman made a statement: "If our OS didn't crash so much, these simple creatures wouldn't be able to survive in your computer. Stable, free OS's run too long, not allowing the bus creatures to come up for air often enough. We're just doing the humane thing."
-- It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Does anyone else think that country is worthy of ridicule, that will crash $1.5 billion of equipment to avoid even the remote chance that it might hurt some single-celled bacteria, and then legalize the destruction of millions of unborn babies? Do those mythical one-celled motes from outer space have more rights than human children?
whoa, whoa. calm, cool, collected.
this is space garbage. the mission was judged to be worth whatever they spent on it. then they got three times as much use out of it as was in the original mission guidelines. as much as we litter our own orbits and ecosphere, I hope you haven't gotten the idea that it's a good idea.
they can gain valuable data by doing a suicide mission into Jupiter or Io. don't get the idea that they picked these targets randomly.
*sigh* I really wasn't in the mood for an abortion fight, so I'm just going to say a few things, since it's offtopic:
one prospective member of one (overcrowded) species != wiping out the entire moon's worth of life (and/or) spoiling all future studies and knowledge we might gain from Europa
unborn baby != child
incest
rape
extreme threat to mother's health
babies in plastic bags in dumpsters. why? guess.
many, many abused, unhappy, neglected children
I'd recognize that hyphenation style anywhere!
by
arthurs_sidekick
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· Score: 3
T. Herman Zweibel has started reading/. !!!
-- "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
First of all, Earth bacteria survived three years on the Moon. So we know it already happened. Earth bacteria can survive in space.
I don't really want a bacteria which survives that environment back on Earth, but it does not matter much. Earth bacteria get blown off the top of the atmosphere all the time. Gravity pulls some to the Moon or Sun, while the solar wind tends to push them away from the Sun. Some will hit rocks and get carried in random directions, including back to Earth.
It doesn't matter how small the probabilities. Some bacteria has probably already survived a round trip back to us. And if Galileo is ever recovered, it will be in a society with so much space travel taking place that we'll have a lot of life wandering in and out of space.
I don't really want a bacteria which survives that environment back on Earth
Well, there are lots of extremophiles here already that survive very "harsh" conditions. Large numbers of microbes are anaerobic, possibly the earliest life here was anaerobic. Geologists and evolutionists get all excited over the presence of oxidized iron because they believe that it's the result of the emergence of microbes that produced the stuff and then other ones emerged that were able to use it. There are bacteria Deinoccus radiodurans that are very happy in strongly radioactive environments, bacteria that eat "poisonous" contaminants. That's all apparently home-grown without any need to postulate microbes hitchhiking in on space debris. That last point is why it's so darn important NOT to contaminate Europa - supposing we find life there after possible contamination. We look at it and it's similar to Earth microbes - cool! That means that there are only a limited number of paths for evolution to take to produce single-celled life, it's independent convergence[*}.....oh, wait no, didn't we just smash a possibly contaminated spaceprobe in here about 20 years ago? {*} Yeah, I know it's damned unlikely to get the same combination of bases/nucleotides at the sequence level necessary for the _true_ definition of convergence, but let's just think even about similar phenotypic morphology - wouldn't it be neat if they had flagella?
Yes, as long as we have control of Galileo we may as well prevent contamination. But Earth has been leaking stuff for a long time, so the neighborhood is already contaminated. Let's not be messy, but we also won't be surprised if nearby life is related to us.
We already know that Mars had water, so it's already in doubt as to whether Mars or Earth started contaminating the neighborhood first...or maybe we got contaminated from Europa, if it cooled from red-hot iron first.
It won't crash, someone else will pick it up...
by
stienman
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· Score: 2
I doubt they'll crash it when the millenium project is done. Many projects, such as this, get swiped by someone else who needs them. Some researcher, right now, is contacting NASA saying, "Hey, I've got this great project which can use your ship. I know it's only 30% functional, but that is acceptable to me, and the gov't will fund my project if I can bring the cost down. By using your ship instead of sending a new one, I'm shaving 10 years and 100 million off my project."
In fact, many researchers are sending their proposals in all the time for space equiment which is nearing its life cycle. This is how it works in that industry. Who knows, we may even sell it to another country who doesn't have the ability to send stuff into space.
-Adam
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein
Does anyone else think that country is worthy of ridicule, that will crash $1.5 billion of equipment to avoid even the remote chance that it might hurt some single-celled bacteria, and then legalize the destruction of millions of unborn babies? Do those mythical one-celled motes from outer space have more rights than human children?
First off, the $1.5G spacecraft is almost at the end of its life as it is. By crashing it into Jupiter, we can at least collect some last bits of data on the planet..which is what Galileo was intended to do anyways. And it's not like that money is going to waste, it's being circulated through the economy just like any other money.
Secondly, the abortion debate aside, if there is a living ecosystem on Europa (not likely but possible -- and by the way, if you can prove that there's no life on Europa, please do so), it would be incredibly stupid and reckless of us to disrupt it. Even in Christian theology, we are the stewards of creation; this implies that we have a responsibility to protect creation, given to us by God. That aside, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from examining Europa directly. If life already exists there, then we have a chance to examine extraterrestrial life...based on an entirely different ecosystem...directly. Otherwise, we have the possibility, for the first time, to introduce terrestrial life to a whole new environment. Both experiments have terribly important implications in biology.
Re:Space junk: we already have alien contamination
by
pq
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· Score: 2
I agree that "ethical" space exploration will require sterilized probes where there might be significant chances for indigenous life...
However, we have already been contaminated by, and have contaminated, most of our inner solar system - through metorites. Simulations show that good sized impacts or volcanic eruptions can fling some material into outer space, and then they cross from planet to planet in mere tens of thousands of years, not millions as previously thought. Turns out that there are dynamically stable / unstable regions which can collect and eject matter - the earth crossing asteroids (Apollos, Amors, Atens, Trojans? I forget which is which) produce signifant meteorites on earth, as do Mars and the moon.
So chances are, we've already "contaminated" other planets, even before our space probes tracked mud in all over the kitchen floor... Europa, because of its ice cover insulating a possible biosphere, is of course unique.
-- "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
...except that smashing the probe into teensy little pieces doesn't sound very dignified to me.
Now, if they were able to get the probe back to Earth, and put it in a museum, THAT would be dignified.
My personal view is that they've discovered it's on a collision course with Jupiter, there's not enough fuel to change course, and they're trying a different tactic to their usual "it just vanished" routine.
(If their probes "vanished" as often as they've always claimed, the Loch Ness Monster sat next to me at lunch and offered me an autographed photo of the Yeti. If anyone at NASA wants a copy, I'll trade it for a fully-fuelled Saturn V rocket.)
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:You're absolutely right...
by
ralphclark
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· Score: 3
Smashing it into pieces right where we can see it sounds just fine.
If we just let it zoom off into space it'll only get damaged by a meteor collision, get sucked through a black hole, drift aimlessly for two hundred years, get picked up and repaired by an race of alien robots and then return to destroy the Earth. And you know it.
PS. I know we have two Voyager craft that run a similar same risk. But one of those is bound to go through a wormhole and get lost in the Delta Quadrant. Or something.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
NASA always likes crashing things. In fact they are getting real good at it lately.
If they could get the tech and bandwidth going to relay back high-res 5000fps video (so you can later savor every frame in super slo-mo) on the way down they'd have some killer pay-per-view potential there. Great potential revenue stream.
I know I'd pay US$40.00 to watch a piece of space junk slam into a planet. Earth, even
...this rock will die when the moon crashes into the surface anyway.
You mean Earth? Luna is never going to crash into Earth; it is getting farther away every year, as it acquires energy and angular momentum it saps from Earth's rotation via the tides. Long ago there were 400 days per year, compared to 365 now; days are always getting longer, though not fast enough to satisfy most geeks. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I could see Jon Lovitz on Saturday Night Live Now.
by
Belboz
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· Score: 2
This would make a great sketch if Lovitz were still on the show.
They would have the "Liar Guy" come out in a NASA press conference.
The press would hound him about another NASA loss in the space program.
He would say. "Yeah, we meant to crash into Jupiter. Yeah thats the ticket. We found life on Europa and didn't want the spacecraft to fall on one of the aliens by accident. Yeah. The idea came from my wife.... Natalie Portman... Yeah thats the ticket"
Well, I should have made it clear that the whole idea that life exists on some other planet's moon isn't stupid because of anything the Bible says or doesn't say...it's stupid because it's stupid. It's the longest long shot anyone could come up with.
Geez, I KNOW we've "gotten our money's worth" out of this billion-dollar tin can, but given the sheer, incredibly gargantuan odds that anything like a life form exists on Jupiter's moon seems like a big ol' waste to me.
My choice for crash sites....
by
Rantage
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· Score: 2
...is Mars. It seems to be gathering a fine collection of NASA equipment, why not a little more?:)
Put Galileo in a Museum?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4
Now, if they were able to get the probe back to Earth, and put it in a museum, THAT would be dignified
If it were only possible, then I'd be totally in favor of returning Galileo to Earth. Unfortunately, it barely has enough fuel to maintain its orbit around Jupter, let alone enough fuel to get all the way back to Earth. Furthermore, any vehicle coming to Earth from Jupiter is gonna be going damn fast when it gets here, and Galileo does not have any method of slowing down (no fuel, no aerobraking).
Galileo may also be somewhat radioactive after 11 years in space and multiple high-radiaion banzai runs past Io. Not the sort of object you'd want to hang up in the Smithsonian.
By the way, we've got a complete Saturn V with zero milage up on blocks by the front gate here. She's a bit run down and the serial numbers don't all match. You'll need to supply your own fuel, too, sorry.
Given the current financial situation of NASA, wouldn't it be best to return the probe to Earth, auction it off at eBay and use the money to fund the next mission?
-- Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Fuel almost certainly doesn't permit that.
by
Tau+Zero
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· Score: 2
One other option the article mentioned was to point it away from the planets and the moon and send it off.
This would require using a lot of the remaining fuel for the Jupiter-escape maneuver instead of science.
Maybe it is dying anyway, but why kill it off earlier?
It doesn't have the fuel to get to another body of interest, and its sensors aren't useful at long distances (we can see some things very well from here with Hubble). That means that the decision to leave Jupiter orbit would end the science mission just as certainly and irrevocably as a crash, only sooner. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Re:Don't contaminate Europa...Mars?
by
joshamania
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· Score: 2
You'll understand that I feel just because they said Galileo didn't undergo decontamination doesn't mean that other spacecraft have. Certainly Viking had not, if this is only a modern phenomenon.
Personally, I doubt that crashing Galileo into Europa is going to make a hill-of-beans difference to any ecosystem that may exist there. It is extrememly unlikely that any microbes on Galileo survived the trip, especially after the passes over Io.
I guess my point in my previous post is that the statment made by NASA about Europa is mostly usless rubbish/propaganda. It's like saying, "I ain't never been to jail," when all of one's siblings are in jail. What do they want, a cookie? (sorry, blatant Chris Rock rip-off there) So NASA gets to fire a thruster on the side of Galileo for a few seconds and send it hurtling into Jupiter. They talked about that last week describing how they would be able to get good research data from the drop into the atmosphere of Jupiter before Galileo was crushed or burned up. They made no mention of this, "We better miss Europa or we may cause major ecological damage," line.
This remark is little better than posturing on NASA's part. I feel if they were truly concerned about space pollution, they would be doing something about all the crap that is up in Earth orbit. Also, they have probes all over the place now, from Mars Surveyor, to Pioneer, Voyager, blah, blah, blah. NEAR might hit Eros, but they haven't mentioned that there might be life there, as far as NASA knows.
What about contaminating Jupiter?
by
Kupek
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· Score: 2
Why aren't they worried about contaminating Jupiter? One very simple reason: It's a giant ball of gas. I don't think you're going to find any water there, and I certainly don't think you're going to find any life. It's essentially a star that almost-was.
Let's imagine the conversation at NASA:
by
JudgePagLIVR
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· Score: 3
"hey Bob?"
"Yeah Frank"
"Remember that metrics/english conversion we didn't make, how it made the martian thingy crash?"
"Yeah Frank, I remember that. Why do you ask?"
Well, the jupiter thingy has the same error. I think it's gonna crash too"
"Jehosephat, Bob! Quick! Release a press statement that we're going to do it on purpose in order to... um... um... Save The Environment! yeah, that's the trick"
"I wish I were smart like you, Frank."
-- Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
Re:Running on fumes?? Was Martian Chronicles
by
Tau+Zero
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· Score: 4
..why not a few good orbits around Jupiter to build up momentum?
I lack the time to go into detail about this, and Slashdot isn't the place to try to deliver a tutorial in orbital mechanics anyway (even if I was expert enough to teach such a thing, which I'm not). So the short answers are:
It doesn't work like that.
Momentum is conserved, it has to come from somewhere, and there's no available source other than the on-board rocket motors. "Winding up" won't boost anything any more than Earth will fling itself into interstellar space as a result of 4.3 billion circles around Sol.
The kind of celestial billiard shots which got Galileo to Jupiter in the first place (first Venus, then Earth, then Earth again; the so-called VEEGA) require massive bodies to apply the kicks (gravity is the mediating force). This also requires being in roughly the same orbital plane... I think. The moons of Jupiter are too small to apply big enough kicks, and Galileo is in a nearly-polar orbit which cannot take good advantage of them anyway.
So that's my take on the issue.
This sort of project (even if unsuccessful) would teach NASA how to use unfueled satellites efficiently.
NASA/JPL has been doing this since before you were born. Just getting Galileo to Jupiter without the Centaur booster originally specified for the purpose (NASA refused to allow hydrogen-fuelled rockets in the Shuttle cargo bay after Challenger) required wizardry and finesse beyond your dreams. See this link for more information on the VEEGA maneuver, and this for data on the Venus-Venus-Earth-Jupiter slingshot used to get Cassini to Saturn. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Re: The dreaded nightmare God
by
jjohn
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· Score: 2
I fear you are correct. The sanity-blasting truth of these multi-tendriled fascist space monsters is known to me all too dearly. At certain ghoulish times of the year, my sleep is haunted by the dreams of slime covered, cyclopean columns which mark out a dead alien city. Shadowy figures shuffle along its centuried streets. How many aeons have past since those enormous walls were formed I dare not ponder. Even in the bright light of day, I fear I hear the horrible clicking of their hellish maws at the very limit of perception.
A first stike? I think the war is lost before the first volley of arms. I will no more be reading Slashdot because I now do what must be done. I go to the sea the follow the ancient call of our nightmare God.
Money's hardly a factor; don't trash the subject!
by
Tau+Zero
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· Score: 4
The point of the crashing maneuver is to prevent Galileo from crashing into Europa and possibly contaminating it with Earth organisms, thereby making it difficult or impossible to determine if life arose there naturally. Galileo's mission is almost done, but the value of future missions is at stake here. We sterilized the Viking probes to avoid just this scenario. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Re:Money's hardly a factor; don't trash the subjec
by
Esperandi
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· Score: 2
Is this a plausible scenario (polluting Europa I mean) considering all the radiation the probe has endured? Shouldn't all organic organisms be completely destroyed?
Esperandi Are viruses immune to radiation? Considering we've never been able to cure a single one (go ahead, do the research, we can't kill the buggers) I'm guessing that they are...
They can't be all bad.. then again...
by
Esperandi
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· Score: 2
Well, they hate hip-hop so they can't be hardly that bad... but then again, their choice is mariachi music which is almost as bad... damn, between a rock and a hard place.
Tell me where they stand on technology issues, maybe then you can get me to hate them;)
Esperandi They can eat my dog, they can take my neighbors SUV, they can even take my hemoglobin, as long as they promise to beat the hell out of the AT&T execs until I get a motherfucking cable modem!
Re:has the environmental movement gone too far?
by
Bryan+Andersen
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· Score: 2
Unfortunatly it isn't the ton of metal and silicon they are worried about. It's the micro gram of flesh along for the ride.
You signed the social contract
by
ToastyKen
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· Score: 2
You're not being forced to do anything. You voluntarily signed yourself into the social contract of the world. By entering into this contract, you get the benefits, but you also are expected to hold up your end of the bargain. If you DON'T want to pay for medical research, you can always wander off to Antarctica, found your own little country, and cut off all links to the outside world.
Re:Money's hardly a factor; don't trash the subjec
by
kaphka
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· Score: 2
Look at it this way... Let's say we let Galileo crash into Europa. (Isn't that extraordinarily unlikely, anyway?) Thirty years later, we land a probe on Europa, and it discovers a colony of organisms near the Galileo crash site. What's the most plausible explanation?
The first scientists to announce the discovery of living extraterrestrial organisms are going to want to be damn sure they've covered all the other possibilities first. We may as well prevent Galileo from becoming an issue in the first place.
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Use then together, Use them in peace." I think someone or something has the fear of God in them over at NASA to maybe not spoil another pristine worl with our junk. Beside the mission has bee a success for over a decade. Wasted tax dollars? I think not!
-- Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse?
It says Romans go home.
No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose given their current track record with crash landing expensive satelites and recon vehicales, they figure this is one operation they cannot screw up.
I just hope they dont miss and send it flying off into deep space.
I say we crash Galileo into Europa! Show those European fuckers we mean bizniz!
- Have a picture
Keep in mind that this craft is 11 years old...it's ancient in terms of spacecraft. It's original 2 year mission was extened another 2 years and is AGAIN being extened 2 more years...so we definatly got our money's worth out of it...and then some. we got 4 extra years out of a space craft that traveled a great distance, don't complain, we should retire it with dignity and honour.
Sgt Pepper
Lame Sig Shamelessly Ripped from
Fortune:
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
I think that they should crash it into a life supporting planet/moon to see what happens. I think that would be an interesting experiment by itself.
Dr Fgets Strikes again!
I think they should try put it into a solar orbit, so that it could be salvaged and put on display a century or two from now. Let's face it: Galileo is one of the most successful space probes ever built. Sure, it was expensive, but look at what we learned from it, despite the major malfunctions it faced early on.
And let's not forget exactly where all that money it cost goes to: paying people's paychecks. The dollars aren't used as rocket fuel, y'know.
I'm impressed that they're considering that course of action - it shows some real foresight. Europa, if inhabited (by any life) could be enormously useful ('uncontaminated') by virtue of being a huge, somewhat isolated biosphere. In addition, this is some real respect for the universe, a big thing we don't quite understand. Let's not mess up another rock if we don't need to. And why would we need to?
[|]
At night I can hear the transmissions from their communications satellites resonating in my fillings; the hideous, scheming clacking of their beaks has rendered sleep an unattainable fantasy. They intend to devour our dogs whole and use our sports-utility vehicles as punch-bowls for their post-conquest banquet. They monitor our radio transmissions, love our mariachi music, and yet despise our hip-hop. These are truly monsters.
How long will the scientific community continue to feign ignorance of this exo-cephalopodic threat looming under Europa?s dark plutonian shores? And how long will it be until our own squid-- trusted friend and snack-- turn on us? As the first earth-dweller to fully recognize the very real threat of worldwide Europan conquest, I enjoin you: We must take up arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end it.
Who's with me?
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
This Headline implies that NASA it wasting money on 'shooting' probes out just to crash them now.
;-) )
Remember that Galileo has done it's purpose and to avoid a possible extraterrestrial contamination of another celestial body that possibly may supporting life, they decided to crash it into another planet that (most likely) does not support any life.
NASA isn't in the habit of building something just to throw it away for no good reason. Sure, they make mistakes, but NASA is still ran by humans, and humans make 'human errors.' The technological feats that they have done (and are still doing) boggles the mind. (I'd like to see you calculate the exact vector to break orbit and travel to Jupiter over the course of 2 years with only 2 minutes of burn-time)
NASA is still going strong and I feel quite happy that my tax-dollars are being pourned into it. (Besides they brought us TANG!
Cheers.
--
Why couldn't they just redirect it when the Millennium Mission is complete in February 2001? With such a success, (NASA needs a few) why crash it in to Jupiter, there has to be some value the old warhorse can provide. It'd be a shame to end this program.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Nice to see that NASA has finally woken up to the problem of space rubbish around other planets. If Gallileo does have Earth-born bacteria on it which have survived in space (there are various theories about life spreading from planet to planet by this method) it would be extremely frustrating to disrupt any current ecosystem on Europa. On the other hand, this concern will make the job of examining Europa in the future more tricky, regardless of what they do with Galileo (dropping it into the Jovian atmosphere or crashing it into Io both sound like possibilities to gain interesting data on either planet/moon). If we are going to go explore Europa for signs of life, we are almost certainly going to have to do it remotely with 'sterilized' equipment - sending a few astronauts down to have look isn't going to help in the attempts to not disrupt any life already there.
Of course, our own orbit is now strewn with bits of satellites and rocket boosters - thankfully it all tends to wander around at the same speeds as the spacecraft in orbit, but it gets a little bit unnerving to wonder about the future of colonizing the galaxy when you have to dodge the last 100 years of waste products in getting started.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Wow... an amazing short-sighted look at the space industry and government. Let's see... if we give money to the space industry, they'll start more projects. As a result more jobs are created. This lets people work and possibly get off wellfare to do the factory work created either directly or indirectly by the NASA projects. Helps our economy and therefore pays for itself. It's people like toofast that should be strapped to next rocket and get a firsthand look at the wonders of outer space.
Seriously, this makes sense. Once they've squeezed the last bit of use out of it, why not?
Nice to see someone thinking a little ahead for once.
(ObRef: "All these worlds are yours-- except Europa. Attempt no landings there.")
Superior: Do you see anything?
Subordinate: Sir, I'm starting to get an image.
Superior: See if you can focus it. We want to know if there's any real life on Europa. We don't want to contaminate it.
Subordinate: Sir, I'm seeing something. It looks like... Like a...
Superior: Yes?
Subordinate: My God... We won't have to worry about contaminating Europa, sir.
Superior: Dammit, what is it?!?
Subordinate: It's a Starbucks, sir.
--
"This is a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend SOMEBODY!" - John Adams
Michael Chisari
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER, USE THEM IN PEACE.
thank you.
We don't know. That's the point.
Even if microbes did make it through space and survice an impact what is the chances that any alien life would be compatible with ours?
We don't know. That's the point. There is no basis (yet) on which to judge those odds. Anyone who says otherwise is indulging in a WAG whether they admit it or not.
Why take any chance? Though it's functioned way beyond it's expected time, the craft is nearing the end of its usefulness. It's time to clean up after ourselves. For a change.
Nasa Scientist A: I'm getting bored at looking at Jupiter
Nasa Scientist B: I know what you mean, same old same odl
A: Mind you those comets that smashed into it were pretty cool
B: Yeah, 11 years watching and its all clouds and methane, where is the fun in that ?
A: We need to do something exciting.
Enter Military Man C
C: Hi Guys, anything new ?
A: Nope, just a big red dot and a possible ocean.
B: And of course the black bits.
C: Okay I'll be off.
A: Hang On, we're just wondering how to make this job more interesting, any ideas ?
C: Well you could take the military approach...
B: Which is ?
C: If it costs over a billion dollars, make sure it crashes, we did it with the Stealth Fighters and Bombers, its the whole purpose of the ICBMs. And they make WAY cool noises and pretty lights when they go up.
A: You mean you crash these things on purpose ?
C: Sure sometimes, but we video everything just incase we get lucky by accident.
And that ladies and gentlemen was how the plan was formed.
I know, I was coffee mug D.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
"IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988"
If I had a space ship, I don't think I'll just crash it into Jupiter. There's got to be a better way.
Does anyone else think that country is worthy of ridicule, that will crash $1.5 billion of equipment to avoid even the remote chance that it might hurt some single-celled bacteria, and then legalize the destruction of millions of unborn babies? Do those mythical one-celled motes from outer space have more rights than human children?
Well, first of all with the cost argument, the space craft is 11 years old, was only intended to be used for 2 years, so in essence, you got 9 years free, can't beat that deal...
I know you're going after the abortion deal, which is really disturbing, whether or not you believe abortion should be legal (I really don't, with some exceptions) you must keep in mind, these are OUR offspring, any life on another planet is NOT ours, and therefore we have more right to destroy our stuff then their stuff. I know it sounds draconian but really thats the way it is.
There are no life forms on any of those moons. This is incredibly stupid.
So I take it you've been there, right?
-- iCEBaLM
Great. So those microbes take a plunge on to a new planet. Fast forward 5 billion years, and those microbes have populated Jupiter and have created life on an otherwise lifeless planet. We've just infected Jupiter!
"Just to be sure, they want to get rid of it and make sure it doesn't go into Europa, where we have a possible habitat of some kind of extraterrestrial life."
Soooooo.....What happens if the crash site is currently occupied with Life Forms that we DON'T suspect, hmm? So in an ironic ending to the life of Galileo, it crashes into a planet with life forms and introduces extra-Jupiterian life to divide and conquer.
Or, we could send it off into deep space, and discover it 300 years from now as a tremendous space probe named G'leo.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Yep, I think the problem is that they will soon not be able to control it at all and they'd rather just make sure it crashes into Jupiter or Io rather than try to put it into some kind of 'stable/permanent' orbit that might decay over time for some unforeseen reason (passing of an unknown comet) and end up falling into Europa and possibly causing biological contamination. (Yeah, I know but someone already said there is a theory which says it might be possible for bacteria to still be viable, even after 11 years in the frozen vacuum of space.)
Makes sense to me. It's already performed it's original mission and then some so it's not like wasting billions of dollars when this craft is 11 years old and has reached the end of it's useful life anyway. Rather than letting this thing float around as so much space junk, they are thinking about of 'disposing' of it as best they can at this point. Plunge it into Jupiter, take a few snapshots on the way in for the evening news. So what's the diff? Option A) have a dead spacecraft floating around with the extremely small possibility that it might mess up Europa someday, or B) use the remaining fuel to send it into Jupiter where it won't cause any trouble and you might just eek out the last shred of science out of a very successful program. No contest.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Everyone know Pionner 10, well, this "old" thing has been launch in March 2nd, 1972, so it has 28 years old today, happy birthday Pionner 10!
--
BeDevId 15453
Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Whether it's running out of fuel is not a question of if, but when. It takes numerous bursts of propellant to keep a craft in any kind of decent orbit when dealing with not just the gravity of Europa, but also Jupiter, Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and the other 10 or more smaller satellites of Jupiter. These tend to pull it in so many different directions that it WILL fall out of orbit if not maintained, (though there is a tiny chance it could actually be propelled away by sheer luck). In addition, this project has been extended beyond its original life, and it costs money to maintain a group to monitor & control the satellite. Once it can no longer take pictures, something must quickly be done to avoid wasting money maintaining what has become a piece of space-junk some 45 light-minutes from Earth.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Microsoft may deliberately crash the $200 Windows 2000 OS which is exploring software stores and computers worldwide at this moment to avoid contaminating system memory. MS Programmers believe simple life forms may exist in your motherboard, as evidenced by the system "bus" which they obviously must use for transportation. An MS spokesman made a statement: "If our OS didn't crash so much, these simple creatures wouldn't be able to survive in your computer. Stable, free OS's run too long, not allowing the bus creatures to come up for air often enough. We're just doing the humane thing."
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Does anyone else think that country is worthy of ridicule, that will crash $1.5 billion of equipment to avoid even the remote chance that it might hurt some single-celled bacteria, and then legalize the destruction of millions of unborn babies? Do those mythical one-celled motes from outer space have more rights than human children?
whoa, whoa. calm, cool, collected.
T. Herman Zweibel has started reading /. !!!
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
I don't really want a bacteria which survives that environment back on Earth, but it does not matter much. Earth bacteria get blown off the top of the atmosphere all the time. Gravity pulls some to the Moon or Sun, while the solar wind tends to push them away from the Sun. Some will hit rocks and get carried in random directions, including back to Earth.
It doesn't matter how small the probabilities. Some bacteria has probably already survived a round trip back to us. And if Galileo is ever recovered, it will be in a society with so much space travel taking place that we'll have a lot of life wandering in and out of space.
I doubt they'll crash it when the millenium project is done. Many projects, such as this, get swiped by someone else who needs them. Some researcher, right now, is contacting NASA saying, "Hey, I've got this great project which can use your ship. I know it's only 30% functional, but that is acceptable to me, and the gov't will fund my project if I can bring the cost down. By using your ship instead of sending a new one, I'm shaving 10 years and 100 million off my project."
In fact, many researchers are sending their proposals in all the time for space equiment which is nearing its life cycle. This is how it works in that industry. Who knows, we may even sell it to another country who doesn't have the ability to send stuff into space.
-Adam
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein
First off, the $1.5G spacecraft is almost at the end of its life as it is. By crashing it into Jupiter, we can at least collect some last bits of data on the planet..which is what Galileo was intended to do anyways. And it's not like that money is going to waste, it's being circulated through the economy just like any other money.
Secondly, the abortion debate aside, if there is a living ecosystem on Europa (not likely but possible -- and by the way, if you can prove that there's no life on Europa, please do so), it would be incredibly stupid and reckless of us to disrupt it. Even in Christian theology, we are the stewards of creation; this implies that we have a responsibility to protect creation, given to us by God. That aside, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from examining Europa directly. If life already exists there, then we have a chance to examine extraterrestrial life...based on an entirely different ecosystem...directly. Otherwise, we have the possibility, for the first time, to introduce terrestrial life to a whole new environment. Both experiments have terribly important implications in biology.
Finding God in a Dog
However, we have already been contaminated by, and have contaminated, most of our inner solar system - through metorites. Simulations show that good sized impacts or volcanic eruptions can fling some material into outer space, and then they cross from planet to planet in mere tens of thousands of years, not millions as previously thought. Turns out that there are dynamically stable / unstable regions which can collect and eject matter - the earth crossing asteroids (Apollos, Amors, Atens, Trojans? I forget which is which) produce signifant meteorites on earth, as do Mars and the moon.
So chances are, we've already "contaminated" other planets, even before our space probes tracked mud in all over the kitchen floor... Europa, because of its ice cover insulating a possible biosphere, is of course unique.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Now, if they were able to get the probe back to Earth, and put it in a museum, THAT would be dignified.
My personal view is that they've discovered it's on a collision course with Jupiter, there's not enough fuel to change course, and they're trying a different tactic to their usual "it just vanished" routine.
(If their probes "vanished" as often as they've always claimed, the Loch Ness Monster sat next to me at lunch and offered me an autographed photo of the Yeti. If anyone at NASA wants a copy, I'll trade it for a fully-fuelled Saturn V rocket.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
NASA always likes crashing things. In fact they are getting real good at it lately.
If they could get the tech and bandwidth going to relay back high-res 5000fps video (so you can later savor every frame in super slo-mo) on the way down they'd have some killer pay-per-view potential there. Great potential revenue stream.
I know I'd pay US$40.00 to watch a piece of space junk slam into a planet. Earth, even
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This would make a great sketch if Lovitz were still on the show.
They would have the "Liar Guy" come out in a NASA press conference.
The press would hound him about another NASA loss in the space program.
He would say. "Yeah, we meant to crash into Jupiter. Yeah thats the ticket. We found life on Europa and didn't want the spacecraft to fall on one of the aliens by accident. Yeah. The idea came from my wife.... Natalie Portman... Yeah thats the ticket"
Well, I should have made it clear that the whole idea that life exists on some other planet's moon isn't stupid because of anything the Bible says or doesn't say...it's stupid because it's stupid. It's the longest long shot anyone could come up with.
Geez, I KNOW we've "gotten our money's worth" out of this billion-dollar tin can, but given the sheer, incredibly gargantuan odds that anything like a life form exists on Jupiter's moon seems like a big ol' waste to me.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
If it were only possible, then I'd be totally in favor of returning Galileo to Earth. Unfortunately, it barely has enough fuel to maintain its orbit around Jupter, let alone enough fuel to get all the way back to Earth. Furthermore, any vehicle coming to Earth from Jupiter is gonna be going damn fast when it gets here, and Galileo does not have any method of slowing down (no fuel, no aerobraking).
Galileo may also be somewhat radioactive after 11 years in space and multiple high-radiaion banzai runs past Io. Not the sort of object you'd want to hang up in the Smithsonian.
By the way, we've got a complete Saturn V with zero milage up on blocks by the front gate here. She's a bit run down and the serial numbers don't all match. You'll need to supply your own fuel, too, sorry.
-- a real Person From NASA(tm)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You'll understand that I feel just because they said Galileo didn't undergo decontamination doesn't mean that other spacecraft have. Certainly Viking had not, if this is only a modern phenomenon.
Personally, I doubt that crashing Galileo into Europa is going to make a hill-of-beans difference to any ecosystem that may exist there. It is extrememly unlikely that any microbes on Galileo survived the trip, especially after the passes over Io.
I guess my point in my previous post is that the statment made by NASA about Europa is mostly usless rubbish/propaganda. It's like saying, "I ain't never been to jail," when all of one's siblings are in jail. What do they want, a cookie? (sorry, blatant Chris Rock rip-off there) So NASA gets to fire a thruster on the side of Galileo for a few seconds and send it hurtling into Jupiter. They talked about that last week describing how they would be able to get good research data from the drop into the atmosphere of Jupiter before Galileo was crushed or burned up. They made no mention of this, "We better miss Europa or we may cause major ecological damage," line.
This remark is little better than posturing on NASA's part. I feel if they were truly concerned about space pollution, they would be doing something about all the crap that is up in Earth orbit. Also, they have probes all over the place now, from Mars Surveyor, to Pioneer, Voyager, blah, blah, blah. NEAR might hit Eros, but they haven't mentioned that there might be life there, as far as NASA knows.
Why aren't they worried about contaminating Jupiter? One very simple reason: It's a giant ball of gas. I don't think you're going to find any water there, and I certainly don't think you're going to find any life. It's essentially a star that almost-was.
"hey Bob?"
"Yeah Frank"
"Remember that metrics/english conversion we didn't make, how it made the martian thingy crash?"
"Yeah Frank, I remember that. Why do you ask?"
Well, the jupiter thingy has the same error. I think it's gonna crash too"
"Jehosephat, Bob! Quick! Release a press statement that we're going to do it on purpose in order to... um... um... Save The Environment! yeah, that's the trick"
"I wish I were smart like you, Frank."
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
- It doesn't work like that.
- Momentum is conserved, it has to come from somewhere, and there's no available source other than the on-board rocket motors. "Winding up" won't boost anything any more than Earth will fling itself into interstellar space as a result of 4.3 billion circles around Sol.
- The kind of celestial billiard shots which got Galileo to Jupiter in the first place (first Venus, then Earth, then Earth again; the so-called VEEGA) require massive bodies to apply the kicks (gravity is the mediating force). This also requires being in roughly the same orbital plane... I think. The moons of Jupiter are too small to apply big enough kicks, and Galileo is in a nearly-polar orbit which cannot take good advantage of them anyway.
So that's my take on the issue. NASA/JPL has been doing this since before you were born. Just getting Galileo to Jupiter without the Centaur booster originally specified for the purpose (NASA refused to allow hydrogen-fuelled rockets in the Shuttle cargo bay after Challenger) required wizardry and finesse beyond your dreams. See this link for more information on the VEEGA maneuver, and this for data on the Venus-Venus-Earth-Jupiter slingshot used to get Cassini to Saturn.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I fear you are correct. The sanity-blasting truth of these multi-tendriled fascist space monsters is known to me all too dearly. At certain ghoulish times of the year, my sleep is haunted by the dreams of slime covered, cyclopean columns which mark out a dead alien city. Shadowy figures shuffle along its centuried streets. How many aeons have past since those enormous walls were formed I dare not ponder. Even in the bright light of day, I fear I hear the horrible clicking of their hellish maws at the very limit of perception.
A first stike? I think the war is lost before the first volley of arms. I will no more be reading Slashdot because I now do what must be done. I go to the sea the follow the ancient call of our nightmare God.
AI! Cthulhu F'htagn!!
What would you suggest we do with it, anyway?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The point of the crashing maneuver is to prevent Galileo from crashing into Europa and possibly contaminating it with Earth organisms, thereby making it difficult or impossible to determine if life arose there naturally. Galileo's mission is almost done, but the value of future missions is at stake here. We sterilized the Viking probes to avoid just this scenario.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Is this a plausible scenario (polluting Europa I mean) considering all the radiation the probe has endured? Shouldn't all organic organisms be completely destroyed?
Esperandi
Are viruses immune to radiation? Considering we've never been able to cure a single one (go ahead, do the research, we can't kill the buggers) I'm guessing that they are...
Well, they hate hip-hop so they can't be hardly that bad... but then again, their choice is mariachi music which is almost as bad... damn, between a rock and a hard place.
;)
Tell me where they stand on technology issues, maybe then you can get me to hate them
Esperandi
They can eat my dog, they can take my neighbors SUV, they can even take my hemoglobin, as long as they promise to beat the hell out of the AT&T execs until I get a motherfucking cable modem!
Unfortunatly it isn't the ton of metal and silicon they are worried about. It's the micro gram of flesh along for the ride.
You're not being forced to do anything.
You voluntarily signed yourself into the social contract of the world.
By entering into this contract, you get the benefits, but you also are expected to hold up your end of the bargain.
If you DON'T want to pay for medical research, you can always wander off to Antarctica, found your own little country, and cut off all links to the outside world.
Look at it this way... Let's say we let Galileo crash into Europa. (Isn't that extraordinarily unlikely, anyway?) Thirty years later, we land a probe on Europa, and it discovers a colony of organisms near the Galileo crash site. What's the most plausible explanation?
The first scientists to announce the discovery of living extraterrestrial organisms are going to want to be damn sure they've covered all the other possibilities first. We may as well prevent Galileo from becoming an issue in the first place.
MSK
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Use then together, Use them in peace." I think someone or something has the fear of God in them over at NASA to maybe not spoil another pristine worl with our junk. Beside the mission has bee a success for over a decade. Wasted tax dollars? I think not!
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Two months? What are you talking about? So in a year, the entire US goverment can only raise 9 billion dollars?
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
No, I don't think ethically we do. If we just merely benifit from it no, not a chance. Now if it comes down to survival, then yes, its us or them.
-- iCEBaLM