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Construction Begins on Beagle 2
Bonker writes "CNN reports that Beagle 2, a lander that's part of ESA's next Mars mission, is beginning construction in England. The lander will be constructed in clean-room conditions to avoid being contaminated with any kind of terrestrial life so that it can more accurately determine if there is or was any kind of martian life once it arrives."
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
This could go very wrong...
Cheers,
Ian
The major thing about this mission that is new is that Beagle 2 contains an automated MassSpec. These things are normaly huge, and would have been imposable to get to mars at the time of Viking. But the Beagle 2 designers have worked on miniturizing and compacting one into the space and wieght available.
This is where the "Beagle 2 will look for life" is coming from. Viking told us general stuff, Rover gave us Geology, Beagle 2 will go for an indepth investigation of exactly what the soil in the area it lands is composed of.
I think you'll find that the GNP and population of the combined EU nations is approximately equivalent to that of the United States. Our technical expertise is pretty much equivalent (we're hardly the Third World)
The question, therefore, is why on earth shouldn't we keep up with the Russians or Americans? Russia's hardly in great shape (no disrespect to their pioneering work in the past) and the US's space program has likewise seen better days.
I just wanted to put in a quick advert for the Beagle 2 website at http://www.beagle2.com/. Many of your questions can be answered there.
-Karl
Dr Karl Mitchell
Planetary Science Research Group
Environmental Science Dept.
Lancaster University, UK
You know that if they do find life they'll blame it on "earthly contamination" no matter how clean it was so these clean room conditions don't do anything but waste time and money. Why not just let it sit in the corner of a nuclear waste site for a couple months and have that nuke off any germs.
If TV has taught me anything, it's that radiation makes things grow. It's people like you who are responsible for us having six foot tall germs chasing people down the street, devouring houses and apartment buildings and leaving a trail of green slime. I hate green slime.
I fully agree with this. The original poster (excluding a troll) may be mistaking this mission with the whole man-in-space mumbo-jumbo (I'm all for colonizing space, but not the ISS-billion-government-dollar way). However:
We excel in rocket science. Serious. The Ariane 5 can launch 6 tons in GTO, and the next version due this fall can do 8. Proton cannot do that AFAIK and using the horrendously exepnsive Shuttle to save money would be ludicrous at best. The next Atlas 5 and Delta 4 will match this kind of performance and are possibly easier to scale up, but are not there yet.
Sorry to start this reply on a sour note, but that is a largely incorrect statement. Jealousy of America as a whole is not a something I encounter much in the UK, or the rest of Europe. Distrust and incredulity, whether justified or not, are at least as common. There is a fair amount of respect for NASA and its science, as the US space programme has done some wonderful things. In particular, the willingness of the US government to release all the data from NASA's planetary missions to the international science community is much appreciated. I hope the ESA will maintain a similar policy.
On to the space programme though. The truth is that a united European science-driven space programme would have been impossible in the past. This was not so much because of a lack of will or experience in the science community, in fact, many European scientists have had important and even leading roles in NASA missions. Not was it a lack of money, as the European economy is similar is size to the United States and also tends to have slightly higher taxes. It was mostly due to a lack of a cohesive structure allowing nations to pool their resources. Only over the past decade or so have we seen this degree of unity, and it looks set to continue into the future.
You wonder why the Europeans should bother to have a science-drive space exploration programme? Well, space exploration slowed down considerably after the 1970s, what with the end of lunar exploration and the shuttle tragedy. As a result, planetary science went into a decline and many scientists decided that it was no longer possible to rely on data collected by NASA. Although this has changed somewhat over recent years, NASA still has problems. The ISS is severely underfunded and is not living anywhere near to its potential. The Bush administration has no interest in any space science that is unprofitable, with the possible exception of the goal to get an American on Mars. Also, several missions have been lost due to the smaller-faster-cheaper-"far more likely to crash" approach in the 1990s, although it has to be said that some, particularly Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder, have been extremely successful.
So, we're left with two options: (1) To let NASA continue along its current course, with the possibility that space exploration will decline once again, or (2) To start planetary exploration independently, giving more data to the international science community and providing NASA with some competition. The latter of these points is highly important, as the United States, as with any free-market economy, seems to thrive on competition. It wouldn't surprise me if the current European interest in Mars causes NASA to re-double its efforts to get a human on another world, and good luck to them!
Of course, you might not think that space exploration is at all important. If that is a case, we've got a completely different argument on our hands.
-Karl
Dr Karl Mitchell
Planetary Science Research Group,
Environmental Science Dept.,
Lancaster University, UK
A sensible approach would be to let the Americans spend the money, then when it becomes commercial feasible people in Europe will start running commercial services up their anyway
So you've never heard of Arianespace then? Arianespace has over 50% of the world's commercial launch market. That sounds kinda commercially feasible to me.
And the reason? Simple. The Ariane rockets get satellites into space faster, with less hassle, and more reliably than anyone else. Which means that when you add up the total costs, Ariane also gets them into orbit cheaper than anyone else (although the Russians are competitive, and currently have a less-full launch schedule, which is why the Beagle 2 is scheduled to launch on a Russian rocket). The US doesn't even come close, mostly due to reliance on the horrendously-expensive Shuttle and the resulting negative impact that has had on the Atlas and Delta launch programmes.
The EU is up with the best in terms of unmanned space vehicle technlogy too - as an example, the Huygens lander that is part of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan was developed and built in the UK, and in 2000, Europe finally supplied over 50% of the world's geostationary communication satellites.
NASA and the rest of the US space industry has talked for some years about doing it 'faster, cheaper, better' but right now, the Europeans are walking the walk rather than talking the talk and are reaping the benefits.
However, outside the space industry itself the European space programme has an image problem - as demonstrated by your post, even Europeans have no idea how well the European space industry is doing. This, in turn, has a negative impact on future sales of satellites and launch services. What it needs is good PR, and the best way of doing that is by headline-grabbing space science programmes, and Beagle 2 is a good example. Think of it as a long-term marketing investment by European governments. What is spent now on space science projects will, if the mission is successful, repay itself many times in the future in terms of sales of satellites and launch services and the tax revenues that are derived from that, not to mention the effect it has on overall national prestige and worldwide perception as leaders in technology, which has other spinoff benefits.
The Americans and Russians have understood this for decades, which is why there has been continued investment in space science programmes of limited immediate economic benefit in these countries, and why you have this distorted view of the world in which American and Russian space technology is far superior to everyone else's.
Just because you are unable to see short-term economic benefit does not mean that such economic benefit will not happen later and perhaps indirectly: all it shows it that you are blinkered by short-termism. Sadly, such views are common and are in some ways the biggest blight on the Western way of life, but I'll save that for another rant.
> France alone is responsible for roughly half the ESA budget.
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Ok, let's kill this particular French wet dream in the bud. It might make for a great sheep-counting alternative at night, but is far from based on reality.
CNES figures on a horrible chart:
http://www.cnes.fr/cnes/moyens/en/budget_
ESA figures:
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/annu
Roughly half? Hmm...