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Funding Approved for Pluto/Kuiper Probe
azpenguin writes "While we discuss the acheivements of the now-silent Pioneer 10, Congress has apporved funding for the "New Horizons" mission to send a probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Space.com has the story here. NASA had actually fought the idea, but Congress approved the money anyway. Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft."
In related news, dalewj writes "Seems the team at JPL will
discontinue operations on
the Galileo Space probe to Jupiter after
extended the mission
three times. Galileo has been in space since 1989 and has some amazing
findings and pictures available on the
JPL website. Truly NASA and JPL's best effort to date."
Wonder if in 12 years (when the probe is supposed to reach Pluto) the public will be as fascinated with the pictures coming back as much as with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft."
;)
Then again, the public might already be bored with the pics from the probe sent to Pluto in 10 years, with a vastly superior propulsion system which gets it there in one year
.: Max Romantschuk
I hope the Congress will also give them extra money when the project inevitably runs over-budget... I think the NASA administration was basically thinking that whatever money Pluto-Kuiper express gets, causes an equivalent decrease in other NASA funding. After all, from the Congress's point of view, it's all on the space research account...
Unfortunately, the problems haven't even started yet for this mission.
Pretty much anything going to the outer system must have a radiothermoisotopic battery aboard, which powers the craft by using the warmth of decaying radioactive isotopes. It's too dark for solar cells out there.
And to get out there, probes must use slingshot trajectories around inner system planets, usually including Earth. It is conceivable, if highly improbable, that a navigation error (insert unit conversion joke) would cause the probe to impact Earth instead of passing it by.
In sum, be prepared for a repeat of the Cassini craze.
Going places where we have not been before. It makes more sense (and is more cost effective) than man marking time in the space station.
The have to do this mission soon while Pluto is in the "warm" part of of its' orbit.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
That's from the article. No mentioning on NASA's web site yet.
In the light of recent Shuttle disaster, NASA is perhaps more keen on getting money to improve safety on Shuttle missions. Just guessing...
What do politicians care about exploring Pluto?
This is just another superiority assertion by the US government. The fact that NASA was against the mission shows how much the government cares about the opinions of those who will be actually performing the mission.
WTF are we going to find on Pluto? How about that moon that may have a liquid ocean beneath it's surface? (can't remember it's name) It's closer, it will cost lest and happen faster. There's far more potential of finding something interesting.
But $504 Million dollars is a lot of money! I could brush everyone's teeth in America with that money! Twice!
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
On NPR a scientist was saying that space station funding and cooperation with Russia was at a standstill because they are helping Iran work towards a nuclear powerplant. So congress wont give them money, then they force money on NASA. That aside, I hate space exploration. I want our problems solved first. Why go out there when we are so busy trying to kill ourselves here? I do not understand the point of exploring space at all, its such a waste of money, time, and resources. I am a geek, and that makes me realize the folly all the more. Until we develop the tech to do it right, Blow it off.
Personally, I'd rather see more money spent on human spaceflight, such as the necessary refitting/redesigning of the shuttles. Probes are great, but Pluto just isn't that exciting to me.
You need to distinguish between your objectives. Human spaceflight serves no immediate purpose. It is a long-term investment for the day where we have the resources and technology to travel to other stars and colonize the galaxy. But in the here and now, it's entertainment: money spent with no productive use. (And better spent, if I may add this, than on automobile races, or presidential campaigns, or certain wars, or any other form of TV entertainment).
The Pluto probe, on the other hand, is science, pure and simple. It's not meant to be exciting, except for scientifically minded people. I won't go on about the reasons for science...
I agree with you. While I want, and will support if I can, manned space flight, I think that the unmanned deep space probes are a second strand which actully delivers more value for money. We need to keep that second strand alive. And $300m expected total cost of the mission ($504m cap) is tiny compared to the spending on Shuttle/ISS.
Apart from anything else, the thinking about designes that *have* to work for 12 years and that you *can't* fix is, IMO, most healthy for NASA. Of course the jury is still out on Columbia, but if it turns out to be tile damage, that shuttle was doomed from liftoff: they had no way of fixing damaged tiles in orbit. NASA has got into the way of thinking that any componen only has to last one flight (Shuttle) or till the next resupply mission (ISS). The rest of the world doesn't work like that: woule you accept a car that needed new tires, an engine overhaul, and a massive safety check after each tankfull of fuel? The rest of the world works either on built to last the lifetime of the object, or at leas a long working life.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
It seems like Bush wants to be remembered for something more than just Iraq.
We've forgotten about Afghanistan already?
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I am all for space exploration, and sending probes out on new fact finding missions. Why do we need to send one all the way to Pluto? Is it that much of a concern to us? We know it is a barren icy wasteland, what more do we need? Not to mention it will take it 12 yeaars to get there! I am sure there is much more closer objects and items we could explore that would be more cost effective.
Perhaps this is why NASA was opposed to the idea? The politicians who pushed it forward weren't necessarily thinking about the best thing for science, but rather the best thing for politics.
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There is absolutely *nothing* going on on the ISS that could in any way be considered important (or at least remotely worth the expenses). And Pluto/Kuiper Belt space exploration seems to be pretty pointless, too, I agree with you here.
On the other side, we *have* to make some progress and the only way we know how is "learning by doing". Research should not always be about instant gratification and sometimes solutions to our problems come from unexpected discoveries. There is a very real need to know as much about our universe as we possibly can figure out.
So, we got to remain active on the space thing or else we won't evolve technologically in that area when it would be rewarding in the long run. Now, why that doesn't mean we establish a Moon and/or Mars colony and do some actual space faring instead of sending countless billion-dollar-probes on suicide missions to return almost no useful data - THAT escapes my limited understanding completely.
Can someone enlighten me on that one?
Let's at least build an automated assembly station on the moon (or something like that) so we can launch "mass produced" probes in a more efficient manner. That's because the cost of getting something in space is still a very huge expense because we're way in the stone ages when it comes to propulsion. And in addition, custom-designing and custom-manufacturing of probes is very expensive. Let's just make more, general purpose probes and send have them start from a low gravity place! Let's go to space using a collection of standardized off-the-shelf components! Why not? (This is normally the point where pseudo-experts jump in and rant about complexity of space missions, but keep in mind that the *actual* reason may be because there is a huge industry that has nothing to gain and everything to loose if space exploration would be made cheaper and more efficient. Our civilization is paralyzed by it's inherent corruption, sometimes it seems like we can almost never get anything actually done.)
Not to mention that we've already had an RTG hit the atmosphere at 25,000 mph when the Apollo 13 LEM re-entered, resulting in millions of deaths and global radioactive contamination. Oh sorry, I forgot, it didn't, did it?
F1 teams, howerver, acquire their revenue through voluntary means. The people who invest in the F1 team have personally chosen to endorse the team. When the F1 team makes a bad investment, they experience a loss. If they can't figure out how to invest their revenue wisely, they will be eliminated from the market and replaced with a better F1 team.
NASA, by contrast, aquires their revenue through the force of government. The people who pay for NASA did not personally choose to endorse the organization. They are given a choice: pay up, leave the country, or go to prison. This "choice" is hardly equivalant to the choice made by F1 investors. When NASA makes a bad investment, they experience no loss -- it wasn't their money in the first place! When a government agency makes a bad investment, more often than not they are rewarded with more revenue.
Perhaps we should be thinking about ways to privatize the space industry, instead of thinking of ways to continue funneling tax dollars into an organization which (and I'm sorry I have to say this) dramatically failed its investors at least twice and continues to recieve funding, whether the investors (taxpayers) approve of it or not.
Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects are made out of the stuff that the entire Solar System was formed of. Personally, I find the 'archaeology' of our home star system to be quite interesting, and this could indeed turn up some exciting results.
If we have learned anything from past probes, it's that we'll always learn something we never expected. That prospect is not exciting?
The eternal quest for knowledge and to understand our history is one of the things that makes us what we are.
What the US did in Afghanistan was a *good* thing.
Those people have moved from the 9th century back to the 17th century. If the warlords can be contained, they'll be in the 20th century within 10 years.
That aside, I hate space exploration. I want our problems solved first.
Yeah, because nothing useful
has ever come
from space research. Jesus man, science for the sake of science is what got our civilization to the advanced state is in today. You don't know the impact space technology has had on your and my life.
Until we develop the tech to do it right, Blow it off.
Yeah, Nasa oughta just sit on their asses until one day the one true idea strikes them and they figure out how to do it right. This is how they figure out how to do it.
.
The whole point of PFF/PKE (Pluto Fast Flyby, renamed Pluto/Kuiper Express, and now renamed again) was to launch early enough and travel fast enough to get there before Pluto's atmosphere freezes. It's fairly likely this has already happened, and almost a certainty by the time the probe gets there. Shame this project got overlooked and delayed so many times, since next chance will be in about two hundred years.
That being said, NASA would much rather spend this money on something that will show direct results quickly. The Pluto mission will not have any results until 2015 when the probe finally reaches the planet. I'm sure that scientifically NASA doesn't mind going forward with a Pluto mission but from a budget standpoint they would rather have used the money for something else.
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