Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
.