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Galileo, Consumed by Jupiter
We ran stories about Galileo's impending incineration earlier this month and last November when the plan was decided.
Here is a typical passage from Journey Beyond Selene, about the worst glitch in Galileo's mission, and the beginnings of how it would be worked around. Failures and the engineers who salvage them are the recurring tragic, triumphant story of our missions into space. Reproduced without permission:
With such triply redundant hardware built into their spacecraft, mission planners could feel confident that they had designed a communications system that was almost completely resistant to failure, and for the first eighteen months after Galileo's 1989 launch, there was no reason to assume anything would fail. Finally, on April 11, 1991, when the ship's trajectory had spiraled out as far as the edge of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, JPL planners decided it was at last probably safe to unlock the high-gain antenna and spread its ribs. It was only then that they'd learn if triply redundant was redundant enough.
Though the deployment of the high-gain system was not a complicated exercise, it was a critical one, and for that reason the chieftans of the Galileo project made sure they were there to watch it happen. On hand at the flight director's console that afternoon were mission director Neal Ausman, deputy mission director Matt Landanow, and project manager Bill O'Neil. O'Neil and Ausman were far and away the higher ranking of the three men, but Landanow, they all knew, was far and away the most knowledgeable. As chief engineer during the Galileo design phase, he had familiarized himself with every strut, nut and rivet of the ship, and could practically describe their placement and purpose from memory alone. If anything went wrong this afternoon, Landanow would likely be the first person to recognize it -- and the first person to come up with a way to fix it.
For the first forty minutes or so after the deployment command went up, O'Neil, Ausman and Landanow had little to do. Like so many other JPL controllers before them, they knew they would have to tolerate the nonnegotiable limits of light speed, waiting twenty minutes as their signal traveled from Pasadena to the spacecraft and then another twenty minutes as it traveled back again. For that entire time their screens told them nothing, flickering merely with the self-evident information that their command had indeed been sent. Finally, after just over the anticipated forty minutes had elapsed, a column of numbers began to blink on the glass. Landanow gave the figures a quick scan and immediately noticed something amiss. He read them again -- a bit more closely -- and this time started to feel downright queasy. The antenna, from all indications, was pulling what the engineers called stall current. The motor was drawing power, the deployment gears were engaged, but the ribs of the umbrella appeared to be going nowhere at all.
"We're stuck," Landanow said flatly.
"How can you tell?" O'Neil asked.
"The current is saturated, something is jammed," Landanow said. "In any event, the antenna's not budging."
Ausman gave the numbers on the screen a read of his own, confirmed what Landanow was saying, and immediately called out to his flight controllers, instructing them to send a second deployment command up to the ship. The engineers complied, and forty minutes later another stall signal came down. A third command yielded a third signal, and a fourth a fourth. With each new report Landanow winced. If he knew this ship -- and he surely did -- he could all but guarantee that whatever was hanging up the antenna was not much: a single too-tight fitting, perhaps, a single protruding bolt, one that was situated in just such a way that it managed to jam all eighteen ribs. If it were somehow possible to transport the Galileo spacecraft to a hangar in Pasadena, Landanow knew he could probably roll over a stepladder, climb up to the antenna, and spring it free with his hands alone. But Galileo was not in a hangar in Pasadena; it was tens of millions of miles away, at the edge of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more elaborate measures would be necessary.
Time Event
________ _____
11:04 a.m. Coast timer initiates probe operation
12:46 p.m. Orbiter flyby of Io (~1000 km) (No imaging or spectral data collected)
2:04 p.m. Energetic Particles Investigation (EPI) begins measuring trapped radiation in a region previously unexplored.
5:04 p.m. Probe entry and data relay
5:05:52 p.m. Pilot parachute deployed
5:05:54 p.m. Main Parachute deployed
5:06:02 p.m. Deceleration module jettisoned
5:06:06 p.m. Direct scientific measurements begin
5:06:15 p.m. Radio transmission to orbiter begins
~5:08 p.m. Visible cloud tops of Jupiter reached
5:12 p.m. Atmospheric pressure the same as Earth's sea-level pressure
5:17 p.m. Second major cloud deck is encountered (uncertain)
5:28 p.m. Water clouds entered (uncertain)
5:34 p.m. Atmospheric temperature equal to room temperature on Earth
5:46 p.m. Probe enters twilight
6:04 p.m. End of baseline mission. Probe may cease to operate due to lack of battery power, attenuation of signal due to atmosphere, or being crushed.
6:19 p.m. Orbiter ceases to receive probe data (if still transmitting)
7:27 p.m. Ignition of Galileo main engine (49 minute duration) to insert into Jovian orbit
Well it has served well - long past how long it was supposed to.
It's history has been plagued with problems, ones it has overcame.
If any spacecraft would show the history and power of space travel, I think this probe is one of them.
Galileo, Consumed by Jupiter
Conceived in 1977, launched in 1989, the spacecraft Galileo ends its 34th orbit exactly one hour from now
Little early for the past tense 'consumed' don't you think?
(I can already see the 'not any more' post below this one in an hour)
I heard on the radio that there was a chance the plutonium in the probe was going to ignite Jupiter into a second star, and it would kill/sterilize most humans on Earth! Glad that didn't happen.
I was reading this article earlier and I was thinking what a sickening feeling it must have been when they realised that the main antennae was not going to deploy properly leaving them up the creek so to speak. I think its a brilliant achievent that they managed to recover from this huge setback, reprogram the vehicle, retask the mission to focus on the Jovian moons and still get so much useful information. A very cool piece of engineering improvisation.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
FYI, NASA TV has a live webcast here. UATV is another place to watch as they are rebroadcasting the NASA channel...
that show that "faster, better, cheaper" shouldn't mean cutting as many corners as possible while earthside. Galileo was probably one of the top few probes ever on a measure of information learned per dollar spent NOT because we saved money while building it, but because it was built so well that it just kept on transmitting when by all rights it should have gone quiet a long time ago.
The JPL's webcast starts roughly now, and should last about two hours (light delay).
:)
Hehe.. and just so that it doesn't feel left out, that JPL webserver is currently experiencing what its like to get smashed into Jupiter at 48km/s
Good old Slashdot.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
How did you find out my master plan!!!
PINKY! Here, NOW!
Man, that would make a great book.
I've been looking forward to Galileo's collision with Jupiter for weeks. I can't wait to see which one wins!
H4x0r Economist - k33ping d3m0cr4cy l33t 51Nc3 1987
And while we grieve for Galileo today, remember, orbital insertion for Cassini-Huygens is only 283 days away!
I am grieving that the satellite exploring jupiter is dieing. How should I be happy with a satellite that is exploring saturn? I nominate Galelio for nobel prize in science.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Since Jamie rather thoughtlessly posted a direct link to the JPL real stream and now none of us can see it; please visit NASA's website listing all the alternate feeds for NASA TV and use one of these instead.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Well, good thing the didn't try to land it on Pluto and set the whole planet on fire. You might want to take some nuclear physics at some point as well, it is quite enlightening to learn what being nuclear really means. Hint: It doesn't involve the magical ability to blow up everything it touches.
I read the internet for the articles.
NASA Press Release: Due to an unprecedented amount of web traffic on the announcement of the Galileo space probe's imminent plunge into the Jovian atmosphere, the Galileo comms computing center was brought to its knees. NASA engineers showed their ingenuity once more, as the flood of internet traffic was directed to the Galileo probe itself, heating Transistor QB-2542a, allowing the main antenna to unfold and allow the original planned communication range, in addition to acting as a miniature solar sail to push Galileo on a recovery arc around Jupiter. NASA Galileo Command would like to extend appreciation to Slashdot and its readers for allowing the unqualified successes of the Galileo mission to continue.
...
The JPL's webcast starts roughly now
Crap. All NASA offers is RealPlayer.
Miss seeing Galileo crash into Jupiter
or
Spend thirty minutes clicking half a dozen hidden, misleadingly named submenu checkboxes to retain my privacy. And then spend three days un-doing RealPlayer's attempt to take over my entire system and all file extensions.
Screw it. I won't download any insertions into bodies no matter how heavenly if it's in RealPlayer format. Definitely not gonna start with something's that not porn. I'll catch the 2 minute recap on the news.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Heh, historically jupiter has been hit by rocky objects that could have been mistaken for planets. The article you link to is awful, and should be modded as funny. Particularly the first sentence of the conclusion, "Let's all keep in mind that NASA has lost two shuttle crews because of its own internal political problems." It is pretty pathetic that the best they can come up with is this.
-Sean
Maybe it will turn jupiter into a mini-sun, and the ice on Europa will start to melt, and the moon (now a planet) would slowly become habitable
I'm sorry, haven't you heard that Europa is forever off-limits to us?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
an ac above posted this link. I'm still not quite convinced, as their main argument seems to be that form of plutonium is *impossible* to fission.
Well we are talking about a lot of material under pressures (within jupiter) that I'm pretty sure havn't been tested at that level on earth. Perhaps 238 just needs more material/pressure than we have tested it at, but when it does go off the reaction could be gigantic.
Plunging into ever increasing pressure, no one knows for sure if this will cause a chain reaction, but the potential energy and temperatures are enormous.
Are you fucking nuts? Talk about "argument from ignorance"! "I don't understand the first bit of what I'm talking about, but I'm going to babble on anyhow!"
I will personally guarentee you that vast quantities of plutonium, and for that matter every other known element, already exist in Jupiter. Just because it's a "gas planet" doesn't mean it's made entirely of gas.
Moreover, if anything was going to "set Jupiter off" it would have been set off already! Remember Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacking in Jupiter? That's huge quantities of energy, large enough to roil up clouds larger then Earth itself! And that's nothing compared to what even Earth has seen in its history, let alone the King of Planets. (There's no way to know but personally I'd bet at least one moon-sized impact has hit Jupiter in the past. Your choice of "Jovian moon-sized" or "Earth moon-sized".)
The only "danger" from forty pounds of plutonium several light minutes away are the quantities of hot air it can still generate here back on earth. Get over your pathetic 1950's-era nuclear fears already. It's just matter, not black magic!
Great...let's make the gas giant even gassier...
"Noone seems to be talking about the danger that there are 40 pounds of Plutonium-238 (the most volatile form) on board this craft. Plunging into ever increasing pressure, no one knows for sure if this will cause a chain reaction, but the potential energy and temperatures are enormous."
You are an idiot. Please die. NOW!
Wipe the drool from your slack lips and have someone click HERE for you and read the facts.
Oh, and don't forget to please die, NOW!
Thank you kindly.
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Hi, no offense, but this is the most laughable thing I have ever heard.
a) The main fissionable form of plutonium is Pu-239, not Pu-238.
b) Even if this was Pu-239 on board, forty pounds thereof is a borderline critical mass. You would need tampers to make it a good bomb.
c) Even if this was Pu-239 on board and there was enough of it for a critical mass, it is not arranged in a critical geometry that will produce good fission under a Jovian pressure crush.
d) Even if this was Pu-239 in a critical mass in a critical geometry, Galileo lacks the tritium primer required to kickstart a fusion reaction from a fission reaction.
e) Even if Galileo had a working thermonuclear weapon on board, a thermonuclear detonation on Jupiter would not blow up Jupiter, because there isn't enough of an oxygen fraction in the Jovian atmosphere to set the hydrogen afire. Think about it. Jupiter has collided with large asteroids and comets before now. These collisions give off heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. The huge pressures at Jupiter's interior produce heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. If Jupiter could have turned into a star (it cannot) it would have done so by now.
f) Learn more about physics.
H4x0r Economist - k33ping d3m0cr4cy l33t 51Nc3 1987
The chance that such a small quantity of plutonium would cause the whole damned planet to blow up is pretty small to say the least.
Sig you!
Probably no one is talking about that because everyone knows that a comet exploded in the Jovian atmosphere. The energy released there was way beyond anything those pounds of Pu could do.
The article you are linking tells how the jovian atmosphere could compress that pile of Pu like the explosives in the nuclear bomb. It is not that simple.
To achieve a chain reaction that would cause an explosion you need to compress plutonium in a fraction of a second.
The plutonium battery that is falling through the atmosphere would be only slowly squeezed (if it manages to stay in one piece in the first place). If it achieves the right pressure it could become above critical but that does not automatically mean an explosion. It just means that the pile will slowly heat up. The temperatures at the depth this would occur are way higher than those that would be caused by the (slow) chain reaction in the Galileo's battery.
238 is NOT that volatile. I'll say that right now. For the rest of your education, read this.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Short version: There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Read on for the long version.
That is because throwing 48 pounds of Pu-238 (which is useless as weapons grade material, Pu-239 is much better for sustaining fission chain reactions) into Jupiter is like tossing a salt shaker into the ocean. Jupiter already has massive radition belts generated by its interactions with the solar wind. It has surely ingested more than 48 pounds of the various isotopes of Uranium from the thousands or millions of meteorite strikes Jupiter has sustained. And the total energy that could be released by complete fission of all of that plutonium into stable elements would insignificant next to the gravitational-potential energy released by the steady contraction of Jupiter's gas clouds that results from the planet's massive gravitational pull. Because of this contraction, Jupiter already releases significantly more energy back into space that it absorbs from the sun.
Finally, with a total mass that is about 0.0001 times that of the Sun, Jupiter is too small to support fusion reactions in its core by about two (2) orders of magnitude. The smallest stars are about 0.08 times the Sun's mass.
haha.
thank you for the best laugh of the day.
"While it is a giant catcher, it is also the largest pressure cooker of our solar system and it could crush Galileo's 48 pounds of Plutonium. The result could be a Jovian Nagasaki with dire consequences for humankind." in the article and this masterpiece next to it as advertisement "Now that we're past the Nibiru fear mongering, is this ancient planet still orbiting our Sun? Yes, and right now we have the luxury of time to prepare ourselves mentally and spiritually for its next flyby. When it happens, the unprepared will become dumbfounded fate fodder, wishing desperately for luck. Meanwhile, the mentally prepared will already know how to make their own luck."
hahah ooo boy... yourowncrackpots.com
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
No... Pu-238 cannot generate a run-away fission reaction because, as the article states, "the products of this fission ... just don't have the right characteristics to create a chain reaction".
You see, for a fission reaction to runaway, when an atom of material splits (which is triggered by, say, bombardment by neutrons), the reaction emits various forms of energy. In a run-away fission reaction, the splitting of one atom generates enough neutrons to cause other atoms to split, and so on. From the article text, as well as the linked document on various Pu isotopes, you see that Pu-238 cannot do this! Why? Because the split of a Pu-238 atom does not generate the necessary products (ie, neutrons in sufficient number) to sustain a chain-reaction.
I heard on the radio that there was a chance the plutonium in the probe was going to ignite Jupiter into a second star, and it would kill/sterilize most humans on Earth!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - NASA probe Galileo was incinerated in Jupiter's atmosphere this afternoon. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy its transmissions, there's no denying its contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
This spacecraft has been in a very hostile environment for a long time now and to kill it they have to plunge it into the biggest planet in our solarsystem. That is what I call engineering.
The strange thing though is that their site (Nasa) cannot hold up on the preasure from slashdot.
I really HAD another userid
(Far be it for me to engage in ad-hominems, but my BS-meter also goes off on the basis of who's promoting this theory and who's ridiculing it. The main supporters seem to be crop circle theorests, such as those at YOWUSA, and Illuminati-conspiracy enthusiasts. Meanwhile nobody at NASA seems to believe it's going to happen. I feel safe.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
In a copulatory sort of way, you could say he was "launched" about ten months earlier...
This is what I dont get about light cones and relativity. We know that the probe will hit jupiter at ~ 19:00GMT, however we cant see it happen until nearly an hour later. Does this mean it doesnt happen until nearer 20:00GMT? Is it something to do with Scrodinger's cat? Because theres no way for us to know its not hit the planet does it mean it hasn't?
"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die." .... Sounds like he needed some love. ::sniff:::
Could somebody tell me the logic of why we destroy probes after their useful life is over? I'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren would get a kick of being able to fly to Jupiter and retrieve the probes themselves. It's an important piece of history, and I don't see why we need to initiate its own destruction.
I bet they miss!!
"Hey, look we finally got the antenna open.. oh, wait, never mind."
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
This is mentioned on all the major news sites.
-
It's gone. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.
Here is an image of my browser which managed to make it to the webserver in the last minute before Galileo crashed into Jupiter.
http://lucifer.intercosmos.net/g.jpg
It is kind of sad..
and I don't know why.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Good point - sorry about that! Of course oxidative combustion has nothing to do with turning into a sun. I should have been more clear in saying that the detonation would neither set Jupiter on fire nor kick-start nuclear fusion.
H4x0r Economist - k33ping d3m0cr4cy l33t 51Nc3 1987
While we're screaming wildly and flapping our arms, I want us to remember that there is continual concern over at my club, that the next nuclear test could set off a Nitrogen-chain-reaction, thereby blowing up the whole world. We've been very fortunate that this hasn't happened yet.
Now, I know that there isn't much Oxygen on Jupiter, but does that mean that there is no Nitrogen on Jupiter? It does not. Therefore I have proven that...
friend pulls tin hat down around ears, then down to chin
mph fph mumph fffhp...
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Selene Dionne builds spacecraft also? Wow, she is truly amazing.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Was I the only one listening to the original Star Trek theme song at the exact spacecraft time of impact??
;)
That would be a shame. Please Slashdot tell me that we all proudly showed our respect in true Trekkie style! LOL
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins."
--Bertrand Russell
(from "A Free Man's Worship")
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Someone's definitely been watching too many movies. What's the maximum yeild possible for that much Plutonium? Ivy King, to my knowledge the largest fission bomb ever detonated, had a core of about 60 kilos of highly enriched uranium and produced an explosive yeild of about half a megaton.
Comet SL9 fragment G hit Jupiter with an estimated force of 6 MILLION megatons.
If it was that easy to cause a fusion reaction in atmospheric hydrogen, we'd all have fusion reactors in our basements by now.
Ignorance is strength! Go USA! Woo woo woo.
--
Power to the Peaceful
So, that's 48 km/s relative to what? If it's correct to assume the writer meant "relative to Jupiter," then that is ridiculously fast. IIRC, typical orbits around Earth manage only ~8-10km/s.
Yes, I realize Jupiter is larger than Earth, but still...
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
According to this we should have a second Sun in order heavens by now. Break out the tanning lotion!
It was a great time! I Salute you, Galalaeo! ps, nominate galalaeo for TIME person of the year!
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
What if it finds a monolith there? What then? Has anyone thought about this?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Yet we know for sure that you are a friggin moron. Stop wallowing in your ignorance and read something that will actually educate you. There is more to the Internet besides the Black Helicopters newsletter.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Yah, sure, they crashed this one *on purpose*. They forgot Jupiter was so big is my guess.
Tell me another story, Grampa.
I ain't buyin' it. NASA just screwed up again and arranged the phony paper trail on their website, complete with press releases, as a massive coverup. Hey, if they can make up a Moon Shot (Capricorn One? Galileo 2003? Sure!) then they can definitely cover up a screwup like this one.
Jupiter's already on continuous fire, most likely.. the only reason Earth has a high-fraction oxygen atmospher is because we have living systems cracking carbon dioxide and producing more oxygen all the time. In other places without life (like Mars), whatever oxygen might have been present chemically burns against other elements.. that's why Mars is so red, all the rust is iron burned with oxygen.
Chemical burning of that sort is going on here on Earth, of course, but life is faster and more energetic at producing oxygen than chemical burning is at getting rid of it.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
"Re:a new Sun? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 2003.09.21 14:47 (#7018985)
Asking people to die doesn't seem terribly useful. Perhaps you're not as intelligent as you'd like us to believe."
Stupid people need to die. There's too many of them as it is, and despite how stupid they are, far too many of them eventuially breed and the result is even MORE stupid people.
It's gotten to the point where Darwinian selection needs all the help it can get.
If one stupid person actually DOES die because of my encouragement, then the collective I.Q. of the Earth enjoys a collective increase. And if they die before they breed, so much the better.
So many idiots, no where NEAR enough opportunities for them to kill themselves.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
First, Afganistan, then Iraq, and now JUPITER!!!
When will this administration stop?!?!?!?
You may not have had a proper subroutine mechanism, you may have had a bizarre instruction set (with a SEX instruction no less), but you were the first processor for which I ever wrote a set of floating point routines. Rest in peace, old friend.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Briefly, it's because it might otherwise crash into Europe (the moon, not the continent). It has itself discovered that conditions (water) exists on Europe that might habour life (however primitive), and crashing a sattelite from Earth with possible bacteria might contaminate Europe (the moon) with lethal bacteria.
It might sound like far-fetched science fiction - it ain't. It's the official reason for the Jupiter crash.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Bzzt. You fail physics. 1) the probe will likely be vaporized into a 1000-km trail of dust by the impact with the atmosphere at 48 km/s. It won't slow down intact and then sink into the core of Jupiter. 2) The temperature reaches the melting point of metal a few thousand kms down into Jupiter. Even if the probe was intact by the time it sank that far, it would melt/dissolve long before it reached the core. 3) The RTG's contain Pu-238, which as has been stated repeatedly, is not suitable as a nuclear explosive. 4) Even if there was an explosion, it is so incredibly miniscule compared to the mass/size of Jupiter that it simply would not matter. 5) Jupiter CANNOT sustain nuclear fusion - it simply lacks the mass. The pressure in the core is far too low to overcome Coulomb repulsion between protons so that they can fuse. The minimum mass of a star that can sustain fusion is approximately 75 Jupiter masses. That is very, very well-understood physics (look up the astronomical tem "brown dwarf").
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Cassini sent the movie of Jupiter's pole as it flew by on its way to Saturn. Given the enormous winds on Jupiter, the eye could extend a dive into the atmosphere a lot further than going in anywhere else as the pressure has got to be substantially lower inside the eye. Getting a signal out of there would be tricky but just try and imagine what's at the bottom of the eye.
Anybody got an copy of it? (yes you can save Real Steams)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
At least it didn't get stuck in Uranus.
the saddest part is that the craft went on the blind side of jupiter before it went down. So, we didn't get to see its final transmition. Did some scientist at NASA do that on purpose, to let it die with dignity?
What it also means is we don't actually know for certain that it crashed. I mean, maybe on the blind side it pulled back up, was rescued by a spacecraft, or...who knows! Wasn't ther ean old original Star Trek that went along those lines? An old space probe that went nuts, and spawned a civilization?
or, infect it-- if europa is sterile, this could have been a leg up
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I think my favorite commentary on it was from Fox news here last night, which noted that if the plutonium core exploded, then "it would disrupt the entire galaxy." This, after a perfectly fine report on Galileo. It was the last sentence of their blurb -- something to give you warm fuzzies, I guess.
I was wondering what level of disturbance would be required before the entire galaxy was "disrupted" -- simply being visible across the entire galaxy, a tremor like an earthquake, or something more sinister? Perhaps Fox needs a galactic Richter scale to better scare the masses. "It's a 0.00009 on the Asimov scale, which doesn't seem like much and we won't feel any effects; but if you were there, you'd be killed, alright!"
Well, it's nearing 5 PM Eastern here in Indiana. No new sun yet....It's alright, though.../sarcasm/We all know that those fission reactions take some time to start up.../sarcasm/
;-)
You guys give me a buzz when the unthinkable happens, I'll be getting my cans of Ensure ready
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Don't worry, the Jovians will probably just pass a bunch of opressive legislation to demoralize their population and then destabalize their economy to pay for blasting Mercury into the sun. We'll be fine.
It's amazing that the atmosphere probe, which entered at 47 km/sec, managed a controlled deceleration and survived.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Bet? (-:
Or if you prefer something less radical, consider that there are a number of other constants tied to c; in other words, they are as constant as c is.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...also built the defunct high-gain antenna. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I know I'll get modded redundant for this, but that has to be the best retort I've ever read. Kudos.
...because it's /. I naturally feel compelled to say it anyway. If the accretion theory is true (and there's lots to say that, like so many other astronomical theories, it's largely imaginitis), Jupiter has been hit by many objects larger than the Moon. Jupiter is many objects larger than the Moon.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Well, there's always Neo-Darwinism or the New Synthesis, and when that starts looking too silly there'll be some variant of Punctuated Equilibrium raised, you can be sure. Darwinism is important to a lot of people - their religion is based upon it, <irony weight=crushing>so they won't let it die off naturally, as it should</irony>. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...seems more appropriate.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"My god, it's full of stars..."
TPF
Jupiter is many objects larger than the Moon.
;-) (With the proper accent which I'm not sure how to type in this environment.)
Touche.
Something I now wish I had posted: "There aren't any cosmic bombs waiting to go off, because on the Cosmic scale, the universe is always throwing sparks at things. If Jupiter didn't blow up during accretion, it's not going to. Every planet is constantly bombarded by high-energy cosmic rays, and constantly bombarded with high-energy kinetic impacts. Anything that can be lit off has been."
Oh well, can't get it all.
I'm not sure why this story is being posted now. "Galileo consumed by Jupiter" happened in around 1610. Galileo's consuming obsession with Jupiter ultimately led to his condemnation for heresy in 1633. This is a totally appropriate subject for Slashdot's righteous indignation, but is kind of late in coming, especially since he was exonerated (sort of, John Paul II waffled a bit) in 1992.
Don't forget, this is Slashdot, no need for me to RTFA.
Like this one. Flat bottom, paired damage, steep sides, right-angled crossings, almost ignores surrounding terrain... doesn't fit anything except arc machining. A good one to watch from a long way off. Notice also the paired craters scattered all about.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'm sorry, haven't you heard that Europa is forever off-limits to us?
No. No. That's Myanus, not Europa.
Blarf.
How is that insightful? The author obviously didn't get a humorous reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
NASA is working on a really, super exciting project called Jupitor Icey Moons Orbitor. This project, should it be allowed to proceed with full funding, would:
a) Create a space based nuclear reactor
b) Use that reactor to power an ion engine
c) Use that ion engine to not only get to Jupiter in record time, but also to explore all of the major moons and for months at a time.
d) The power from the nuclear plant would be used to do a deep penetrating radar scan of Europe and the other icey moons. This will allow for the detection and analysis of oceans out in all of the major Jovian moons that might have them.
JIMO is the most dynamic, most new, most novel, most daring and ambitious of all NASA space projects to date. If it means cutting manned space flight, if it means cutting a fricking aircraft carrier, JIMO MUST be allowed to launch.
If you can build an unmanned ship with a nuclear powered ion engine, you can build a manned ship with one too. Sending robots to jupiter will help us send people --really--- into space.
Whatever your political affiliation, urge your congressman to support JIMO. Or, let's just all take up a collection and write JPL a check for the thing!
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Sorry :)
That's how we spell Europe in Denmark - should've stuck with that...
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
While I agree that Europa looks promising as a potential well of life, are we so sure that Jupiter is sterile? Some SF writers have suggested that bouyant lifeforms could live at some appropriately warm and dense level of the Jupiter's atmosphere. If creatures on Earth can thrive on the chemical energy in our planet's relatively weak geothermal hot spots, who knows what might exist in the roiling depths of the Jovian atmosphere.
I am really not that worried. Between the years in a hard vacuum, bazillion Rads of radiation, and reentry, I doubt any terrestrial organism would survive, let alone find edible/infectible biomass on Jupiter. But you never know....
I hope Jupiter's Jellyfish don't get E. coli.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Isn't Europe already contaminated with life?
Damn Europeans...
(Take it easy, just a little US-centric humor)
WTF? Over?
The heat of entry will burn up and melt Galileo and any bacteria which may have hitched a ride..
If you're really concerned, think about the plutonium we'll be dumping into Jupiter from the 'reactor' on board. Well, don't worry about that either because it will get dispersed over a huge volume.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I would be perfectly willing to eliminate all private investment from government if you are willing to make enforcement of contract terms something not enforceable by any law. After all, why should government interfere with the business of contracts?
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...from that cylinder shaped object that a Russian probe detected back in the early/mid 90s that was orbiting the planet [Jupiter] nearby? Supposedly the object measured out to 25km in length (which would be the size of the fictional Super Star Destroyer Executor, aka "Darth Vader's Star Destroyer"). When the Russian scientists sent the command to the probe to take a closer look, they then lost contact with the probe. Now back then, a lot of people laughed at Soviet/Russian technology as being backward to Western tech, but we know now that Russian aerospace equipment was/is pretty tough and reliable. I'm also open to the possibility that Fox's *Sightings* program made the whole incident up, but I'd love to have more info either way...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
A chained set of contracts will result in the same sort of unfree society as a government bureacracy.
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"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there..."
So, Galileo died of consumption?