Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear Powered Mission to Jovian Moons
Skyshadow writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about NASA's new project, the JIMO (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter). The probe is designed specifically to search for liquid water and signs of life on Europa, as well as making detailed observations of Callisto and Ganymede. Planned for a 2010 liftoff, this new probe makes all previous interplanetary probes look wussy: it'll be 300 feet long and powered by a next-gen fission reactor (as opposed to nuclear batteries). Sure beats blowing money circling the earth over and over again..."
Had to be said, what with a 2010 liftoff date (actually 2011 if you read the article.)
The ship even looks quite a bit like Discovery.
And I bet the NSA lies to this onboard computer too.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
NASA will also launch a satellite to search for liquid water and signs of life over Arizona sometime late next year.
can we call it GZK? to any who have not read Arthur C Clark's and IBM's "discussion" about the naming of HAL ignore this. actually just ignore it anyway :)
"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." - Lennon, McCartney
did anyone else read that big long link in the title as "looking for signs of life in europe"?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
I wonder, specifically, what instruments this thing'll have that will require their own little nuke plant as opposed to batteries. Articles were a bit sketchy on the details...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I hardly believe that a space station is a waste of money. There is much we still don't know about how humans react in 0 gravity and without an ozone layer. If we ever hope to have any type of manned exploration vehicles for our solar system we've got to "do our homework" first.
With that said, ISS isn't the well-oiled machine I had hoped it was going to be.
What if there is a failure of some sort around Europa and the probe ends up crashing on the planet?
That nuclear material could have an unmeasureable detrimental effect on any life there is there, so NASA needs to be damn certain that this baby will not contaminate the surface even if the worst case scenario was to occur.
Remember, recent NASA missions to the other planets have not all gone smoothly, so this is a very big concern.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
We all know the REAL reason we're going there.
TO NUKE THE MONOLITH IN 2010.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
to try and slashdot Boeing . . they might try and return the favor . . B-52 carpet bombing style :)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Should be quite interesting seeing what it can come up with, assuming they can make this thing land. They will have to make a lander waterproof and very shock resistant (earthquakes), or it won't have a chance.
Nuclear fission in a launch vehicle is pretty bold, considering the history behind non-proliferation. I sure hope this one doesn't blow up on the launch pad.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
One step close to living out all my Cowboy Bebop fantasies!
But I'm afraid I can't let you launch a satelite.
Dave?
Da---aaaave.
Dave.
Stop that, Dave.
Wonder what the monday-morning-quarterbacking will be like when something bad happens?
If you have seen the types of tech for small-scale nuclear reactors being developed and implemented... we can create something where even it exploding on the launch pad will create some fun clean-up times for people in NBC suits, but not much beyond that. Not to mention that it is being used as the probe's power source, not for the launch vehicle or propulsion.
This isn't the first time we have sent nuclear material into space, and neither was Cassani (IIRC).
Started looking around for information on flight safety for this system. I found this link[pdf] [google HTML]
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Europa is already under extreme radiation. The speculation is that if life existed, it would live under the hundreds of miles of ice which cover the planet. Water blocks electromagnetic radiation extremely well (for example, visible light can't penetrate more than a few hundred feet -- ask any SCUBA diver), so it seems like it would absorb electrons and alpha particles pretty well too. NASA does need to be careful, but not with regard to Europa. If this probe blew up on launch it would be bad.
NASA (and the public opinion driving it) are way too optomistic about the idea of life on Europa. Just because there's water (which is barely above freezing temperature, and lacking in the organic molecules required by life as we know it), there is no reason to assume any kind of life-forms. People are so eager to find other life, but it's not all that likely to happen... any really developed ecoystem would most likely be visible from space (like the green areas of Earth). So maybe NASA should pursue something more realistic...
That's because NASA didn't bother to sterilize Galileo either because it wasn't practice at the time or because its mission suggested that such extra cost was unnecessary (you'll get one of those two reasons depending on which news report you read). Space agencies are of the opinion that they are now capable of producing probes with a reasonably low risk of contamination (the Beagle 2 is being manufacturered in a clean room).
I just hope they're happy when sentient organisms evolved from prions send their ships to invade Earth...
especially the fact that ".." means "up" in this particular context. how many of you smart-ass slashbitches missed that detail?
It is just tantilizing that out there, in our solar system, is another ocean.
One in which you could actually swim (lack of oxygen aside and all)! geniune water, at a comfortable temperature...well, at least in a thin layer (below which is seething boiling death and above, vacuum-of-space freezing).
The chances that this moon harbors life seem high. After all, we are all familiar with deep oceanic hydro-thermal vents and the bleached beasties that find the lightless life appealing.
It is my dearest hope that someday a probe will melt down a few miles, pop into this blackened world, and turn on it's lights to discover mile-long whale-like creatures.
Of course, it's most likely we will only find bacteria and other single celled dudes. But complex organisms are so much more cool...and kinda freaky.
But sadly, as it is with this universe, I have the sinking suspicion that europa will ultimately yield nothing more than the biggest cache of sterile water known to man.
Let us not also forget, intelligent life evolving in an environment where the outside universe is completely obscured by miles and miles of pitch-black ice might not be ready for the rest of the universe just yet.
When NASA and its contractors can pull together a big project that works, I'll believe it. Until then I doubt their proposals. Since Apollo and Skylab, we've had an expensive shuttle, several failed shuttle replacements (over ten billion dollars wasted trying) and spam-in-a-can ISS. Manned space missions have turned into grandiose, miserable failures.
On the other hand, the small unmanned projects with limited and well-defined goals have had some success. The microprobe analyses from the little Mars rover were very interesting. Viking did good work. Probes have left the solar system and still work. And there is the propect that the next Mars landings will do some good science.
This proposal just smells of another huge project to keep funding and billing rates high for the sake of government jobs and contractor profit. No concrete details and a promise to Fundamentally Change Life on Earth.
Stick with KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid.
and the real purpose of the mission is to ship off all the inmates from Guantanamo Bay, Alcatraz, etc.; a new Australia on the Jovian moons. And this mission will be followed up with a similar mission, only this time as a test platform for the secret "gravity drive" device developed by Nergal Defense Industries.
Searching for life... my ass.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The missions have not gone perfectly, no. But take the recently ended Galileo mission. It was deliberately flown into Jupiter to avoid any chance of contaminating Europa.
And Cassini, to the chagrin of the doom-and-gloom types, completed it's slingshot around Earth without smearing it's RTGs across our atmosphere, and continued out towards Jupiter.
Even the shuttle and ISS. Yes, many things can go wrong, several of which will result in the loss of life of the crew. But none of those will result in anything but the most limited damage on the ground. I haven't seen any reports of anyone on the ground being harmed when the Columbia shredded itself last Feb. (some Slashdotter will probably prove me wrong, but oh well)
There is a huge chasm between an unsuccessful mission and unsafe one, or even an unsafe result.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
I'm saddened by the fact that this thing will probably come under some extreme environmental protest simply because it contains the words "nuclear" or "reactor".
Not to mention that the reactor is probably sturdy enough to survive an liftoff abort destruct, or falling back to Earth. These things aren't engineered to be large radation hazards.
Besides, nuclear material goes up on a lot of spacecraft and the world hasn't ended yet.
this is my sig
When scientists look for life out side the solar system, why don't they focus on moons of Jupiter like planets instead of finding Earth like planets. These Jovian planets could harbor moons that could sustain intelligent life. If you look at our solar system, two planets are good candidates for life (Earth and Mars) while three moons are good candidates (Callisto, Ganymede and Europa.)
In the external solar systems we've found, most have had a Jupiter like planet orbiting near the star. This would expose it's planets to a similar amount of heat that the earth is exposed to.
As Europa, of course, is Oberus.
And if you understand this, I congratulate you on being as esoteric as I.
I hope they go double on redundancy.
Wasn't there something about reactors providing a natural shield to radiation. Anyways this might be great opportunity to test out new materials which may be radiation resistant. Maybe chech out power transfers over extended distances using microwaves, maybe polarizing the hull to provide shielding of a sort (heh, if powerful enough a conductive gas following magnatic lines could provide a genuine forcefield, those lines could be altered to follow basic geometry (C)Nasa.gov).
No links to a gov site?
Moderators, please re-mod parent. Parent was not offtopic, as original slashdot story refers to the ISS as "blowing money circling the earth."
BU's Center for Space Physics had a seminar speaker talking about this a month or so ago. So, to answer questions:
-The reactor will be started up in orbit and, like all missions carrying nuclear material, it's well-shielded and, even if it weren't, basically huggable without detrimental effects
-The goal here is to provide a deep-space probe with a much larger energy budget than possible with RTG's. It's not really a LOT of power; just that RTG's are very little power. One interesting consequence of this design is the propulsion: ion drive, as tested on Deep Space 1.
-Instrument package is by no means finalized yet; it's basically pie in the sky. That includes what exactly will happen with a lander
-"What if something goes wrong" scenarios tend to be based on the idea that stuff can "fall out of the sky." It can't. The people running the mission know where things are going
-To the poster who said "small cheap missions are better": the manned program tends to be the money sink (as were all the examples you quoted). The really small cheap unmanned missions have a sadly high failure rate. This is more like Galileo or Cassini or Magellan: big, expensive, and incredibly valuable in scientific return. There's a place for small and cheap, but outer planets missions are expensive no matter what. You can't afford two baskets, so you make a *really good* one.
In short, this is a chance to do a pure science probe the likes of which we haven't seen before. It's incredibly exciting and pushes our true exploration of the solar system further.
Here's a nice drawing of the design. Anyone know why the reactor is all the way at the front and the thrusters are at the back??
They also mention on the JPL site that the propulsion system (and I guess much of the rest of the proposed design) was vetted on the Deep Space 1 mission. Some interesting reports on the technology here.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Aren't fission reactors and lead shielding a bit heaavy for that? It's the main reason nuclear powered airplanes never flew (well the Russians had one that flew but most of the staff operating it died as it was not shielded at all). The idea sounds more feasable than in the case of aircraft because as soon as it's in space you don't need to worry about mass to much. But the point is, transport of spare parts for the reactor is going to be very expensive.
...that's no moon
...takes seven years to get up, and is going to probe where no man has probed before?
A damn sexxeh probe.
Anyone concerned about the nuke aspect should investigate the procedures and methods used aboard our nuclear fleet of suface and submarine vessels. They have very good safegaurds, and the subs nuke ractors can withstand the pressures at the bottom of the sea and not leak. I would trust that they would ateast make them as safe. But, because it is so important I would like to see close oversight of the whole thing.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
What I'm most personally interested in are those moves that might make space commercially viable. The Chinese are talking about mining the moon-that is exciting to me and may have a lot more long term impact IMHO than purely scientific missions.
Who here _wouldn't_ fuck Faye Valentine if given the opportunity?
I'll be laughing at all you Sci-Fi fanboys when it finally dawns on you - we are alone.
...Mir does ring a bell. But what exactly is your point?
The Monolith said to leave Europa alone!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
This picture specifies a 20m boom, which appears to be over half the length of the spacecraft. I didn't find any reference to 300ft (or metric equivalent) at the JPL website (but feel free to correct me if it is there.) Eyeballing the picture, 20m for the boom implies about 35m total length. By comparison, 300ft is about 90m.
The 300ft figure is in the newspaper article. Possibly it is an error, possibly the reporter knows more than I do.
I am curious as to how they will launch something so long. Presumably it will be collapsed in some way, and expand after launch. Allowing the (presumed) heat-pipe connections between the reactor and the radiators in a collapsable configuration sounds like a challenging engineering problem.There is no indication of how it would collapse - telescoping and folding seem the most obvious.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Is Spike on teh spoke?
as you move to higher and higher powers, nuclear reactors become more and more cost effective, since theres a large upfront mass penantly, but additional kilowatts of output dont cost as much (diminising returns)
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
that's right. Sigh. It's been awhile since I watched it too... (are we talking about the same thing? :-P )
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
And once it's in space, it has no weight, just mass.
I'd say "no thanks" to the price tag. I'd rather have 12 or so of the New Frontiers programs (which are about $700 million and powered by an RTG - see http://centauri.larc.nasa.gov/newfrontiers/ ).
That way you can launch a mission every year and when (not if) one blows up, you didn't have all your eggs in that basket.
I don't long for the bad old days of the 70's and 80's, in which there was one mission a decade (Viking, then Galileo, then Cassini, with nothing in between).
I think it's just been done.
Although the Tuesday SF Chronicle article (referred to in this slashdot article) claims that Jimo will be up to 300 feet long, Both the astrobio.net article, (also referred to here) and a Monday SF Chronicle article (pointed to by today's SFC article) refer to Jimo being 60-100 feet long.
I'm thinking that somebody saw 100 feet, and thought metres. Hopefully they're not the engineers for the current mission.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Tsk, tsk. It's not size that matters. It's how you use it.
What else can you do with a big highly powered probe like this?
Mmmmm - Pluto? Kuiper Belt? Oort Cloud?
My favorite:
A 500 AU Mission - using the Sun as a (gravitional) lens to look closely at other systems directly. Something 500 to 600 AUs is the Sun's focal length for the visible part of teh spectrum. High bandwidth real time images of other solar systems - any takers?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
It doesn't take fission to fling reactor fuel pellets all over the place. Especially when it's in a vibrating supersonic vehicle at high altitude.
Sending a 'space' mission to search for us... Oh! you said nuclear powered? So they call 'them' space missions now.
EOF
Until a sincere culture change takes place at NASA it will be hard to take any of these announcements seriously. Today Nasa's line is "we'd like to do this - if there is adequate political support and budget", but there's nukler in it so dubya will probably fund it - until the next president comes along (like Gores earth watch satellite - currently stored in liquid nitrogen)
Sorry NASA, I know this is harsh, and it's not that they have killed 17 of thier own astronauts - but they just can't seem to learn from thier own mistakes. Now they want the population of the world to trust them throwing fissile payloads into orbit, maybe as a one off they can do it, but history shows that Nasa becomes complacent with minor engineering problems that are warnings of catastrophic failure. Converting thier memory of a failure into a memory of success.
They should focus on a reliable launch platform first. I'm a big fan of NASA, but risking 7 peoples live is not the same as the risks to those who might be in the way of a failed flight path containing a nuclear reactor.
Well, I never knew. Thanks for the link!
The radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) that many of our current probes use are far more dangerous. They carry a considerable amount of a highly radioactive isotope of plutonium that has a half life of a few decades. The decay (not fission) of this isotope generates the heat to generate electricity with a thermocouple.
UG! I didn't even realize that something this inefficient and crude would be worthwhile enough to be considered for space applications...
Just make clearer to me how primitive our efforts have been so far when it comes to space. (NOT like I've got better ideas, but c'mon...)
And yes, I DO read way too much sci-fi...
How about life based on some other elements other then the usual(?) Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen?
Just because most life on Earth needs water, that does not mean life on other planets needs water. They apparently forgot to think about that.
Why don't they first figure out what the dominant elements are on those moons? When they know what elements are present, they might have a reason to search for life based on a specific element.
Now they're just guessing.
damn troll
Nobody has mentioned this: what if it crashes on earth during launch, or crashes into earth orbit later? This is a major concern and a reason prior missions with plutonium isotopes have been widely protested against.
Then they're like...
Uh, dude? Could we detect life from the surface, or not?
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Not a 'pub' bar - a space bar.
"60 to 100 feet in length" says this Yahoo news article:
/ 20031209/ap_on_sc/icy_moons_2
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
More non-Americans than Americans died in the WTC.
I suspect that quote was extrapolated by a PR guy at the publishing house, Aldrin's original quote being 'Good book.' It just screams 'PR bollocks'.
Why doesn't NASA just give up and announce that they've discovered large oil reserves on Europa?
We'll have humans there in two years!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
One good way to get from Europe to the US is to get in a row boat and start rowing.
Another is to go work someplace for a month and use the salary to buy a plane ticket.
NASA's rowing. I've taken the time to read the Space Elevator Phase II NIAC paper. For a good many years now, composite fabric with a higher and higher percentage of carbon nanotubes loading(hence a higher and higher tensile strength) is produced each year. Moreover, each year the scale of production jumps higher and in a very non-linear fasion. They were at 5% CN loading in March 2003 (as of the writing of the NIAC Phase II summary paper), promising 15% in a few months and techniques that will allow 25% and higher.
According to the current estimates, this will get us to elevator-worthy fiber in mid-2006.
If NASA really wanted to get to Europa, they'd funnel the 10 bil at CN research, building power-transmission lasers, hammering out the political hurdles and building a working elevator. Then they could send a manned boomer sub to Europa if they wanted, probbably for less money than this new idea of a white elephant.
For those too lazy to go read the paper, here's the piece that'll interest us:
"The University of Kentucky has published and patented on fibers 5 km long with 1% carbon
nanotube loading that achieved a tensile strength increase from 0.7 GPa to 1.1 GPa. Recent
results have included producing fibers with tensile strengths of 5GPa with ~5% CNT loading.
Steel has a strength of 3 GPa and Kevlar is at 3.7 GPa. This process used multi-walled carbon
nanotubes. This implies a roughly 100 GPa carbon nanotube strength or an interfacial adhesion
roughly 1/3 of theoretical. However, we must remember that in the current process only the
outer nanotubes are being functionalized and attached to, the inner tubes are not being fully
utilized. Understanding this implies that by finding a method to utilize the inner shells would
enable production of material performing close to theoretical maximum. A complimentary
technique now being developed at Rensealler Polytechnic Institute allows for the pinning of
the walls in the multi-walled tubes together so that all of the tubes can be used. Techniques at Foster
Miller will also allow for dispersion and implementation of the carbon nanotubes in the
composite at much higher loadings. Loadings over 25% have been demonstrated and higher
levels are possible. By combining these techniques the resulting material should have a tensile
strength near theory of 150 GPa for 50% loading. Material at 12 GPa (4 times stringer than
steel) is expected in the coming months and the full strength materials should be available within
two years at the current research rate."
"Hear that, NASA? That is the sound of inevitablity..."
-
You can't just turn 2*H2O into 1*O2 and 2*H2 by use of HEAT alone... you have to "add" some kind of catalyst too (ever heard of electrolysis? it gets better as water gets warmer, but only when you don't get bubbles over your electrodes)
Hmmz, let's see... spark, H2 and O2? Boom!
Now, you'd have to channel the H2 and O2 in two different directions (O2 outlet near ground level, H2 outlet somewhere high) and let gravity do the rest (H2 goes off into the stratosphere and even up to outer space).
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
It's not crude at all, it's very elegant. An RTG is basically a nuclear battery. It has no moving parts, there's nothing to break or go wrong. It just produces a nice, steady stream of electricity for the probe to use.
It is inefficient in terms of how much energy it gets from the nuclear materials, but that's not all that counts. There is also weight efficiency, which is good because there are no control rods or anything like that, and making things light is very important when you're flinging them into the outer reaches of the solar system with chemical rockets.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Has everyone already forgotten about Cosmos 954?
At the time then President Carter called called for an agreement with the Soviets to prohibit earth-orbiting satellites with atomic radiation material in them. Unfortunately this was never enforced.And for a little history of Nukes in space.
- SR
It's not just uninformed or the non-scientific who will protest.
Don't forget that one of the leading figures in protesting the launch of the Cassini probe was the well known physicist (famous for string theory), Michio Kaku. He is totally opposed to nuclear systems in space.
I called in when Dr. Kaku was on a local radio program discussing the Cassini launch in 1993(?). He was talking about how we could build better solar panels and stuff, but I pressed him: what about the outer solar system? No way could you use solar panels for a Pluto mission. Nor could you use solar for a Europa mission with radar sounder, or lots of other things.
Kaku conceeded the point, that there probably is a large class of missions that simply have to be nuclear, if they are done at all. Therefore, he would not do such missions.
His bottom line: if in the end there is no way to explore the solar system without using nuclear power, then the solar system is not worth exploring.
I'm sure there is. Actually I'm almost sure there is life on almost every planet/moon of the solar system.
Look at what we found on earth: life in deep oceans, in caves filled with toxic gases and even in Antarctica ice !
Life simply grow everywhere, you can't do anything against that. One of the lunar missions discovered life on a moon probe that was sent 2 or 3 years before and some complex organisms do resist to nuclear explosions.
But first we have to understand that there is no reason life should always be the same than on earth. I believe that some organism don't need water or oxygen. It's just different, but alive.
For me the real question is not 'will we find life?' but rather 'when will we find it?' and 'will we find complex organisms?'.
We are looking at earth like planets outside of the solar system, which is surely really exciting, but anyway I believe we won't be able to reach these planets within the next century. Beside that there's so much to do in our own solar system !
Iraq: war to save the U
They're planning to fuel the probes halfway around the Solar system with the heaviest elements in nature, rather than with the abundant power filling the void. Solar radiation comes from the fusion reaction that is out of the reach of current science, but can be easily tapped. How about a solar orbital laser platform with solar collectors, pushing a sail, or powering a hyperjet of steam particles? NASA could produce the R&D to work out practical systems for harnessing solar lasers, like they did with fuelcells in the 1970s. When we get sustainable fusion reactors, we'll need the "transformers" to harness the prodigous energy. When we half-mastered fission, we were ready with steam turbine technology to use it; if we get saddled with the same harness for fusion, we'll squander that advantage too.
--
make install -not war
Great idea. Go 500 AU away from the Sun, then take out your big telescope and ultra-sensitive visible/IR detectors and point them back at ...
the Sun. You'll see a blindingly bright object,
magnitude -13 or so. And your goal is to search
for planets around other stellar systems, which
might be, what, apparent magnitude 25 or so?
"But the gravitational lensing will amplify the light from those faint little planets!" you cry. Amplify by how much --- you need a factor of over one trillion in order to bring these planets up within one-millionth the apparent brightness of the Sun. Oh, and by the way, you'll be magnifying the STARS around which those planets circle by this same amount, which won't make the planets any easier to see.
Take a look at one of my course WWW pages describing the difficulties of direct detection of planets to get some idea of the practical difficulties. Using the Sun as a gravitational lens won't help at all.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Climbers won't carry fuel. They'll run on electric motors with power beamed to them from one or more (probbably more) ground stations.
There's two existing technologies to do this - Microwave and Laser. MW gives you 0.5% power up top of what you spent beaming from the bottom. Laser gives you a whopping 2%. That's more than enough to get 20 tons (and later on even a Kiloton on the bigger 10^6 cables) 35 thousand klicks up. No additional breakthroughs needed on this end.
-
I don't know about anywhere else, but here in the UK the energy market is distorted massively in favour of nuclear power. The nuclear industry is getting huge government subsidies. The government has agreed to pay for the cleanup of pretty much every privately owned site in the country.
And yet still, nuclear power providers are struggling against bankrupcy and only escaping because the government is keeps throwing huge amounts of taxpayer money at them, almost certainly in breach of EU competition rules.
And yet, wind power is on a big up turn. The only thing that is slowing it down is the difficulty getting planning permission due the the nimbys.
And this is really still first round of large scale wind power. It's going to get much more efficient over the next decade or so as our expertise increases.
Sure, nuclear power doens't have the problems with CO2 emmisions of fossil fuels. But it only takes once suicide bomber to get into a nuclear site and we'll have a pretty huge disaster on our hands. A bunch of volunteers from Greenpeace got into the same nuclear power station in the UK twice in the space of a few months, and got onto the reactor dome the second time, despite the fact security had supposedly been stepped up, and did the same at another reactor in France just a few days ago.
Would you bet your life that Al-qaeda can't do the same?
project to maintain sustainable existance on earth for another 50 billion people? i think so.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Attempt no landing there.
Don't piss off the MONOLITH!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
"Jimo won't launch until at least 2011."
&
"The spacecraft is envisioned as being 60 to 100 feet in length."
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
I didn't mean to imply some sort of Assyrian connection.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Actually, if you did use, say, the sun as a gravitational lense, I'd expect that your telescope would most definitely have a blind spot exactly where the sun would be (similar to the SOHO chronograph), as the lensed images you're interested in would show up as warped images *around* the sun. IMHO, the more interesting question is, what is the focal length of the sun? Is 500 AU enough? After all, relatively speaking, the sun isn't *that* massive.
As for your second point, regarding planet detection, well, that's a strawman, as the grandparent didn't even *mention* planet-detection. In fact, he specifically mentioned high-resolution imaging of *stars*, not planets.
Damnit... disregard my second paragraph. The great-grandparent did, in fact, mention "solar systems", thus implying planets.
The Europa message was from 2010, which personally I think was quite a bit better than 2001. Of course from that point it went downhill to 2061 and reached "What the hell was that?" territory with 3001, so after you've read 2010 you can do yourself a favor by stopping there.
After all, theres no people on board to fry. The instruments themselves need shielding from it, but thats why they stuck the reactor at the far end of the boom away from the instruments.
The soviets launched several satellites with fission reactors, and they were considerably crappier than the new designs are...
The main reason for the reactor is to power the ion engines. The more electricty you have, the more thrust you can generate with them. Ideally, in the far future, we'll have spacecraft with fusion powered ion engines travelling all over the solar system at a fairly good clip.
-
mount -t greased_up /dev/dolls/Yoda ../yourass
One of the "Making of 2001" type books describes the design process for the Discovery.
At one point it had a nuclear pulse ("Orion") drive.
There was serious thought to giving it whopping big radiators, which would make it look even more like this probe . . . but they didn't want people thinking they were wings!
The design of this probe is a "classic," in the sense that it looks a lot like design proposals for nuclear-ion rockets circa 1960. One of the science encyclopedias I had when I was a kid had nifty pictures of 'em.
Stefan
does the "jupiter and beyond infinity" music play in your heads when you read this?
anyways... let's pray the onboard computer doesnt go crazy.. or has some glitch that makes the probe useless... and hang in an orbit around io... that would be a kick.
I'm betting that Clark has wet pants now that this project has started.
Maybe by the time this puppy lifts off they'll have enough knowledge from these babies to send people along.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
He did also mention that 500 to 600 AUs is the Sun's focal length for the visible part of the spectrum.
His bottom line: if in the end there is no way to explore the solar system without using nuclear power, then the solar system is not worth exploring.
Guy with that kind of attitude is not scientific OR informed. Whatever titles he might have.
All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
Excellent! Hmmm... well, that leaves one valid point left... I wonder how long that'll last...
As long as the fission power plant has never achieved criticality before it is launched there won't be a big problem. You can walk right up to a highly-enriched U-235 reactor core with no danger. It can be blown up with just some low-level contamination, unlike, say, the plutonium-fueled "batteries" that have been used in other deep-space probes which, if breached, would do some very ugly things. (The likelyhood of a breach being an item of religious intensity.)
If a nuclear reactor hasn't yet achieved criticality and operated at power it's very benign. Once it HAS been operated with a power history, however, it can contain about a Curie of radioactivity for ever watt of rated power. So if this plant were a few hundred kilowatts (thermal) it would have a few hundred kilo-Curies at end of core life - a LOT of radioactivity.
The space-craft's nuclear plant would therefore be designed to achieve initial criticality in (most likely) a high Earth orbit.
The head of NASA mentioned several years ago now that he was talking with NAVSEA CODE 08 (Nuclear Propulsion) to get ideas on how to make one of these puppies. One thing the Navy knows how to do right is operate and (with Bettis and KAPL) design small, high power density nuclear power plants.
In the search for microbial life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, a new idea has emerged, suggesting that heavy doses of lethal radiation surrounding the massive planet might spur chemical reactions on its tiny satellite, providing fuel for life in the suspected liquid ocean below.
In other words, it's an ion drive: you get the thrust by blowing atoms into space. First you strip an electron off your "propellant" atoms to make them into ions, with a positive charge. Then you use a magnet system to drive the ions into space. (While it is "electricity into propulsion", yes of course you need "propellant" matter too.) And wheeee, forward you go. Don't expect hot rod acceleration, but you do get stellar miles per gallon.
This post because somebody will be too lazy to click (and the propulsion info is buried in PDFs on the Prometheus site), and the idea is kewl nevertheless.
We've got things much nicer and bigger than the B-52 to send your way. Though I'll admit the B-52 is like an old pickup truck, as long as you keep changing the oil and put gas in it, it will keep going and going and going.
NO! Cassini used thermo-isotope generators to provide it's electrical power using the heat to generate electricity. There was no fission reaction involved.
This project will have a nuclear reactor using a sustained nuclear chain reaction to produce heat. It's a very different thing.
and a LOT safer to launch.
Go and give those Jovian Lizards what they deserve!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Maybe the mission will help explain why the moon monolith sent that extremely powerful radio transmission at Jupiter.
I'd rather make an attempted landing on Uranus :)
I've talked with a couple professors who have been tracking this, and most of them didn't like the idea.
While I agree with you about the reactionism bit, but this is not an especially worthy mission. NASA is contracting the Navy to build this new type of reactor (which, btw, has very little chance of lasting the whole time, and which the Navy really *didn't* want to have to design. They were sort of nudged from way up top).
This is a mission built to need the reactor, not a reactor to fit a mission. Let's spend our money on more important things, please.
I can't believe you cited Total Recall as a reliable source of science.
Well no that was just a VTA (visual training aid) to give you a goofy picture in your head what I was shooting for.
I doubt a fission reactor has enough power to convert a planets worth of atomosphere for europa, but like I said, maybe while it's melting it's way down through the 100's of miles of ice, it might create a 20' wide hole with enough warmth (from rising steam) and distance from the reactor at the bottom where life could spring up near the top of the wall.
Nothing as complex as a biped, it would probably resemble some sort of an algae. Since there probably isn't enough sunlight for photosynthisis it would be like the sulfur bacteria we find near geothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean floor.
Bottom line is though... over any kind of elements you have on a planet, the most important thing for life is tempature. Too hot and cells start falling apart, too cold and they can't do anything usefull unless they have a high glucose content for antifreeze(call it a hunch, but I would bet there isn't a lot of sugar on europa)
From what we know on earth, the tempature for life is something between 120 degrees (thermal vents) and 60 (surface stuff)
Not that it would matter, even if it did work as you suggest. Without a magnetosphere like earth's to protect it, any atmosphere would soon be stripped away by the solar winds.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
From what we know on earth, the tempature for life is something between 120 degrees (thermal vents) and 60 (surface stuff)
I'd like to point out a couple of glaringly obvious holes in your reasoning so far. :)
First, we don't know the conditions under which life appeared on earth. We have every reason to believe that the earth was never an ice-covered planetoid like Europa. Nevertheless, we don't know how life formed on earth, and until we do (or know more about the subject in general) anything we say about the conditions under which life can appear is based purely on conjecture.
Second, bacteria survived to the moon from the original moon missions and thrived afterwards, somehow. I don't know the surface temperature of the moon, but I recall it being significantly out of the range you cited. This puts a serious division in where we have to say "These conditions can result in life" and "In these conditions life can exist". Neither of these sets of conditions are required to exist at the same time. What I mean is, the conditions that can result in life may not be able to sustain life, and the conditions which can sustain life may not be able to result in life. We just don't know.
I hope I've given you some brainfood in here. But I'm certainly no biologist by any means.
Like what I said? You might like my music
but you are still right, it is nasty and hard.
...(radio waves) and ...(visible light) ...a gravitational lens can enlarge the brightness of a star by the same remarkable factor."
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0205126
Seems to be a bit of a dampener.
Even though equations (6) and (7) give an amplification of between 10^4 (at radio) and 10^10 (visible)
"Since for the Sun the frequency can have values between
Solar atmospheric conditions:
"The main effects are to limit the observable
wavelength to those well above about 100 GHz and to increase the effective optical length of
the SGT"
Still I vote for more probes to outer solar system, and at least seeing what can be done. And I would argue that useful astronomy can be done at >100GHz.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I hope I've given you some brainfood in here. But I'm certainly no biologist by any means.
Ya u gave me support for my theory since according to you it doesn't take as much atomsphere.
Ya u gave me support for my theory since according to you it doesn't take as much atomsphere.
Why don't you brush up on your reading skills, dude? I never said anything except "What we don't know".
Like what I said? You might like my music
Space... squid.
Well that's why I included the prion joke: because there's still the possibility that we don't understand life well enough to sterilize something properly.
But seriously, I don't believe it's present-centric to think that we can do a better job than the New World explorers. Science does make progress, and the universe is not infinitely complex (well, maybe on a subatomic level...).
Also, it's important to note that New World diseases did so much damage because once the effect of diseases on the native population was observed, the colonialists tried to use it to their advantage (eg: smallpox blankets). Consider how things would have been if colonization had been a bit slower, or even better if someone bothered to tell the natives about how to use smallpox scabs for vaccination!
All we know, is that each and every one of us is alive (I think therefore I am). We also know that life keeps popping up in seemingly uninhabitable places. However, these facts do not imply that life will pop up all over the solar system, since we don't know how "difficult" (how likely) it was for life to get started on a planet. We don't know the likelihood of that moment of creation.
There is the interesting line of thought that life can transfer between planets/moons in a solar system (and further!?) on "carrier" matter, such as asteroids, but this still has no impact (pun unintended) on the issue of the rarity of life spontaneously appearing somewhere.
Incidentally, I too am uncomfortable with the assumptions about life concluded from our own lives, such as "all life is water/carbon-based". Not particularly imaginative. If there's anything we know, it's that we know nothing at all...
GrimRC