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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..."
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
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.
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
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.
Does "Mir" ring a bell with you at all?
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
another ignorent fool who thinkg the act of explosion is enough to cause a nuclear reaction and explosion.
dumbass.
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.
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.
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).
mass is still important, since it requires propellant to accelerate
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
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.
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!
But my expectation is that any money approved by GWB is meant for the militarization of space. Sad isn't it!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Obviously you're after laughs, but consider where oil comes from.
If Nasa said that they had found oil it would be a fantastic discovery - but not because it was oil as such, just what it means.
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?