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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
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.
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.