Terrestrial Planet Finder

solarlux writes "The Terrestrial Planet Finder has taken one step closer to reality as two architectures have been approved by NASA. The first, TPF-c, will be a single optical telescope which employs a coronograph to block starlight for planet detection. TPF-i will be a flotilla of infrared telescopes flying in formation to form a interferometer. TPF-i will analyze the planets identified by TPF-c for life signatures. The telescopes are to be launched within the next 10-15 years."

Comments

10 to 15 years

[bsDaemon]

to find another planet. 150,000,000 years to get to it. Don't forget that we are seeing things as they used to be! discovering other planets is only has good as our ability to get there, which is nil. Not to mention that they probably arn't even there anymore.

Planning

[Killjoy_NL]

I've always been very impressed by the timetables NASA is using.
It must be an enormous task to plan so many years ahead into the uncertain future, not sure if the funding will be there. /me tips my hat to them

10 - 15 years? That's quite a horizon.

[machinecraig]

IMHO - something planned to happen 10-15 years from now has a great risk of not happening.

Entirely too much can change. You're talking about a funded project that would have to survive multiple shakes up in Administration (and think of all the Bureaucratic structures a NASA funded project relies on!!!) , not to mention a project that would have to be able to keep it's funding for that long.

Plus - in 10-15 years, it's entirely possible that technology might make this particular project irrelevant.

Re: 10 - 15 years? That's quite a horizon.

[Saluton_Mondo]

Most missions of this kind have a long horizon... 10-15 yrs isn't that far away.

Re:10 - 15 years? That's quite a horizon.

[LiquidCoooled]

On the 25th May 1961 President John F Kennedy told Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself, before this decade is out, to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

10-15 years isnt much long than the 9 quoted here.

Sure, it needs massive impotus to continue, but a 10-15 year plan is extremely feasible.

The other alternative is to make the plans so low key that they slip unnoticed under the noses of whichever government is in power at that point.

Re:Pre-history of a new religious reformation...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider our creation myths as stories about how OUR planet was created, there really is no conflict of interest between this science and modern religion.

Sure, historically The Church has had a problem with this idea, but modern religious people for the most part believe in science. In the same way, modern people in The South believe slavery is wrong despite what their ancestors thought. It doesn't make them give up their southern heritage completely though.

Re:10-15 years?

[Paulrothrock]

A race would leave their planet for a lot of reasons. There is a ton of resources in space, including rare minerals in the platinum group. Also, there are manufacturing processes that benefit from microgravity, particularly in the making of crystals for electronics. Finally, they'd run out of room eventually, and have to move somewhere.

But, then again, why would anyone have left Europe in the 1500s? Doesn't seem efficient.

Intelligence limitations

[carvalhao]

As usual, we are impared by our own lack of intelligence. We are going to spend a considerable amount of money building a complex infrastructure to retreive information that is... well... pretty much useless.

We'll be searching for a planet similar to Earth because we believe all life must come in some kind of carbon-made structure forming an organism that needs water to sustain itself and that releases some kind of carbon substance into the atmosphere. We also believe that life on Earth was possible to to it's "moderate" conditions. YET, we keep discovering ON EARTH new species previously unknown who live in the most extreme conditions.

So, from my point of view as an engineer... we'll be looking at a science subject without knowing exactly what to look for and without being able to extract any conclusive information. Futhermore, the technology that has to be developed to attain this study is not altogether new. So, no new relevant or important data, no new significant tech... What's the point, then?

If they need a sugestion on where to spend a couple of billion dollars... why not that not yet fully explored planet Earth, with loads of life that considers itself intelligent?

Re:Intelligence limitations

[dtolman]

Pretty much useless? Whats the point?

This is basic science - its sole purpose is to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. Most great discoveries are by taking a look at something no one has ever seen before. If we never look, who knows what we'll find?

Furthermore - we only have two earth sized planets in the solar system. Thats two datapoints to understand the past, present, and future of our world. By examining other similiar worlds, it could be great use in figuring out what things could happen to our planet - either now or in the future!

Re:Intelligence limitations

[Angry Toad]

We have exactly one example of an earthlike planet. That's not much in the way of data, true. On the other hand it is an indisputable, actual, real example of life evolving on a planet.

Parsimony pretty much dictates that before we can consider as realistic other, purely hypothetical modes of life we need to understand the apparent distribution (or lack thereof) of planets with earthlike biomarkers.

I can come up with all sorts of extraordinary ideas about how life might work on other worlds. So can you. All the same I'd argue that making a survey that specifically looks for conditions which we know for certain can be associated with life is the first and logical scientific step which can should taken on this subject.

I actually don't understand people having objections to such a survey - imagine finding two or three strongly supported oxygen/CO2/water worlds within a few hundred light years!

Re:Space exploration is not taken seriously enough

[Paulrothrock]

How about a trillion tons of iron sitting in orbit, unoxidized, complete with thousands of tons of platinum-level metals that are extremely rare on earth and useful for electronics? That sounds profitable. And once you get off of earth, it costs very little to go anywhere, since it's mostly downhill. (Heck, with a little boost you could steal all your delta-v with gravitational boosts from the Earth and moon, as long as you had enough energy to survive.)

Re:10-15 years?

[.com b4 .storm]

Remember, it intelligent life isn't dependent on a planet. Any advanced race probably left their world eons ago.

I love these two common assumptions that people mistakenly make about efforts to find other life-friendly planets. Firstly, who said we're looking only for "intelligent" life? I'd be tickled if we found a planet with silicon-based bunny rabbits or something. And secondly, who's to say any "intelligent" life we find has to be "advanced" relative to us? Perhaps we will discover some stone-age culture that barely comprehends what their world is, much less how to have left it "eons ago."

I guess light travels more slowly than I remember.

[Christopher Thomas]

to find another planet. 150,000,000 years to get to it. Don't forget that we are seeing things as they used to be! discovering other planets is only has good as our ability to get there, which is nil. Not to mention that they probably arn't even there anymore.

You do realize that with a detection range of a few dozen to a few hundred light-years, we'll be seeing planets as they were at most a few dozen to a few hundred years ago, not hundreds of millions of years, right?

A laser boosted sail-probe could reach a nearby star system ( 10 LY) within one human lifetime. It would be impractial to send one big enough to carry humans, but an automated flyby survey would definitely be feasible.

Re:Generation ships

[Rei]

I think this concept of trips to other stars *necessarily* taking decades, centuries, or millenia is based on a common misconception about the speed of light. Many people view it as sort of an intergalactic speed limit. Not so.

Picture that you're on a spacecraft with virtually unlimited energy resources, for the purpose of demonstration (yes, I know, even matter-antimatter engines have their limits). You start accelerating. And accelerating. And accelerating. Do you ever see your acceleration stopping? *No*. While an observer on Earth will see your acceleration slow down to almost nothing, from the perspective of people on board the space ship, you can keep on accelerating as if there is no limit. If you can keep on putting more energy into your thrust, you can reach a speed that makes a trip across hundreds of light years seem like seconds. Now, from the perspective of Earth, that trip will take hundreds of years. But the perspective of earth is irrelevant - only the perspective of those on board the ship is.