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ESA and NASA Consider Joint Mission To Europa
ewg writes "In defiance of the monolith, the European Space Agency and NASA are in the early planning stages of an automated joint mission to Europa, Jupiter's watery moon. This follows the triumphant Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn's moon Titan. "All these worlds are yours, except Europa...""
Depending upon your point of view, all of the above could be construed as Science Fiction, too.
Long histories of blody war?
Naaw, Science Fiction is only for entertainment (that occasionally spurs creative application of concepts). The former are all documents which different types mass hysteria are based upon.
Southwood's plan is for the US to settle for building a simple 'relay satellite' and to get their glory probe into orbit around Europa so that they can claim all of the credit.
Why would NASA want to do all of the hard work and spend all of the money to put an ESA orbiter at Europa??
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Just a concern about safety.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Depending upon your point of view, all of the above could be construed as Science Fiction, too.
I appreciate and agree with the point you're trying to make, but I disagree with your choice of labels. The Bible et. al. might be construed as "Soft-Sci Fi" maybe, but I'd consider including the Bible, the Koran, and the Maya Codex under the heading of "Science Fiction" (of any kind, soft or not) to be a fundamental misuse of the term. Science Fiction is supposed to be fiction based on science, however loosely.
"Fantasy" would be a more accurate heading for those works, as in "Fantastic Fiction." After all, they include such notions as "magic," "god(s)" etc. that really have no foundation whatsoever in science.
I've always found it unfortunate that fantasy ("Lord of the Rings" etc.) is grouped with science fiction, as I consider the two genres to be no more alike than Murder Mysteries and Romance (which enjoy their own, seperate sections in the bookstore). This doesn't mean that science fiction and fantasy can't sometimes be combined, just as one can have a romance/mystery novel, but that doesn't change the fact that science fiction and fantasy are fundamentally different, just as mysteries and romance novels are.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
While I get a kick out of most of these missions, I'm *really* waiting for the next Titan mission. I want to see a nuclear powered helicopter or cryogenic-temperature blimp (two proposals thusfar) patrolling around Titan; it'd be able to visit pretty much the entire moon. Huygens definitely was a "pose 5 new questions for every one it answered" mission. And if anything, Titan now looks even more like Primordial-Earth-In-Deep-Freeze than ever before.
Plus, it seems that there likely are hotspots on the moon due to radar evidence of cryovulcanism. So, in short, we have a moon the size of Mercury where we have been able to see huge amounts of organic chemistry going on, locations where liquid water even makes it out to the surface, and extensive evidence of hydrocarbons coming into and out from the surface. Seems like there might even be a chance, however slim, of subsurface present-day life. Heck, I wouldn't even rule out life using Titan's methane as a solvent, although it's nonpolar so it certainly couldn't be LAWKI.
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
I'm not worried about a couple of kilos of plutonium - I'd be more concerned if they found an independent form of life (probably bacterial-like). Maybe somebody (in a later mission) will want to bring some back. The worst diseases are often those that recently jumped a species barrier (think SARS or AIDS) and haven't had time to coevolve with the host. That might be a good reason to attempt no landings there ...
I know I'm stepping on a land mine even getting into this thread, but there are Christians who believe the whole point of their religion and following Christ is that if you love your fellow person and treat people well, the future, not to mention the present, will be better.
For Christians who feel this way, myself included, we're not all that interested in how accurately the Bible predicts the future. It seems pretty clear to me the future is in our hands. Either we get our acts together and play nice or it'll be just more of the same luke warm happiness and misery.
"..., I would like deep-penetrating radar"
I'd like to see a permanent orbiter that can map out the moon in detail first.
Select a target for something similar to "comet busting".
Then drop several probes into prime targets.
Further, lets put some robotics onboard these probes.
Look at the heavy equipment used in the Huygens probe.
Albeit its great for durability, there has to be a more compact way to design the connectors.
Look at these pictures:
Huygens Internals
Huygens RS232 Connectors
Surely you can save space and weight with a more efficient connector than an RS232 jacket.
Look at how compact electronic devices are.
Get Sony to help with development.
Be good for some advertising I'd think.
On a mission like this, software testing budgets can easily get larger than software development budgets. If things really get out of hand testing can double development. But it has to be done cause it's hard to fix some things. Although a lot of times patches can be uploaded enroute when a problem is detected. But sometimes we only detect them after it's too late. As in the standard units v. metric units issue and the lander that when kerplunk. Both good lessons in engineering for quality. For this business "quality assurance" really means "stupidity minimization". It's amazing how many dumb things engineers with advanced degrees can do when it's late at night and they've had too much coffee.