ESA Venus Mission Delayed

MrShaggy writes "The BBC is reporting that the ESA has announced that they have to hold the Venus Mission. According to the article, contamination is being blamed. From the article: 'Esa said the delay had been prompted by the discovery that insulation from the rocket launcher had contaminated the Venus Express spacecraft. "The satellite is contaminated, so they will have to dismantle and re-mount it again," a spokesperson for the space agency told the BBC News website.'"

Comments

At least they're doing it right.

[CyricZ]

It's good to see that they're doing the right thing, regardless of the financial costs.

It'll tell us something about greenhouse gases

[Cerdic]

From the article:

Composed chiefly of carbon dioxide, Venus' atmosphere generates intense greenhouse warming, whereby trapped solar radiation heats the surface of the planet to an average of temperature of 467C.

Experts think Venus could teach us more about how the Earth's climate will respond to the release of greenhouse gases resulting from human activities.

It will tell us what many of us know - that putting too much CO2 into the atmosphere will heat up the planet. Unfortunately, those with real power to do anything about it will continue to aim for quick gains with little regard for the future.

I know someone will respond about how the earth naturally spews CO2, but many of our processes that produce CO2 also produce pollutants such as CO, arsenic, and PCBs. These other pollutants are proven to be dangerous. Why does nobody (hello media?) ever mention that?

Re:It'll tell us something about greenhouse gases

[biryokumaru]

It is my (perhaps misguided) understanding that there are extremophiles and such which might likely be closely linked to our very most primordial ancestors. Were we to kill off all land-based life on earth, within them would lay enough evolutionary basis to rebuild the oxygen breathing world (over the course of a billion years, maybe). As you seem to be more well versed in this than I, could you confirm this as fact or fiction?

Also, I think Australia is an excellent example. I do not know how long it normally takes humanity to destroy entire species, but we've fairly easily wiped out the dodo and the carrier pigeon. Australia is still teeming with life. It may be much unlike its previous design, but we haven't killed off the whole place. It's just found a new ecological balance, as I understand it. Is this incorrect? Are native species continuing to decline amongst the human-introduced predators?

right

[Quadraginta]

Of course it won't. The atmosphere of Venus is 96% CO2 (Earth's is 0.03%). The solar flux is four times higher. There are no oceans on Venus, and indeed all the Venerian water seems to have vanished, possibly as a result of that increased solar flux. And finally, there is no biosphere, and we know the Earth's biosphere has a profound effect on its atmosphere (and vice versa).

If the goal is understanding CO2 and climate change, the atmosphere to study is right over our heads (which saves a lot on shipping costs). Obviously any competent scientist knows this, and so none of them would be so silly as to propose spending umpty millions sending a few instruments to Venus to study global warming on Earth.

I expect this little comment in TFA is a fanciful addition by the BBC to suit their own agenda. Pity they can't leave that agenda on the editorial page, however. It can make the scientists involved look like axe-grinding fools, which in turn makes it that much harder to convince undecided ordinary people to study the climate responsibly and seriously. With "friends" like the BBC, I'd say serious climatologists need no enemies.

ah so

[Quadraginta]

No, journalists don't make it up out of thin air. Well, unless we're talking about fringe publications like The New York Times or The New Republic ...or, er, the BBC itself, come to think of it. But I digress.

Anyway, if the reporter could have gotten one of the mission PIs or any prominent climatologist to voice this idea on the record, he would have. An anonymous "expert" can be anyone at all. It can be any random fool with a PhD, or the local high-school teacher, for all we know. The fact that he had to go with a limp and vague "people say..." tells you a lot, if you read between the lines a bit.

Furthermore, he didn't quote his "experts," and this tells you a lot, too. Maybe he asked an expert whether this mission might return some data that gives some insight into Terrestrial global warming, however small, and the expert laughed and said "Sure! Anything's possible!" And there's your "expert opinion." Only, the reporter can't quote him precisely because it would clearly not be the same thing as Herr Professor Doktor furrowing his brow and saying "We MUST have zis mission or ze race is doomed, I tell you, DOOMED to boil in the fetid heat of its own emissions!" (Cue dramatic music...) Again, if the reporter could have gotten someone to make a definite strong statement ("The Venus Express will tell us what we can expect from global warming here on Earth, and that's important."), he would have done so and used it. Remember the Sherlock Holmes reflection on the dog that failed to bark in the night.

As for the second part of your comment, sure, extra data is always helpful, if only marginally so. No doubt data from Venus isn't utterly worthless in terms of insight into Earth's atmosphere. No one's going to refuse to look at it, if they get it for free. But pay 220 million euros to get it??! That much bread will buy a lot of stratospheric balloon missions, or open-ocean buoys, or supercomputer simulation time, or experiments in the upper-atmosphere simulation chamber, or -- but you get the idea.