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Russia to Search For Life on Europa
porkpickle writes "Russia plans to participate in a European mission to investigate Jupiter's moon Europa and search for simple life forms. The head of the Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, said a project to explore the giant gaseous planet Jupiter would shortly be included in the program of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the years 2015 to 2025."
Actually, it's looking for fruit in a fruit tree where the fruits are *high*. Europa, while the best extra-terrestrial candidate for bearing life at present, requires some serious radiation shielding on any spacecraft going there, a fairly expensive landing, and a *lot* of work to bore through 1-10 km of literally-rock-hard ice. The probability of finding a viable ecosystem is balanced against the great difficulty to get to it.
As I recall, a recent NASA study said that they can't do it for under $1 billion (US); actually, I think that they found that they couldn't even do a decent orbiter for under $1.5 billion, let alone a lander or a submarine probe. (Warning! This is only my recollection from presentations 6 months ago.)
whoah there! 'fraid you've been misled by the lousy headline. If you'd got to the story synopsis, you'd see it was a *European* mission, which Russia is contributing to. It's called 'Laplace' (a curiously French name for a 'Russian mission', huh?) and will be launched by the ESA - European Space Agency in 2015ish.
Now how much you trust those dirty Europeans is a different matter...
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
No, they exploded because there was no Russian to compete with. Or, rather, because NASA turned to Russian practices.
Challenger blew up because the launch was decided despite really, really bad conditions for a launch (to cold, too wet weather), because Reagan was about to hold a speech that night, and they wanted to be in it. This is about as Soviet Russian as can be.
Columbia was a matter of time and money. NASA engineers will tell you (of course not officially) that it was bound to happen sooner or later, and that for about 10 years they were incredibly lucky. But sooner or later your luck is all spent. The crates are OLD, for crying out loud. They need a complete overhaul or, better, replacement. But there's neither time nor money available for either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.