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NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions
coondoggie writes "NASA is trying to decide among eight space exploration missions that include further exploring Venus and comet composition as well landing on an asteroid or examining the space around Jupiter. The space agency today began accepting solicitations for these space exploration opportunities and will ultimately pick one of them to begin perusing in 2009 with a launch date targeted at 2018. The solicitations and ultimate expedition are part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which has as its main objective to explore the solar system with medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations, NASA said. The first New Frontiers mission was selected in 2003 and will result in the launch of Juno, a Jupiter polar orbiter mission set to blast off in 2011."
#9 Locate and retrieve the lost toolset
That's what Detroit wants this year. If we gave it to NASA instead I would consider the money better spent.
And if they threw in the rest of the 350 Billion they haven't stolen yet in the TARP, I could go for that too.
I bet with 400B NASA could come up with an electric car. I doubt Detroit could.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
...because protection is important with all the wierd stuff floating around.
The possibility of humanity being able to stop a killer asteroid rises with more study on such bodies.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
And seriously harden up the electronics. If the Pioneer and Voyager probes can do 30+ years, a modern probe can. Given the fuel efficiency of the ion drive, a probe could also carry enough fuel to perform a great many missions. It may not be able to do everything on the list, but a decent design should be able to tick off a fair few at less cost than one probe for each one.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Way better than paying for revival of the gas guzzlers industry.
Thank you NASA!! You guys are one of the few things that make me very proud of the human race!
bureaucracy and other badness aside, exploration is pretty damn cool.
... to the 5th grade class that I teach. It's unanimous, NASA should go to Uranus and look for Klingons.
Some things never change.
I want to see balloons dropped into the atmosphere of planets. Particularly giant planets. Best pick would probably be Saturn, but I'm sure we could learn interesting about Uranus if we sent a balloon there. And Neptune too, although I'm afraid the winds are a bit too violent there. Jupiter would also be great but I'm afraid the superior "surface" gravity there would make it harder.
I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?) or Titan.
Oh and to clarify my idea : the balloons/blimps would stay aloft for months on end, going up and down in the atmosphere on command to study different altitudes, drifting off the winds, telling us more about them, performing all the analyses possible, and not just about the atmosphere but also (why not) the magnetic field and whatever else might be interesting. And of course a good colour camera, so we can see what it looks like from there, see the clouds, thunderstorms, the moons through the coloured atmosphere, boreal auroras, and so on.. That would be pretty exciting.
You just got troll'd!
Should be relatively cheap and reliable hardware. While the surface is the definition of a hellish landscape, the cloud tops of Venus are the only place in the solar system (other than Earth of course) with temperatures and pressures that humans could survive in. Not only is that interesting from a human habitation standpoint, but the mild conditions should also improve the lifespan of the balloon probe itself. Sure, you can't dig in the dirt like the Mars rovers can, but you will see a heck of a lot more of the planet from the air than on the ground.
If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...
I assume they'll peruse the proposals before they select one.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
'Nuff said.
If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...
Don't fret so much. There's always Bruce Willis.
Hellow fellow humans,
I want the humans to send a ship with lots of titanium and plutonium to a spot behind mars where no alien fleet is hidden.
Thank you.
Gahrull the devastator.
Ministry of Discovery and Invasion.
All hail the Imperial Queen.
Positronium is it. The mass is roughly 2x the
electron mass, which is essentially nothing.
The half-life is a tad short though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium
There are other choices as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom
you may have more problems than only financial ones
Indeed. One of those problems is that we had this capability decades ago, and we were good at it, too. But then we pissed it all away.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Hows about we stop fannying around it is high time we had habitations on more than just this lump of rock we call Earth , One of these days some crazy is gunna push the button and we need to have a safe out post before then with a healthy population just in case ( i trust Barak O'Barma Bin Laden about as far as i could throw him he has big red button writ large across his forhead)
Not Anoyn just think the Moderatos should moderate them selfs out of the game you have a nice day now
Why not give NASA's entire budget to private companies in the forms of grants or awards for reaching certain goals related to space travel and exploration? NASA if of the opinion that only aerospace engineering PhDs, and very few of them at that, should be allowed to travel in space. The only way space travel will ever be feasible for the common man is if it is privatized.
Obama is planning on cutting NASA's budget to give to education initiatives.
I'm not sure if they currently have this mission planned but why not go to Europa? It seems to be one of the best possible places for life.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
The Lisa is the one that interests me the most. It is a multi sat interferometer using differential time calculation. My speculation is that it just might pick up more than graviton waves. The data from this project should be examined by Seti.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
I'd say Venus. There has always been speculation about floating cities on the planet. It's surface area would not be habitable by humans, but at a specific altitude, the atmosphere is just right for human life. I know it sounds far fetched, but I would be interested in seeing if we could really pull something like this off...Almost Jetsons style.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
A lander on Europa to search for life. We already have a mission to Mars planned for the same thing but it appears Europa has been overlooked.
Since I have to pick one from the list given, let's go back to Venus.
I really don't see the point of a Lunar sample return mission since we're sending humans back there in a few years anyway (I hope - are you listening congress?)
I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?)
No need to wonder, it has been done: http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Vega.htm. The aerostats (that's the collective term for all lighter-than-air vessels) were part of the same payload as landers for increased difficulty, too.
Some quotes from the link:
The aerostats were deployed at the anti-solar point of Venus, above the continent of Aphrodite Terra. During 46 hours of operation, they traveled about 1/3 of the way around the planet in the 240 km/hour zonal winds.
After the end of signal, the balloons probably overheated and burst, somewhere on the daylight side of Venus.
So there is a first generation. Many are ignorant of this and the rest of the Venera program (linked site is recommended). This ignorance has probably been "helped" by Soviet scientific successes not being considered the hottest stuff to tell people about.
These were night-side aerostats though - the dayside is still out of reach, and a "global" longer-lived aerostat could be the goal for the next generation of missions.
The author should have counted. Only seven were listed in the article. He/she left out Asteroid Rover/Sample Return (on page 7 of the announcement).
President-designate who is opposed to further space exploration (apart from once changing his tune when speaking in Florida).
I just want to go to Europe- To possibly look for the existence of Belgium and its isotopes.
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- aqk
F U