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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."
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.
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.
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of that would be hard to accomplish in the first place. Your talking about something like a weather balloon correct? I was watching some science channel show where they were talking about that idea, but it would be hard because a large portion of Saturn or Jupiter is made up of hydrogen and helium gas, and to get a gas lighter than that is kind hard.
Unless you were to heat hydrogen or helium in order to make it lighter than the hydrogen or helium that is currently in the atmosphere. Other than that you would have to create a new element that had an atomic mass smaller than hydrogen which I'm not sure if it is possible to even do. Atomic mass of 0 would be an interesting element for sure.
Then again I could be wrong, and if so let me know because that would be interesting.
hello
The Trojans mission looks good. Any of the two Trojans groups contains a bunch of asteroids all in similar locations with similar velocities. Once there, a spacecraft could hop from one asteroid to the next with very little fuel expenditure.
Okay, seriously? Europa. Come on NASA, pretty much the entire scientific agrees... we want to know more about Europa. Just do it already.