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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."
...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)
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!
Hmmm... There needs to be a "sad but true" mod option because I don't really find this funny at all--insightful if anything.
Developing large floating platforms for potential future colonization of Venus would be amazing. Sure, the thermal currents would probably throw everything out of wack, but it's worth trying.
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
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.
NASA already is contracting just about all spacecraft and components to private companies. The difficulty is setting goals that cannot be cheated around.