Fly Me To Which Moon?

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA and the European Space Agency are expected later this week to settle an ongoing debate on whether to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan. Both are difficult places to get to — a mission to either would cost several billion dollars/euros to build and execute — and both have become alluring targets in the quest to learn whether Earth alone supports life. On the one hand, Europa is believed to have liquid oceans beneath its frozen crust which (on Earth at least) are a source of life-supporting chemistry. Scientists would like to scan Europa's surface for bits of material that may have seeped up from beneath the ice. 'Imagine if there were microbes entrained in material that has exuded onto the surface of Europa and they've been sitting there for maybe three million years,' says planetary scientist Dr. Brad Dalton. On the other hand, Titan has two enticing features in the search for life: liquids on the surface, and a thick atmosphere that can be used to slow down a spacecraft and help put it into orbit. Titan's surface water is locked into the crust as ice, but scientists suspect there may be a subsurface ocean where water mingles with ammonia. The mission will not get to the launch pad before 2020. 'It's unfortunate that there has to be a decision,' says NASA/JPL astrobiologist Dr. Kevin Hand. 'It's important to go to both. They are both such amazing and tantalizing worlds in terms of finding life.'"

Comments

access to space

[Gary W. Longsine]

If we had worked on cheaper access to space first, we could have both.

Re:access to space

[Bearhouse]

Expecting government contractors to do anything more than provide the bare minimum to get the next contract is foolish.

The whole point of Apollo was that nothing fundamentally *new* was required. "All" that was needed was to put the existing technology together. The same cannot be said of RLVs.

Agree with the first pont, but the second - you're kidding, right?

The entire point of the Apollo programs was to funnel huge amounts of cash into the public/private sector so the USA could 'catch up' with the Sovs. (If they were really 'in the lead' could be debated endlessly).

Huge advances were required in many fields, including materials science, rocket motor design and construction, computers for simulation and guidance...

As often, Wikipedia says it better than I could:

"The program spurred advances in many areas of technology peripheral to rocketry and manned spaceflight. These include major contributions in the fields of avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The program sparked interest in many fields of engineering, including pioneering work using statistical methods to study the reliability of complex systems made from component parts. The physical facilities and machines which were necessary components of the manned spaceflight program remain as landmarks of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program