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

Re:access to space

[Jurily]

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

Agreed. we should have a space station at L1 before we do any more exploring.

Standardize

[jbeaupre]

Thinking about Voyager I and II and the Mariner series, maybe it's time to create a standard probe platform (orbiter and lander halves if you insist) and build them in large quantities. Make them rugged and try to minimize expensive customization. Keep them relatively small so several can be launched at once. Then start tossing them everywhere. Use whatever orbital mechanics work (Hohmann, interplanetary transport network, whatever). But send 2, 3, or more to each destination.

Launch a dozen at Jupiter with arrivals spaced apart and you can wait to see if the first one arrives safely. If it does, send the second to another moon or to the same one for redundancy. You now have mission flexibility on a whole new level.

Send 2 to our moon. Then if you want to try a software upgrade, you can try it on those first.

And so on.

The whole point is to get the cost per craft down to the 10's of millions. If you can average 4 for $50 million and buy a rocket to launch the 4 for $50 million, you can now send 40 for the price of one. And now you have a series of missions such that if one fails, it's not a disaster. Will the data be as good as a custom probe? No way. But with so many probes you can take risks you never could before and maybe see things custom probes never could. Risks such as sending them odd places or putting some cheap funky instruments from some university.

Almost the "Faster Better Cheaper" concept, but based on mass production instead of 1 of a kind probes.