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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.'"
All these worlds are belong to you. Except Europa. Attempt no landings there, every 'ZIG'!!
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
If we had worked on cheaper access to space first, we could have both.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
We need something that can see big things too, so we don't miss some Cthulhu looking thing just beneath the ice while we scrape around for little stuff.
http://www.aaronrogier.net
Why not both? This is chump change compared to the bailout, and hey! It might actually work!!! :D
Just call it "stimulus" and us yanks will just print some more money for it. :/
I misread that one as "would cost several billion dollars/euros to build an executable" and thought "what the heck of a compiler they are using!!"
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Send a manned mission to Titan.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"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."
Going there just because it is easier is nothing but a crock. The ONLY criterion for a visit should be: which is judged to be a more likely candidate for life?
The suggestion that they should go there because it is easier, is like the guy who says he lost some money "around the corner" but is looking over here instead because the light is better.
Sheesh. That's logic for you. From the people who are supposed to try to do it! Is the fact that I am less than impressed apparent yet?
The Europa mission is a bit more tame by comparison, but has a lot more technological development to back it up (which would help it come in somewhere close to its original budget). There are two orbiters. The NASA-built orbiter would explore the inner two large moons of Jupiter: Io and Europa; while the ESA-built orbiter would explore the outer two large satellites: Ganymede and Callisto. Unlike the Titan mission, no landers are planned with this mission, but the instruments on-board both spacecraft would allow it to provide more detailed global mapping of Europa and Ganymede than the Titan mission, which as mentioned before would only provide 50-m per pixel global mapping with selected areas at higher resolution imaged by the balloon (which would be limited to a relatively narrow latitude band since Titan's winds are mostly east-west).
The NASA-JPL website has a page with more detailed documents outlining the mission plans for each moon: http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/library/
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
We can throw as much money as we like at the Halliburtons of this world and rain the national vault to fund wars which enrich our leadership's business cronies. We can use whatever's left over to bailout people so greedy and incompetent that they'll ever change their ways.
But we have to choose between Europa or Titan.
In the book version, we send the thing to Titan. Then when Stanley Kubrick does the movie, send it to Europa!
Two things: First, a question. What are the orbital mechanics? Would it be possible to build a "bus" that could drop off a navigation-capable "probe taxi" near each destination?
Second, a dream. If ever there was a time to send a large human crew on a career-length mission (maybe 30 - 40 years), this would be the one. High-acceleration supply/instrument packages could be sent before and after them. A serious commitment to zero-gravity construction could be undertaken. The cost would be huge, but the payback would potentially be on a scale rivaling the technology revolution that grew out of Apollo.
And let's face it, the odds that we're screwing up our only livable habitat in potentially-ugly ways are increasing. Developing the capacity to move at least a few people elsewhere isn't such a terrible idea.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The mountains of Venus would be interesting. Radar reflection suggests that it might rain bismuth or lead.
Landing on Pluto would be a nice challenge. First there is the problem of slowing down enough. Then there is the problem of landing without melting a deep hole.
Let's go to the best place for living there some day. (Sounds like neither)
So, we're always careful about not infecting extra-terrestrial ecosystems the way we have here on Earth. We're obsessed with finding some kind of 'life', (but have not so far). Well and good, and I've always supported those points of view.
But we might want to consider the chilling possibility that one day the Earth might become uninhabitable, (asteroid strike, nuclear war, superbug, whatever). OK, it's improbable, but then again so is finding 'life' on some barren, frozen moon.
If that did happen - maybe hundreds of years from now - our descendants would be pretty glad if we'd shipped out bugs that had quietly been transforming methane into oxygen (for example) over the centuries...
I'm really amazed that no one came up with this simple idea: what happens if there is some kind of primitive microscopic life in any of those worlds, we bring it to Earth, and have a major epidemic?
I can imagine in the news "the Titan victeria(strange alien cross between virus and bacteria) has produced 3000million deaths...govt producing tunnels underground for nonzombie survivors..."
For the sceptics on putting money into this: money into science always pays back, you shouldn't worry. It's only when you put money in the hands of bankers or such scum (brokers, politicians, owners of big firmas...) that you should be worrying. By the way anybody has seen yet any improvement, any difference by the injection of money in the banks? What I see is that OUR money has disappeared into the hands of those robbers. This would never happen with scientific missions (which discover things, create technology, blabla)
Why not?
A single mission to drop two probes!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
While the Titan mission is admittedly more ambitious (and potentially more costly) the reason why we should go to Titan is because there might be THREE radically different kinds of life there. This is from Biologist Peter Ward's book in his book "LIFE AS WE DO NOT KNOW IT".
One might be related to, or if we're not careful with contamination, might be the same as our DNA based "CHON" (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen) life. They would presumably live on the surface feeding on the hydrocarbons drifting down from the sky; similar to our methanogens or other chemo-trophic bacteria on earth.
Another kind of life might be something a "little" different (but still really unlike anything seen on earth, life that uses AMMONIUM as its working fluid as opposed to our life which uses water. (It would presumably live in the ammonium ocean speculated to beneath the ice) that forms Titan's surface. It's only a "little" different because it would still be basically be CHON life but who knows what its metabolism would run on?
Finally he even mentions the possibility of a SILICON based life (as opposed to our carbon based life). No, unlike the star trek Horta from "Devil in the Dark', it needn't live deep underground. Instead it would life in some of the ethane-methane lakes at the surface (which would be capable of making the silicon soluble and would substitue in for carbon I guess). So all of life's components; fats, sugars, proteins, RNA and DNA would use silicon as a major structural component. Now that's different!
For these admittedly extremely speculative reasons he suggests Titan should be on our priority list of places to visit. He recommends sending a biochemist/biochemical lab to Titan. Anyway if they found even ONE of the three kinds of life there, it would (even if they were just micro-organisms) be an incredible discovery. Of course because of Titan's distance it'll be a long while before we can put a human there, maybe we'll have to wait for A.I.
Unfortunately as much as I (and many other people including James Cameron) would love to see "black smokers" (geothermal/chemical powered undersea geysers) at Europa, Dr, Ward explains that there is just not enough energy available to Europan life (from the dim sunlight filtering through the ice or the flexing of rocky core by Jupiter's gravitational tides) to drive an ecosystem. I think he claims there would be enough to make, perhaps, 120 tons of biological matter dispersed in a volume twice that of Earth's oceans! A low flying orbiter scanning for molecular signatures in the ice or trying to capture ice crystals kicked up off the surface would likely find nothing. Even if it did find some complex organic molecules (proteins, long carbohydrates or DNA) that would be relatively indirect evidence; there would always be concern about contamination. This is in comparison to a direct observation of life on Titan, we could watch it grow!
That's why we should go to Titan, there may be a higher chance of life be present there NOW than even at Mars (recent methane plumes discoveries notwithstanding). And how cool would it be to send an orbiter AND a balloon AND a lander (or even a boat!).
Kill research on a Mars mission and find out more about the universe in general before the resources run out. Kill the Mars mission and fund the rest.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
from: http://advancedmediacommittee.typepad.com/emmyadvancedmedia/2007/05/wideband_cable_.html
"If we wanted to travel to Alpha Centauri (the nearest star system to the Earth) when should we start the project?"
Located a mere 24 trillion miles from downtown Manhattan, Proxima Centauri, the dimmest orb in the Alpha Centauri star system, is actually the nearest star to the Earth. It takes light, which travels at 186,200 miles per second, 4.22 years to make the trip.
Now, the Voyager spacecraft is generally considered to be the fastest man-made object traveling in space. It is heading out into interstellar space at a blistering, 38,000 miles per hour.
So, if it was pointed at Proxima Centauri (which it is not) it would take Voyager approximately 73,000 years to get there.
Let's think about project management for a moment. Most of the technology we need for this journey does not yet exist. My rocket scientist friends estimate that it will take mankind approximately 1,000 years to build the ship. Inside that 1,000 year time-frame, let's assume that technological advances allow us to travel four times faster than Voyager's top speed. If we start today, we could reasonably expect to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about 20,000 years.
However, if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, technological advances might allow us a four-fold increase in speed for each 1,000 years we wait which would reduce travel time to about 2,000 years.
Which brings us to the Alpha Centauri paradox. If we start the project today, it will take us approximately 20,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, but if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, the whole trip will take about 12,000 years.
Yes, in the race to the nearest star, waiting 10,000 years to start will get you there 8,000 years ahead of the people who start building technology today. Would you wait?
This is not really a REAL question I hope.
Hands down, the place to go is Europa.
Titan's chemistry is not interesting, when it comes to life.
Europa will have vast energy sources, liquid water, probably at ranges of Titan to superheated on the ocean floor.
The curvature of space around Jupitor will stretch the moon as it orbits the planet, heating it to a decent temperature.
I find it AMAZING that the curvature of space time, is in itself responsible for the energy production.
It is as close to a perpetual motion engine as you will get!
Titan would be a great place to study exochemsistry, but to study life? Not as good as Europa.
Besides Arthur C Clarke has a great track record going for predictions. :-)
Go Europa!! W00t! Life or BUST!
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.