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Proposed NASA Mission Would Sail the Seas of Titan
The BBC has a report on a proposal that will be submitted to NASA for funding — a mission to Saturn's moon Titan that would deposit a lander on its hydrocarbon sea. (We recently discussed the widely-circulated photo of sunlight glinting off one of Titan's seas.) "The scientific team behind the idea is targeting Ligeia Mare, a vast body of liquid methane sited in the high north of Saturn's largest moon. ... 'It is something that would really capture the imagination,' said Dr Ellen Stofan, from Proxemy Research, who leads the study team. 'The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring, and the idea that we could explore for the first time an extraterrestrial sea I think would be mind-blowing for most people,' she told BBC News. ... The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) has already been under study for about two years. It is envisaged as a relatively low-cost endeavor — in the low $400m range. It could launch in January 2016, and make some flybys of Earth and Jupiter to pick up the gravitational energy it would need to head straight at the Saturnian moon for a splash down in June 2023."
The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring, and the idea that we could explore for the first time an extraterrestrial sea I think would be mind-blowing for most people
Oh come on, everyone knows that once you invent satellites the whole map is revealed!
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
At least it could find a few sirens.
I would seriously be interested in donating maybe a hundred dollars toward something like this, and I can't be the only one. Are there any non-profit organizations that fund similar missions?
Interestingly enough, the Cassini Orbiter's landing probe, the Huygens, which landed on Titan a few years back, was designed with floatation devices, just in case it hit liquid instead land (ultimately it hit land). An interesting fact about Titan: the high density of the atmosphere, combined with a much lower gravitational force than that of earth results in very soft probe landings. In fact, it is hypothesized that on Titan, a human could strap fake wings on his arms and fly -- now if only we breathed methane and could survive at temperatures colder than -200F...
Wikipedia has a picture showing the probe floating on Titan.
One question I can immediately see an answer to is whether the ASRG generates as much power in vacuum as it will on the surface of Titan. My assumption is that having a weaker heat sink will reduce power output but I can't confirm that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Sometimes the point of science need be be nothing more than to capture our imaginations and/or blow our minds.
That "boat ride" is about .01% of the federal budget or what we spent on Iraq in less than 10 hours.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This sort of BS analysis has been around forever. What do you think it going to happen with the $400 million? Think we are going to launch it into space? That goes to creating jobs, and the various space programs are *a lot* more effective than the close to $2 *trillion* spent on the other bogus stimulus plans in actual job creation. Even Governor Moonbeam himself has recognized the value of the space program in economic terms.
Now, if all we were going to do was pay someone to tell us what Titan is like, certainly the information would not be worth it. Pure science has never been and will never be the purpose of NASA. But building things to find out (and this creating movement in the economy and jobs) pays off.
Brett
It's certainly a better use for 400M than bailing out a bunch of banks...
Furthering human knowledge and exploration of our solar system.
Sitting here on Earth for perpetuity won't solve our problems. Most of the problems we have here on Earth that are able to be addressed at all are largely the result of a poorly structured economic system in one form or another.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This idea is beyond awesome. Sending a "ship" to sail the seas of another world. And the price... $400 million... is uber-cheap in the world of space exploration.
Unless we can send a man to a near-Earth asteroid, this is the kind of exploration NASA should be doing... not manned attempts at Mars. Not yet.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Maybe our agencies don't want to find life yet, as some societal and religious aspects of there being life somewhere else would drive the religious folk crazy, or maybe they don't want to contaminate Europa. Whatever the reason they need to get off of their collective rear ends (asses) and do a mission there before even going back to Mars. I just get tired of the new bright and shiny and unpaid for missions, and some of the more dumb funded one that just go in circles snapping images of useless real estate, when Europa truly deserves, on all levels, a serious series of missions that bring light to what resides under the ice.
I wouldn't mind paying my taxes toward space missions like this; it's all the other frivilous crap like bailouts, corporate welfare, corn subsidies and unnecessary wars that are really disgusting uses of tax dollars.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Hrm, let's see ... spend $400 million to explore grand new vistas and expand the sum total of human knowledge ... or spend $400 million on a website. I dunno, that's a tough one ...
The story of human exploration on Earth has been one of navigation and seafaring
The story of human exploration on Earth has also been one of spreading disease and wiping out indigenous populations. Bacteria are known to survive the radiation and vacuum and cold of space quite nicely, thank you. I do not think this is a good way of looking for alien life.
Infuriate left and right
Titan is interesting because, in many ways, it is probably similar to primordial Earth, frozen in time. Even with low temperatures still the most similar place to our planet in the Solar System.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Have you ever been in a boat? If the wind only blows one way, you tack against it (if you want to go close to directly opposite wind direction - slow but it does work) or just set your sails right to get propelled whichever way you want to go roughly perpendicular to wind direction. Or you can always run with the wind if you'd actually like to go wherever the wind blows. Really, sailing on the seas of Titan with a constant wind direction would be damned easy. If there are storms, on the other hand... but (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think we've seen any big ones in our studies of the atmosphere.
> But if we do run out of oil here, we'll have to get the raw materials to
> make plastics from somewhere. Titan seems as good a choice for that purpose
> as any.
Much cheaper to simply use water, air, and any handy source of carbon.
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