Slashdot Mirror
Europe's Space Agency Wants To Do What NASA Can't
coondoggie writes "The European Space Agency is moving forward with a plan to land an autonomous spacecraft on the moon by 2017, with the idea a manned vehicle could land there sometime in the future. It's a mission NASA had on its roadmap before the current budget debate, but such plans seem doomed now. The ESA is now seeking proposals for a lunar lander that would land on the south polar region of the Moon, which possible deposits of water ice, heavily cratered terrain, and long periods of sunlight make promising for explorers and scientists, the agency stated."
I do hereby formally propose April 1 as International Internet Abstinence day.
Europe's Space Agency Wants To Do Nothing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Heh, I just got it. Took me a while.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
That's no moon!
I'm reasonably sure this isn't an April Fools. See story from the horse's mouth, dated 31st March.
If it is an April Fools joke then the joke is ultimately on them. That something like this could be considered absurd would only highlight how incredibly pathetic space programmes have been for the last 30 years.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
a manned trip to mars would be the only goal i could think of that would truely be worth the price tag for an achievement just to say we have done it (similar to why we went to the moon), with all our technology we are still yet to walk on another planet.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Really? So NASA can't send an unmanned lander to the lunar surface?
/. to stop posting shitty stories.
First of all, NASA has done this several times. Second of all, NASA is great at seeking proposals to do things they won't do, which is all the story from the ESA side is at this point. And lastly, I want do to do things NASA can't, who doesn't? You know, like, get
We went there once and there was nothing there. Now we find here water there, so what I have loads of that in my back garden too. Why not spend money and time going somewhere worthwhile like Mars, or other bodies that we might actually mine or get some kind of significance out of?
~don't feel threatened by my pineal~
bad moderation
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
it's all in the manuals.
please mod this 'insightful'
We already did it. With both automated systems and manual. Multiple times. Likewise, we have landed a number of different systems using different approaches on Mars. ESA still has not put one on mars (though apparently into it) or any place that requires something difficult (doing a parachute on titan is not that difficult).
Personally, I would rather that NASA get our CHEAP private space into orbit and help them get multiple destinations for money (via bigelow aerospace private space stations), while working on new approaches on putting a real base on the moon and mars.
With that said, I am glad that ESA is working towards doing a system to actually land on a planet/moon using active systems. It will be a good education for them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Do you actually work for NASA?
Also, doing something 40 years ago doesn't mean you can do it now. NASA clearly cannot do it now because they don't have the funding or, it seems, the balls to take a bit of a risk. Technical capability is only one factor.
There was a budget debacle. Let's be clear about that. The dog and pony show Congress put on for the press and the people was nothing compared to the deal cutting we'll never hear about.
No, it isn't.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Animation released by ESA. Very impressive!
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
just start it already ffs!
...
If the US didn't have to bankroll Europe's defense, then perhaps the US could afford a more ambitious space program as well.
Like understanding metric?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
that have no WMDs, you could indeed save a lot of money.
The whole reason this is important, and that no-one seems to be talking about here, is that we need another planet. There's no way we can sustain our current population on this planet into the future, and the population is growing. People will start to die en mass and life will become tragic and harsh for a much higher ratio of people (currently, thats just life in the worst places to live). We need to figure out how to create contained ecosystems and how to use the resources of other planets (and moons and asteroids and dwarf planets and eventually exoplanets). Some work is going to get done in LEO for sure, but advancing the knowledge of how to actually exist on another planet will always be valuable and important progress. Eventually, earth will just be a retirement planet, where its nature and remaining resources are protected and safe from development, and can be treated like the rare and delicate jewel that it is.
The high cost to the human race's colonization of space, is caused by the complexity and danger of reaching and leaving escape velocity within the earth's atmosphere, whilst dragging the fuel with which this is achieved up from the earth's gravity well, this is illogical when a supply of rocket fuel is close at hand on the moon.
The Space Shuttle turned out to be an expensive and dangerous white elephant, the reason the Shuttle was so expensive is, because of its complexity with millions of different manufactured parts and the requirement to lift the fuel up from the earths surface with which it achieves escaped velocity.
There is another route, we can reach the edge of space no problem Burt Rutan proved this with Space Ship one, when he won the 'X' prize by reaching over 100 km twice in one week.
Yes the Shuttle was 'reusable' but in name only. They could not have turned that around in a week.
One idea could be to create rocket fuel on the moon, there is lots of water on the moon, use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen which makes very good rocket fuel.
Use robot technology controlled from the earth to create the rocket fuel.
Use the rocket fuel to fuel a space tug, use the space tug to accelerate and decelerate Space Ship one, to and from escape velocity in the safety of a vacuum.
The moon is the door to the solar system
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
How is europe going to the moon doing something that NASA can't? NASA has already been to the moon. Not just once but several times. Its not a big priority to go back because we already did that . While everybody works on how to get to the moon we are working on how to get to mars.
So what you're saying is that we need to get cracking on mining space, because doing all this space stuff is going to consume a lot of resources? Let's think about that one a little more carefully, shall we?
True, for what it's worth. But when are we going to figure this out? The answer seems to range somewhere between "not for a really, really long time" and "never". Until such time as the problem of cheap access to space is solved, these questions resemble nothing so much as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
No. What we really need to make manned missions to various celestial bodies is some reason to actually do it. Bringing fragile humans millions of miles through space, landing them, and bringing them back safely is really, really expensive. And what do you get out of it that you can't get from unmanned probes?
NASA (like every other serious engineering outfit) balances the amount of risk they're willing to take against the payoff they think they'll get. NASA's clients, the American people, have very sensibly decided that they're not willing to get a bunch of astronauts killed for the extremely limited payoff involved. And OBTW - it's clear that you really don't think there's any place for the discussion of risk (hint: when you refer to risk discussions as "blabbering and yakking" it kind of gives away the game).
Problem: earth is overpopulated. Proposed solution: ship lots of people off earth. Actually achievable solution: control our tendency to reproduce out of control. For those who haven't noticed, the population growth rate has dropped off significantly in recent decades, and shows every sign of continuing to drop. Not to mention the fact that shipping lots of people off planet would be so unimaginably expensive that it's a total non-starter.
Right, and it's not like building an entire solar powered refinery on the freaking MOON would be expensive or anything. Who's paying for that? What are they getting out of their investment?
News flash: your proposed "solution" is also absolutely wildly expensive.
but when it comes to spending a measly extra $3 billion on real science and progress they get the finger. wall street must be thrown down from it's slimy throne.