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."

Comments

Wait, is it? Isn't it? Fucking hell...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

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.

Re:Wait, is it? Isn't it? Fucking hell...

[Fnkmaster]

I think this is the first non-April Fool's story today. Thank god. It's funny when it's one or two stories. It's just fucking annoying when it's the entire day.

manned space exploration = fail

[timmarhy]

how about we solve the cost issue of just getting into orbit, and work on alternative propolsion systems to get places faster before blowing our cookies over manned trips to the moon, which add NOTHING of scientific value and solve no problems.

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.

Re:manned space exploration = fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine having hundreds of hubble-class telescopes actively scanning for mining targets worth $20,000B ea. requiring little to no propellant to harvest. Gravitational corridors exist that travel through the solar system that require minimal fuel. Materials science is close to being able to construct suitable solar sails capable of freely traveling the solar system. We're not quite where we need to be for moving to space, but it's a helluva lot closer than most people think.

Re:manned space exploration = fail

[DerekLyons]

Imagine having hundreds of hubble-class telescopes actively scanning for mining targets worth $20,000B ea. requiring little to no propellant to harvest.

Why when it can be done from the surface of the Earth?
 

Gravitational corridors exist that travel through the solar system that require minimal fuel.

Sure, so long as you don't have anything resembling a deadline. (I.E. the savings in fuel for a manned mission would be completely obliterated by the increased life support requirements.)
 

Materials science is close to being able to construct suitable solar sails capable of freely traveling the solar system.

Solar sails *are* a cool technology - if you're a very small unmanned package with years and years to get where you're going. They pretty much suck, like the gravitational corridors, if you're a manned craft.
 

We're not quite where we need to be for moving to space, but it's a helluva lot closer than most people think.

That's probably because 'most people' are completely oblivious to the issue at all. Most of the rest of us aren't, but do know the difference between hand waving speculation and hard engineering.

Re:manned space exploration = fail

[R3d M3rcury]

Imagine having hundreds of hubble-class telescopes actively scanning for mining targets worth $20,000B ea. requiring little to no propellant to harvest.

I have a feeling you're being a bit optimistic.

First, I assume you're talking about a target worth $20 trillion (that's $20,000,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes). What substance exists that would have that value?

But let's say you find it. We'll use gold as an example. The current price for gold is $36,120.81 per kilogram. So, to get $20 trillion dollars, we'd need an asteroid with a mass of 553,697,440 kilograms. Let's say you go ahead and drag in all these as yet undiscovered golden asteroids. What's that going to do the price of gold on Earth? I'll tell you what--it'll drop to next to nothing. Everybody will have more than enough gold and the price will drop. Frankly, because of speculation, just announcing that you're bringing this much gold to market will cause the price to drop before you even show up with your first gram.

Platinum? It's about 1.5x the value of gold, so you'd need less of it. But you still have figure that when you show up with a whole bunch of Platinum, you're going to drive the price down--that's basic supply-and-demand economics.

What you need to find, of course, is Unobtainium--something that doesn't exist on Earth. Of course, finding this Unobtainium is going to require a bit more than a bunch of telescopes (since you don't know what you're looking for). Also, assuming you find your Unobtainium, you need to figure out what it's useful for so that you can convince people to buy it so that they can turn it into something useful.

Re:manned space exploration = fail

[MartinSchou]

He said nothing, I might note, about manned flights into LEO

He said he could see the point in a manned mission to Mars. Rather difficult to get to Mars without getting into LEO or higher.

So what do those manned mission to the moon gain, please do explain.

What is the point in going to Mars? Or having bases in the Antarctic? Going to the moon is a decent proving ground for a mission to Mars. It's close by - four days travel vs a couple of months at the moment, radio contact has a few seconds delay vs several minutes.

Just setting foot on Mars and going "well, let's head back" would be stupid. Mostly because you can't really do straight return missions with our current technology. And if all we're sending are unmanned probes, time isn't exactly of the essense, meaning there's no point in trying to develop fasters ways of getting there.

Setting up a base on Mars isn't going to be easy. We'd need to more or less bombard the planet with supplies before we set foot there ourselves. A lot simpler and faster to test perfecting landing and aiming against the Moon. Same with building a base on the planet. We've tried building various selfsufficient habitats (like Biosphere 2, and they've been mixed successes. Those only tackle some of the issues we'd be facing on Mars, and unless we're 100% certain we can replicate the successfull experiments we will conduct on this here on earth, it'd be silly not to use the Moon as testing grounds. Much cheaper, faster and easier to ship replacement parts to the Moon, when we find that something doesn't work like we thought

It's also a good place to test how to build a base, that will stop us from dying of cancer. No magnetic field means really nasty things with regards to radiation, and neither Mars nor the Moon has a suitable magnetic field. Probably better to learn somewhere close by rather than months away.

How about figuring out how to set up production centers from scratch? If we can produce our own raw materials, fabricated materials etc. all the way to custom made production utilities, we can save a ton of money in supplies. We'd still need food, water and fuel, but if we can kick start industrial production planet/lunar side, we're pretty much golden. Hell, if we can manage to build a nuclear reactor, we don't even need that much fuel.

Now, as for using the Moon as a 'stopping off station' for trips to Mars, I rather doubt there's a point to that. The Moon is about 380,000 km away, Mars is between 55,000,000 and 401,000,000 km. That's between 0.7% and 0.09% of the distance. Essentially the argument seems to be that if we're flying to the other side of the Earth on vaccation, we should really book some hotel time between 18 and 140 km away from our house. I expect it gets even worse if you do the energy equations rather than just distances.

Now, using the Moon as proving ground for the technology we need to survive on Mars is just common sense. Unless we develop some way of getting to Mars and back that can be done in a few weeks round trip, but I don't think that's something we're going to see any time soon. But then again, my crystal ball IS broken, plus I'm an Aries - we don't believe in that kind of stuff.

But even if we ignore a possible mission to Mars - what could we get from the Moon? How about the largest and best isolated radio telescope? The best optical telescopes possible - no atmosphere to worry about, much lower gravity which I suspect would allow you to build much much larger mirror arrays. No annoying neighbours who complain that your telescope is blocking their view.

Imagine building an optical telescope that covers the entire bottom of the Cabeus crater. It isn't subjected to sunlight, it's about 100K making IR astronomy even easier. I'm pretty sure the entire astronomy field can see a point in going to

NASA Can't?

[Liquidrage]

Really? So NASA can't send an unmanned lander to the lunar surface?

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 /. to stop posting shitty stories.

Re:NASA Can't?

[Runaway1956]

"Nasa could do that."

Oh, really? A bunch of pathetic, fearful old women, sitting around, nattering about risk, can actually do that? You do realize that today's NASA is not the same NASA that put men on the moon, don't you?

When the mission was to put men on the mooon, the atmosphere was much like the atmosphere aboard a warship.

Today, there is no mission, and the atmosphere is more like a cruise ship catering to octogenarians.

It's NOT an easy cruise to the moon, or mars, or anyplace else out there. We need some kick-ass, no-nonsense types to decide that we are going to space, then get it done. Blabbering and yakking about risk has it's place, but when it becomes the primary concern, nothing gets done.

Obligiatory

[Hognoxious]

Europe's Space Agency Wants To Do What NASA Can't

Like understanding metric?