New Spacecraft Set For Dangerous Jupiter Trip

solaGratia passes along word of the equipping of Juno, the most heavily armored craft ever to be launched to another planet. The launch is scheduled for a year from now. "In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. ... 'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,' said... Juno's radiation control manager... [The] titanium box — about the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box..., power and data distribution unit..., and about 20 other electronic assemblies. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."

Comments

why?

[Asaf.Zamir]

what's the purpose of its mission?

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

To look for the monolith of course.

Re:why?

[QuantumG]

to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)

Re:why?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Butt like Urasshole, Jupiter has a great red spot.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

To boldly go where no man has gone before - 100 million visits to the dentist.......

Re:why?

[kurokame]

what's the purpose of its mission?

Wikipedia say:

The spacecraft will be placed in a polar orbit to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.

As to the big "why" as in "why this instead of spending money on something else"...Jupiter is the big laboratory in our solar system. Studying it lets us lets us collect data which will help us study places where terrestrial data alone leaves things a bit fuzzy. It helps us verify the models we're already relying upon. We can make some guesses based solely on what we can observe from Earth - some extremely good guesses. But Jupiter is the big checksum in the sky. Is our understanding of the behavior of the Earth's magnetic field correct? Do our existing models hold up well for a stronger field? Do all these weird patterns we see on the surface of Jupiter and the predictions and assumptions we've made about the forces driving them hold up if we take a lot of new data from a closer vantage point? Are our assumptions about the formation of the solar system valid - and thus most of the assumptions we start with when examining more distant objects?

If you're the kind of person who can't see the value in something which doesn't directly translate into new gadgets - where do you think the technology in the cell phone (or replacement device) you'll own 20 years from now is going to come from? New technological developments are predicated upon basic scientific research. Sure, you can come up with rocks and fire and a few other nice toys without understanding why they work. Maybe god did it, or a wizard, who knows. But modern technology doesn't really work that way, it's far too complicated. Your computer is based upon a number of scientists and engineers understanding what's going on in terms of quantum mechanics, solid state physics, chemistry...not to mention loads of math. You wouldn't be online to question this without people doing basic scientific research.

Besides, the best and most human reason to go is because it's there. How could we not?

Re:why?

[joeflies]

It's amazing how military expeditions often launch under the guise of scientific exploration.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

what's the purpose of its mission?

To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least its not blue like Uranus.

Re:why?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Let's shoutout to all the females in space too, shall we? Interstellar travel would be no fun if it were a sausage party. From the Wikipedia article about the famous phrase:

Five years later after the release of The Wrath of Khan, a slightly altered version of the introduction was included in the title sequence of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The new version replaced...the word "man" with the gender- and species-neutral "one". The new introduction, narrated by Patrick Stewart (who played the Enterprise-D's captain, Jean-Luc Picard), at the beginning of every episode of that series, was:

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Though I wish the females' TOS uniforms were still en vogue. ;)

Re:why?

[Jeprey]

As someone who's personally worked in military radiation hardening of electronics let me assure you this is 30-year-old military technology that is being re-used by NASA, not the other way around. You paranoia is admirably but misplaced in this case.

Re:why?

[oliverthered]

Feminine is used in the English language for a neuter form of a single entity.
America and her army,
My ship and all who sail in her.

Masculine is used in the English language for a neuter form of a unit of a group.

In chess, move you man.

Did they also change Woman to be Woone? or Woperson?

But then person is no good either, it's got son in it and that's not gender neutral.

So, from now on I'm going to call my partner a Wopeone, that is unless my partner is male in which case I'm gona call him my bitch.

Re:why?

[xaositects]

My God, it's full of electronics

Re:why?

[janerules]

I dont think it was a "Why? What a waste!" I think it was more of a "Why? I haven't got the details, and am too lazy/busy/stupid to google it"

Re:Nice

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Cool story, bro.

We talked about this a month ago. Too lazy to look it up. Lots of jokes about sending tanks to Jupiter and such.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

We talked about this a month ago. Too lazy to look it up..

Pics, or it didn't happen.

How many SUV trunks per LoC?

[fotoguzzi]

And isn't an SUV _trunk_ about 1 m x 1 m x 1 m, anyway?

SUV's trunk...

[Wyatt Earp]

An SUV doesn't have a trunk.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Martin Blank]

It does when an elephant is driving.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[SheeEttin]

Heh... reminds me of a joke.

How many elephants can you fit in a Volkswagen Beetle?
Four. Two in the front, two in the back.

...which is the set-up to the real joke:

How can you tell when there's an elephant in your fridge?
- There's elephant prints in the butter.
How can you tell when there's TWO elephants in your fridge?
- There's two sets of prints in the butter.
How can you tell when there's THREE elephants in your fridge?
- The door won't close.
How can you tell when there's FOUR elephants in your fridge?
- There's a Volkswagen Beetle in your driveway.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

You know, I was thinking the same thing. The area commonly called "trunk" is usually under the rear deck of a passenger car, separated from the passenger compartment.

Then I thought about my car (2000 TransAm). It has what's called a trunk area, but it's under the rear hatch, and doesn't necessarily have a separation to it. There is a removable interior cover, but I'd hardly call it a separator.

I went looking for a more accurate definition of the "trunk". It's the main cargo, luggage, or storage area in a vehicle. It would not generally be the passenger area, as humans prefer to not be considered "cargo". :) A "trunk" area could be anything from the little space in my TransAm to the rear of a 26' cargo truck. You'd be hard pressed to call a 26' cargo truck a "SUV" though, but you could include something as big as a International XT series. A SUV trunk could be defined in several ways. We'll use a large fully enclosed SUV for an example, the Chevrolet Suburban. I was helping a friend of mine with his, and in the process, we removed everything from the interior, so I became very familiar with it. I'm using rather inaccurate numbers, as the true dimensions are a bit tricky. Somehow they made that truck without a straight edge anywhere in it. We found that out when building panels to replace the interior. They required many measurements to create properly sized templates.

With all the seats installed, it had two front captains chairs, two mid captains chairs, and a bench in the rear. The cross section dimensions were roughly 4' wide by 5' tall. The "trunk" area (between the rear of the rearmost seat and the cargo doors) would be roughly 2'x4'x5', or 40 cubic feet.

The rear bench seat was easily removable, which would change the "trunk" area to roughly 4'x4'x5' or 80 cubic feet.

Removal of the interior trim in creased the cross section to approximately 5.5' wide by 5' tall. This would increase the "trunk" area of the rear to 4'x5.5'x5', or 110 cubic feet.

Removal of the mid captains chairs and associated interior trim increased the distance from the back of the front seats to the rear of the truck to 8', so the "trunk" area would be 4'x5.5'x8', or 176 cubic feet. This would be about standard if the truck was configured from the manufacturer as a work truck, rather than a passenger truck.

So the article's precision explanation for stupid people of "about the size of an SUV's trunk" is just plain wrong. They did also say each side is nearly 1 square meter, or nearly 9 square feet. As 1 square meter is 10.76 square feet, which is over the given sizes, we can deduct it to be not larger than 9 square feet, or 0.83 square meters. So 6 equal sides of 9 sq/ft would make it 81 cubic feet.

Easy, huh? Well, they threw us with "each wall is 9 square feet", because that lets us assume the walls are square. Looking at the picture provided, it appears to be a cube. But, if you look at this NASA photo, you'll see there are 6 square sides, and two hexagonal sides. So, if it were a cube, it would be the size of the cargo area of a suburban with the third row. But, it's not a cube, and there are no less than two different sizes for the sides.

You can't blame the article's author for it though. They got the details from NASA's own article. Great. Dimensions from the same organization that said "oh, we made a mistake in our unit conversion, and lost a $125 million dollar satellite."

Sure, if you're going to go around saying a square meter is 9 square feet, there's obviously something wrong with your conversions. :)

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Wyatt Earp]

After I posed that, I went over to wiki and read the definition for an auto trunk, I never ever heard of anything other than the traditional "trunk" called a trunk.

Everyone with SUVs or vans I've known called it, well the "back", or the cargo area. I guess I can expand my mind around the thought of the back of an SUV/van being a "trunk", maybe.

So does a Chevy Avalanche or Honda Pilot's "trunk" expand to the entire cargo area when the divider opens up? If I put a hard or soft cover on my Silverado's bed does that become a "trunk"?

Re:SUV's trunk...

[theapeman]

So 6 equal sides of 9 sq/ft would make it 81 cubic feet.

I think you mean 27 cubic feet (assuming square sides).

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the squares are the same then you are looking at about an extra factor of 2 1/2 to your cube volume calculation (3sqrt(3)/2 if you want to be precise). So we are looking at 60-70 cubic feet or a bit under 2 cubic meters. As this is slashdot, it may be more convenient to think of it as a mere 2.4 × 10^ -7 cubic furlongs.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JohnFluxx]

The joke continues:

Noah called a meeting for all the animals. Which one didn't come?
- The elephant - he was in the fridge.

How do you cross a crocodile infested river?
- Wait until they are at the Noah's meeting.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

    They didn't define the "trunk" to be enclosed, so the bed would count too. I agree, I've never heard anyone say "trunk" in relation to the back of a truck. It's always "cargo area", "back of the truck", or "bed of the truck". The rear doors are usually "cargo doors" or "rear doors". In helping my friend with his suburban, we needed to replace the "cargo door seal", as GM described it. My car has a rear hatch seal. The trunk on a sedan would be a trunk seal. :)

    The rumble seat was shown in the picture on the wiki article, which just adds to the confusion. The rumble seat is uncomfortable, but it is a seat where a passenger could ride.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

Ya, you're right. I ran everything through a calculator so my mid-night math wouldn't go wrong. At least I wasn't planning a space mission with my bad math. :)

Re:SUV's trunk...

[drinkypoo]

Trucks really don't have trunks, even if you have a tonneau cover. They have a "bed", which is true whether it's a pickup with a closed bed (with sides on it) or an open flatbed, with or without slat sides. I've been to school for auto body and paint and this is really what it's called. (I can probably still accurately name any part of the body, how useful if I ever want to actually do auto body for a living.) Or of course they can just have a hitch, as in the case of semi-tractors. I've seen at least one pickup with a fifth wheel hitch and no bed. And I've certainly seen rock crawlers on a shortbed frame with the bed completely removed and just nothing back there but bare frame and running gear.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

    I agree with you, and I'd suspect a lot of other people would agree with you, but what I found as definitions of a vehicle's trunk say otherwise. Unfortunately, someone at NASA referred to the trunk of a SUV in the article. {sigh}

    Auto body is one of the things I've tried to avoid doing. Maybe I should learn it someday. I've been doing auto repairs for about 25 years. If it is driven on the road, I've probably worked on at least one of it's type at some point. That's kind of funny since I don't actually do it professionally. Anyone who knows me knows I am very honest. I diagnose their problem, and have them buy the replacement parts for me. Then they pay me what they think my time was worth. Since I only do it in my spare time, if they give me anything, it's more than I would have been making. :)

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I grew up in farm country and we made a clear distinction between pickups = personal vehicles, and trucks = larger vehicles of whatever sort. But all you city folk with your highfalutin IP addresses and skim lattes use the latter term for LDVs, your F150 etc. Kinda puzzling.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine does. It's big enough to carry an elephant. Or four elephants, if I put them i a Beetle first.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

    I guess it all depends on where in farm country you grew up. "Truck" was anything with 4 or more wheels that wasn't a passenger car. Being that SUV's were built on light duty truck frames, they were also called "trucks". Oddly enough, manufacturers also call light duty trucks "trucks" ... and the town I grew up in didn't have any IP data service when I left, other than dialup in the next county. The idea of a coffee shop, other than one attached to a doughnut shop was completely foreign. As far as I know, they still don't have a Starbucks. According to the Starbucks site, the nearest one is about 50 miles away.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[drinkypoo]

The manufacturer calls them trucks. In fact, they call them a pickup truck, or a light duty truck. I have a 1992 F250 diesel which is a light truck with a "light heavy duty" engine made by International. Whatever that means. They put the same engine in school buses and crap like that.

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

    Well.. International, Cat, and Detroit Diesel all make engines for various applications. I know some school buses have light truck engines, but some have the larger truck engines too. In looking at RV's and buses, I found some were gas or diesel light truck engines (like Chevy 350, Ford 351, or Chevy 454). Others had engines like the DD 6v72 and 6v92. I don't know the International motors very well, since they weren't in what I was looking at. I was told by someone that the motors that show up in pickup trucks are not the big truck motors. Pretty much, if it were a big truck motor, you wouldn't be able to see over it. :)

    I was looking at both to figure out which was most cost effective. Should I buy an already complete RV that probably won't suit my needs, or build one out on a heavier chassis? Affordable RV's aren't the real heavy duty ones. To get a good class A, you're looking at 6 figures. Since I can do both automotive and construction work, I opted to build my own on a city bus (GMC RTS-04). It's 40' long, 8.5' wide, and has a DD 6v92TA motor, and only cost about $2500. It's built more like a large truck (tractor-trailer) than a light truck (pickup/van/school bus).

Re:SUV's trunk...

[drinkypoo]

Yes, city buses tend to have big fat cast parts in them that have immense mass. I know a guy who's got a cruise bus with a twincharged DD of some type. His engine is larger than what's in my pickup, but not immensely larger. But then the OBS fords are stupidly heavy, maybe a thousand pounds heavier than the competition. And the International engine in my pickup is dramatically heavier than, say, the Cummins. You allegedly WILL find this engine in semi-tractors, and it was certainly commonly installed into two-ton vehicles and the like. The Ford PowerStroke diesel is descended from this design, but the heads are completely different, the block has numerous upgraded features, and my engine is mechanical where the PowerStroke is electronic. It has better emissions, I have better mileage :)

The 7.3 liter makes a peak 338 ft/lb @ 1800 RPM and redlines around 3500 RPM (!) This is hardly the highest-revving diesel I've seen (Indeed my 300SD redlines at 3700 RPM... with a 3 liter engine, though) but it does make peak torque very low in comparison to its redline. It's provided with a three-core all-brass radiator and in super-duty models Ford also implemented a high-flow puke tank, so when you overheat it, the coolant is swapped fairly quickly between the radiator and a cooling tank and you get to overheat it all over again :) International can safely be assumed to have implemented the same sort of features.

The big advantage of an engine like that isn't output, though; it's longevity. But the 7.3 is actually pretty amazing in that respect so long as you follow the service requirements. Like many engines of its size it requires a cooling system additive to prevent cavitation due to flexing of cylinder walls. However, the additive is generally successful. The big fail of this motor is that it has only a single thrust bearing in the lower end, and the entire thing is gear driven so if this goes to hell it will take the entire motor with it. This makes a manual transmission something of a liability...

Re:SUV's trunk...

[Wyatt Earp]

I grew up on a Wheat farm in South Dakota, pickups were called trucks or pickups, six-wheeled farm trucks were called trucks, or since our farm was all GM and the farm trucks were all Fords, we called the six-wheeled farm trucks "Fords".

We had a number of pickups (Chevy or GM full ton with 427s or 454s) converted to utility vehicles, which we called trucks

Re:SUV's trunk...

[JWSmythe]

    There are significant differences between big truck motors and car motors. Like I said, there is some crossover, but that's usually where performance isn't actually required. I drove a 26' U-Haul across the country, and it had a gas Chevy 454 in it, tied to some fairly stock automatic transmission. I didn't have a look at it, but the guy at the shop said they used dump truck transmissions, which would be similar to a standard automotive transmission except much lower gearing. Empty it drove pretty well, but fully loaded driving the length of I-10 was painful. I kept my foot planted to the floor for the whole drive. We'd hold about 65mph on flat land, 20mph going up hill, and the governor would kick in at 70mph going downhill on the other side. I cheated a little going down hill. I'd get up to 70mph and throw it in neutral until we hit the the next uphill part and the speed dropped down to 70.

    A DD6v92 weighs somewhere just over 3,000 pounds. That wouldn't ever show up in a light truck. The front tires wouldn't be able to take it. Check out the max load capacity of your light truck tires.

    I just checked out the Ford web site. The F650 and F750 use a Cummins ISB motor. The F350 through F550 do come with a gas or diesel automotive sized motor.

    A Cummins ISB motor dry weight is 1,150 pounds. A Caterpillar C7 motor dry weight is 1,295 pounds.

    Your 7.9L Ford/International Powerstroke has a dry weight of 920 pounds. That doesn't mean the large trucks do.

    An International Truck, like a 9900 uses either a Cummins ISX or a MaxxForce® 15 (coming in late 2010). The Cummins ISX weighs 2,940 pounds. The MaxxForce 15 weighs 3,150 pounds. The comparable Caterpillar C15 weighs about 3,000 pounds.

    So, you may see trucks bigger than a pickup with regular automotive engines, but you won't see large truck engines in something the size of a pickup truck. You wouldn't really want to though. They don't spin very fast. They make awesome amounts of torque, which would make them very hard to drive in a light chassis. International isn't just in the business of building trucks though, they've had a diverse history including engines, and for a while were building consumer vehicles, like the International Harvester Scout. Just because it says "International" doesn't mean it was a huge truck part. It's kinda like saying "oohhh, Cadillac, it must be good", and pointing at a Cadillac Cimarron. :)

Re:SUV's trunk...

[hawkfish]

Q: What's gray and comes in quarts?

/me ducks!

Re:Nice

[$RANDOMLUSER]

happy now?

dangerous?

[polar red]

Yeah, al those other moon- mars- and other space-missions where a walk in the park ...

Re:dangerous?

[Bigjeff5]

Compared to Jupiter, they were a cakewalk.

Do you have any idea the forces that are involved? Jupiter's tidal forces are so strong they may warp its moons enough to generate significant amounts of heat inside its moons - moons that are the size of planets (Ganymede is bigger than Mercury, and nearly as big as Mars).

We're not talking about just orbiting Jupiter either - we've done that before. We're talking going down into low-Jupiter orbit to study it up close and personal like. It's almost 320 times as massive as the Earth, so it's going to be hit with those insane tidal forces. It's also generating incredible amounts of radiation which will easily fry all the electronics on-board.

I mean, for heaven's sake, they've built it out of 500 pounds of titanium to withstand the radiation and crushing gravity. That's not exactly a heavy metal. They'll be ending the mission by diving it into the surface, and they are not even expect it to survive to the surface with all that protection.

Really, we've done nothing like it before.

Re:dangerous?

[digitalchinky]

It'll be in freefall around the planet even if it is in low-Jupiter orbit, so the only problem will be getting its teeth X-rayed a hundred million times or so. Weightless and happy, it pretty much will only be as complex as any other mission to orbit another planet. That bit about diving it in to the surface though, that'll be a tad on the damaging side like you say.

Re:dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

the natural satellites of jupiter are also in freefall. tidal
forces depend on the difference in gravity between two
points in an object. since juno is at most ~10m from
tip to tip, i really doubt tidal forces will make any difference.

(likewise, there are no solar tides on the earth.)

Re:dangerous?

[mbone]

You are correct that there are no significant tidal forces in a 10 meter spacecraft, but there are certainly solar tides on the Earth - they are about 1/2 the amplitude of the Lunar tides, and the interaction between the two gives rise to the Spring and Neap tides.

Re:dangerous?

[photonic]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt that tidal forces play any role at all for Juno. Tidal forces are caused by the difference of gravity over the extend of an object, which is only significant for planets and moons which have sizes on the order of thousands of kilometers, compared to satellites with a diameter of 10 meters. According to the last formula found here, the tidal force is roughly a fraction (diameter / orbit height) of the gravitational force itself. A satellite of 10 meters orbiting at the same height above Jupiter as Io (known for its tidal induces volcanoes), will thus experience just a few millionths of the force experienced by Io.

Re:dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jupiter's tidal forces are so strong they may warp its moons..Really, we've done nothing like it before.

I'm sure you haven't, dude. I'm now all, "Now where did I leave my silver coloured board again? The waves, the waves!"

Re:dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

'weightless' is one thing, but the tidal gravitational interactions of Sol vis a vis Jupiter will essentially be the same as being in a cake mixer, literally pulling and pushing the device apart. Add to that the fact; that some of Jupiter's planet-sized moons orbit contra rotational, that the orbits of all the moons are far from 'stable', looking more like a spirograph over time, and at the Galileo mission also both fired a probe into jupiters athmosphere and then intentional dive-bombed, the radiation hazards are nothing compared to the orbital location.

Re:dangerous?

[sjames]

Ahhh, is piece of pie!

Re:dangerous?

[sjames]

The free market can sort this out. Given the crazy costs of healthcare in the U.S. these days it won't be long before the uninsured resort to taking a trip to Jupiter to get their teeth X-rayed. If NASA is really nice, they can probably get them to take the space probes with them, especially if they share gas money.

Re:dangerous?

[Tablizer]

They'll be ending the mission by diving it into the surface, and they are not even expect it to survive to the surface with all that protection.

The Galileo probe had an atmospheric sub-probe that dived into Jupiter's atmosphere. It came very close to failing due to a construction flaw: they put an almost-symmetrical part in backward.

An interesting thing about Juno is that it will have a polar orbit, which is something new.
   

Are we there yet?

[thervey]

Anyone know how long it will take the probe to get there? They didn't make any mention of the travel time in the article.

Re:Are we there yet?

[Bigjeff5]

It will take a few years, Jupiter is 8 times as far away from Earth as Mars, so however long it took to get to Mars, it will probably be about 8 times that (maybe less, depending on how long it can accelerate).

I didn't look up past missions to compare, but if I had to guess I'd say about 4-6 years to get there.

Re:Are we there yet?

[mbone]

Anyone know how long it will take the probe to get there?

Current plans are for a 5 year cruise phase with one Earth fly-by. This might change, especially if the mission has to slip for some reason.

Re:Are we there yet?

[thervey]

Thanks for the link!

SUV trunks?

[Mr. Freeman]

Has the US population degraded to the point that we can't figure out what a square meter is? Do we need to measure volume in terms of SUV trunks?

I'll forgive people for not being familiar for units of radiation exposure because it's not something that 99% of the population will ever deal with, but how the hell does a dental x-ray put it in perspective? It's not like you can feel an X-ray. (If you can feel radiation then it's way more than enough to kill you, below insta-death levels you're not going to feel a damn thing).

At least with the size of the thing they gave dimensions in addition to their bullshit comparison, they didn't even bother to mention with real units how much radiation this thing will have to withstand. This serves to do nothing but perpetuate the idiocy growing more and more common in the US today.

Re:SUV trunks?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:SUV trunks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:SUV trunks?

[oliverthered]

I suppose they could have used 2 hours in a microwave or 40 years under a tanning lamp. But then the radiation may well be x-rays (though they say they tested using a gamer ray source).

It may have been better to put it in terms of how bright the equivalent aura would be if earth had that much radiation in it's atmosphere.

But the article was written by a dentist who drives an SUV, so I doubt he'd have know about things like that.

Re:SUV trunks?

[loufoque]

Has the US population degraded to the point that we can't figure out what a square meter is? Do we need to measure volume in terms of SUV trunks?

It seems to have degraded to the point of confusing surface and volume.
Volume is in cube meters.

Re:SUV trunks?

[assertation]

The US population hasn't degraded. The US population never went metric outside of science classes in school - which is a very small portion of their experience.

Luckily, I learned linear measurements before the "English System" when I was a child in the 70s and there was a movement to make the US metric. Before it was killed. You know, the metric system is sort of like health care, it spooks conservatives into thinking communism is around the corner.

I have an intuitive sense of some metric measurements. A meter is about a yard. A liter is about a quart. I don't have an emotional impression for what it feels like to walk a kilometer or what centigrade feels like. 80 degrees F to me is a nice day. On a gut level I have no idea what kind of day 26 degrees C is like.

Re:SUV trunks?

[Clovert Agent]

Has the US population degraded to the point that we can't figure out what a square meter is? Do we need to measure volume in terms of SUV trunks?

Apparently so. Or don't you measure volume in cubic metres any more? :)

Re:SUV trunks?

[moonbender]

Would you describe your level of outrage as being five times stubbing your toe or is it more like 0.5 times some idiot double parking you in for half an hour?

Re:SUV trunks?

[Anonymous Coward]

cube FEET. get your NASA units right.

Re:SUV trunks?

[BraksDad]

Has the US population degraded to the point that we can't figure out what a square meter is? Do we need to measure volume in terms of SUV trunks?...

The short answer is "yes."

The long answer is that too many Americans (read USA occupants) would more likely understand volume to be a reference to sound levels (i.e. 1-10 or 11 for some more fortunate rockers)

Re:SUV trunks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are two separate questions, dumbass. The first one deals with surface area, the second deals with volume. Next time you should actually read the post before spewing more garbage.

Dangerous to whom?

[davidwr]

I'd say any manned mission has a higher risk of fatalities than this one.

100 million dental X-rays

[R.Mo_Robert]

100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[dangitman]

Well, in this case it would be Librarians of Congress with tooth decay per fortnight.

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[St.Creed]

Beat me to it :)

But on a more serious note: a dental x-ray can vary between 5 and 170 micro Sievert (source: http://hps.org/hpspublications/articles/dentaldoses.html),
so this could be between 500 and 17000 Sievert. A rather large uncertainty in such a statement. Not that it wouldn't be lethal, since anything over 6 Sievert (acute dosis) is considered lethal (and even 1 Sievert acute will get you radiation poisoning - see Wikipedia).

What's with scaring people about dental X-rays, though? While I appreciate the need for an analogy, couldn't they have come up with a better analogy for this one? Like "equivalent to standing inside Chernobyl starting on the first day of the accident, for 15 months in a row"? (*)

That'd make the picture much clearer, I'd say.

(*) using 20 Sv for Chernobyl first day exposure (max value) and the average value for the potential exposure with the 100 million dental x-rays, which gives 8750 Sievert total exposure.

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[Anonymous Coward]

The conversion factor is the length of a football field divided by the distance from the earth to the moon, so only about 20 Libraries of congress.

Seriously though, 1 dental X-ray is only enough energy to move a Volkswagen the width of a human hair, but 100 million is a pretty big number number (you'd need that many iPods to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.)

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[Sabz5150]

100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?

4 - 6 megarads.

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, and I came here to ask if someone could convert that into Libraries of Congress for me.

Re:100 million dental X-rays

[fahrbot-bot]

100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?

The *real* question is: Why does this probe have teeth?

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA.

[Anonymous Coward]

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

those are good questions

[circletimessquare]

but from the story summary, i think the most pressing question would be why the heck does jupiter have millions of dental X-rays?

Re:those are good questions

[QuantumG]

Fat planet eats too many sweets.

Now that's what I call good writing:

[lxs]

'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,'

Nice image. Everybody hates dentists and their evil cancer rays.

[The] titanium box — about the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box...

Everything is better with titanium, and a proper car analogy on top of that.

The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."

Metric first, and imperial units as backup. Very nice.

Re:Now that's what I call good writing:

[mbone]

Metric first, and imperial units as backup. Very nice.

What I like is that the author didn't say

The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (440.92 pounds).

The key to running "dual stack" on metric / English units is to realize that most of the time you do not have to be too precise in the conversion, as most of the time the original is not very precise either.

it's a type'o

[oliverthered]

If you read the write-up you'll see that later on they say that they are an invisible force field.
As we all know from sci-fi movies, force fields protect things.
So, they must have meant to say, millions of denial X-rays, not dental X-rays.

It's a type'o, simple as that. Either that or someone forgot to rub out the little horizontal bit on the t to turn it into an i, when they were having a little joke with themselves to lighten up the day, working for the man an all.

no, no, no

[circletimessquare]

as we know from 2001/ 2010 a space odyssey, enough black monoliths and jupiter will finally ignite and become a second sun. but the question is: what are those black monoliths? and, we finally have our answer: dental x-ray machines, alien dental x-ray machines. that is what inspired pre-homo sapiens species to begin the journey to modern man: the divine inspiration of advanced dental technology

Re:no, no, no

[oliverthered]

Wow, that guy who done the write up must have got a beta version of the SETI at home project that lets you write your own algorithms. Written his own one, and managed to communicate with the aliens that put the invisible, black monoliths around Jupiter. They then must have told him that they were using the force of Dental X-Rays to perform a denial of service attack on Jupiter and ignite it into a second sun as it overloads with the drilling of requests.

2010 you say, dam shame that NASA's budget got cut, due to the cost of the wars no doubt, and they missed their intended launch window of 2009, otherwise they may have been able to make it their in time. Now there defiantly going to be too late, even if they take a ride on the nipon solar sail and get their at the speed of light.

At least the Zionists will be happy, the Muslim world getting over-thrown, the Jew's back in the holy land and busy fighting off and imprisoning the Muslims around them and now the coming of the second son.

Thing is, it already seems like hell on earth where I'm standing, and I'm pretty sure those few million souls that go to heaven must have already gone, cos I've not met a single on of them, and Christians aren't like they used to be.

So it look like the bible was actually correct after all, they just wrote riders of the apocalypse when they really meant to put, Juno what, 2001/2010 a space odyssey.

It's uglier than you can imagine.

[jrst]

It's uglier than you can imagine.

IIRC (sorry, it was long ago)... on the Pioneer 10//F 11/G missions Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope for an order-of-magnitude more than expected, and we pegged them. Pioneer suffered significantly--never regained full range on one channel of the IPP (Imaging Photopolarimeter--that thing that made the pretty pictures possible).

We nearly lost the spacecraft due to some spurious crap/commands during periapsis on Pioneer 10/F. Try dealing with an idiot-savant-brain-damaged-two-year-old throwing a tantrum with ~90-minute round-trip light time at 256-1024bps. It's ugly.

The running joke was... If you want to be absolutely certain a spacecraft is sterile, just make a flyby of Jupiter. Jupiter's belts are not to be taken lightly. A seriously understated quote from one post-mission presentation "Closest approach: It’s hot in there!"

It's not just hot, it's a red-hot-poker enema in your electronic guts. That Pioneer 10/11 F/G--the epitome of cheap deep-space exploration--survived those encounters and lived to tell--and did so for many more years still amazes me.

It is a testament to what we can do, and what deep-space exploration is all about. (So allow me a bit of hubris: Suck eggs Voyager... you had a much bigger budget, you got the press, you got your name in a Star Trek movie, but we were there first. Nah nah nah.)

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[CrashandDie]

Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope

Oh man, I remember that concert, it was just absolutely insane.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Jeprey]

Indeed. The illusion of space safety largely comes from the fact that the space shuttle uses only LEO where radiation is only a bit higher than terrestrial (but still higher) and the gullible fantasies of SciFi stories. Get to a higher orbit or deep space and it's radically higher normal radiation levels. The mission profile of Juno is like the Earth's van Allen belts fully charged. Very nasty.

Most commercial semiconductor technology is burned up by the high orbit and deep space radiation levels shortly after being powered up - back in the day we tested off-the-shelf Intel processors and SNL clones of the same and the first small 10KRad dose destroyed the Intel processors dead while the clones (designed from scratch for rad hardness) lasted to MRad doses.

Humans beyond LEO? Don't make me laugh! This is the Achille's Heel of any Mars mission. There is no existing technology that can fix this either. Even the Juno shielding comes at a heavy price: using high Z shielding increases cosmic ray and ion spallation which results in increased total dose that the shielding is nominally trying to reduce - because the process occurs *inside* the shielding material and actually gets worse with Z, it's a trade-off between bad dose levels and really bad dose levels. That's what is alluded to in the article as well. Strictly there is no way to shield down to human-tolerable levels.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[JohnFluxx]

> Strictly there is no way to shield down to human-tolerable levels.

Lots of shielding?

The coolest idea that I've seen is to snag a comet as it goes by, and drill our way to the center of that. Then you have several km of sheilding :) Wouldn't that be sufficient?

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Strictly there is no way to shield down to human-tolerable levels.

The claim that radiation obviates human space travel predates the ability to leave the atmosphere, much less achieve LEO or land humans on the Moon. This is historical fact that you don't get to deny just because it frustrates you. As humans have traveled deeper and longer in space the claims have evolved to remain conveniently beyond contemporary experience. Your assertion about 'any Mars mission' is a fine example of this phenomenon.

Keep up the good work. It's probably good (or at least does little harm) that someone in the peanut gallery is forever yammering on about intolerable radiation that has no remedy. Show no humility when your present claims are proven false. Just quietly move the bar (again) and carry on!

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Wingman 5]

yea, but how do you steer it?

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[JohnFluxx]

Easy - by ejecting its insides. Simply through lumps of it out the back in the opposite direction that you want to go in. Hopefully its contents will include something that you can use as fuel to propel the lumps at high speed.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[RichiH]

> The running joke was... If you want to be absolutely certain a spacecraft is sterile, just make a flyby of Jupiter.

Finally, someone writes about the _WHY_ of the titanium case. Thanks :)

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[kurokame]

Deep space is considerably lower in radiative flux than it is when you're near a star for obvious reasons involving decay times and 1/r^2 laws. If it worked like you're saying, the universe would be extremely bright and extremely hot everywhere. In real life, most of it is just empty.

Also, there's an old trick which pops up in hard SF every now and then. Bury your interstellar ship inside layers of rock or water or both. Get it thick enough and it will shield out damn near anything which you're likely to encounter regardless of where you are or how fast you're going. Of course there are still places you're likely to want to avoid...stellar nurseries are probably not a nice place to be, nor do you want to get too far on the inside of the habitable zone of a star. Stuff like that. But the fun thing about radiation is that you can stop any conceivable level of radiative flux simply by putting enough matter between it and you. So much for "no way" eh?

As for something as simple as sending a probe to Mars - yes, you have to account for radiation in the design. But it's hardly insurmountable. If somehow it mysteriously happens that nothing else works, you can always fall back to covering the hull in water tanks. Higher fuel cost, but certainly possible.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[loufoque]

Humans beyond LEO? Don't make me laugh! This is the Achille's Heel of any Mars mission. There is no existing technology that can fix this either.

Just make a massive ship; its sheer mass would provide enough shielding.

Obviously, it would have to be built in space. But to make a good enough space or moon base, you'd have to bring fairly massive amounts of material as well. And the only cost-effective ways to do that are propulsion based on nuclear explosions or a space elevator.
One technology people are afraid of, the other is not ready.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[imakemusic]

Simply through lumps of it out the back in the opposite direction that you want to go in.

That's not steering, that's propelling. You could make some holes on either side and top and bottom as well, but the more holes you make the less shielding you have.

(btw, it's "throw" not "through")

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[ShooterNeo]

Do you have any numbers for this? I thought that it was generally agreed that a Mars mission was survivable using a lightweight spacecraft with little shielding. (maybe a 'storm cellar' shielded room for when a solar flare happens but that's it.) And we're talking a slow Mars mission, using conventional chemical rockets and a many month trip.

Now, a trip to Jupiter or Neptune...yeah it sounds like the only humans making a trip like that would have to be genetically engineered for higher radiation resistance.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[mbone]

While the depth of the atmosphere also helps in shielding, 14 pounds per square inch (or, ten metric tons per square meter), is not a bad first guess for adequate shielding for most of deep space, although it would not nearly be adequate for Jupiter. (Not every part of the spacecraft would require this, but a shielded "safe room" for solar flares would be a very good idea.) Note that the Jovian / Solar Flare radiation is all charged particles (no X or gamma rays), so it might also be possible to do magnetic shielding.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[mbone]

There has to be shielding, but not every part of the spacecraft has to be shielded. BTW, NASA does monitor radiation exposure to its astronauts, and you can't do a long duration mission to the ISS once you reach your lifetime limit.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[MartinSchou]

Also, there's an old trick which pops up in hard SF every now and then. Bury your interstellar ship inside layers of rock or water or both.

One advantage to this is waste management.

Since you'd need to recycle EVERYTHING on an interstellar (or even interplanetary) ship, use the massive radiation to your advantage. Feed the plumbing from all the waste to the outermost layers of the ship, exposing it to as much radiation as possible, thereby killing all bacteria, viruses and other parasites.

Doing this should allow you to save space/mass, since you then don't need as advanced a water treatment plant as you'd otherwise need.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[ahankinson]

Uh... wouldn't that create irradiated water? Could you even use that water again, once it's been exposed to such high levels of radiation?

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[mbone]

Yes. Water irradiates fairly nicely. In the solar system, this "radiation" is actually high energy protons and electron, with a little Helium (AKA Alpha particles) and a smidgen of other stuff. Generally, you would worry about fission byproducts under such radiation. However, you can't fission Hydrogen at all, and you're not likely to encounter energies required to fission Oxygen either, or to make Neon from Oxygen by the Alpha process. You might make a little Tritium, but Tritium decays rapidly.

It's the heavy elements (roughly, Iron and above) that tend to have lots of nasty fission byproducts, caused by a proton hitting and breaking apart the nucleus. A steel container for your water, now that would be an issue, but I don't think that the water itself is likely to be dangerous.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans beyond LEO?

well shit, I bet you're the type who thinks the various moon missions were fake as well.

The moon is beyond LEO.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Cantus]

Mod parent up!

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[DerekLyons]

And the only cost-effective ways to do that are propulsion based on nuclear explosions or a space elevator. One technology people are afraid of, the other is not ready.

One technology people are afraid of, two technologies that are not ready.
 
Seriously, people treat nuclear pulse production as if were a done deal, but there's been damn little actual engineering work accomplished. Exactly none of the equipment has been tested except in the form a non-nuclear (very small) scale model. Huge questions remain about the design of the pusher plate and the shock absorbers, as well as the of pulse unit itself.

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Alsee]

But the fun thing about radiation is that you can stop any conceivable level of radiative flux simply by putting enough matter between it and you.

Not quite true. There is one exotic exception you overlooked... neutrino radiation.

Even if you used the entire mass of the universe to build a spherical radiation shield around you, it would only block a small fraction of neutrino radiation. Of course on the other hand neutrino radiation is quite harmless unless the radiative flux is insanely high. The only known natural source for dangerous levels of neutrino radiation would be a star going nova. So add stellar novas to the list of places you want to avoid in your interstellar spaceship :)

Interestingly, scientists have been considering building an artificial neutrino radiation beam for study, and they specifically analyzed the hazard level of the neutrino radiation it would generate. It turns out that if your bed were parked right over the local exit point, the neutrino radiation dose would be about 5 millisievert per year. This is about double the natural background radiation, and it is similar to receiving an X-ray per week. This is within occupational exposure levels, but such a worker would be required to wear a special badge to measure their radiation exposure.

So you can add "parking your interstellar ship on top of the proposed physics lab" to the list of things you want to avoid. :)

-

Re:It's uglier than you can imagine.

[Kvasio]

note to self: must see again Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets to check how they've managed to put a person on Io. AFAIR that person nearly died of radiation.

USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

Juno is NASA's newest planned mission to Jupiter. As part of the New Frontiers missions, it will focus on cost-effective research of the planetary giant. The project's costs will not exceed USD $700 million, however, budgetary restrictions have caused the original launch date of June 2009 to be pushed back to August 2011.

Apparently, that's about the same as the US has spent on the war in Iraq (ignoring all the other countries [including Iraq] and the none-financial costs)

http://costofwar.com/

or to put it another way

Due to the secretive nature of Hollywood accounting it is not clear which film currently holds the record as the most expensive film ever made. Some charts have Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in the top spot which had an estimated cost of $300 million[1] while others have Spider-Man 3 which was officially acknowledged to cost $258 million.[2] Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and its sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End were produced together on a combined budget of $450 million,[3] making it the most expensive production. More recently there have been reports that Avatar is the most expensive film ever made with speculation that it cost $280 million,[4] which if true would make it the most expensive single-film production.

But then there's the 'real' costs too, how much people spend on movies, just like how much they spent on this project.

For instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films
1 Avatar 20th Century Fox $2,731,058,342 2009
[# 1]
2 Titanic Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox $1,843,201,268 1997
[# 2]
3 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King New Line Cinema $1,119,110,941 2003
[# 3]
4 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Walt Disney Pictures $1,066,179,725 2006
[# 4]
5 Alice in Wonderland Walt Disney Pictures $1,024,291,110 2010
[# 5]
6 The Dark Knight Warner Bros. $1,001,921,825 2008
[# 6]

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

Thinking about it, why the hell don't they turn the mission into a Movie (as cost effectively as possible) and then release it to generate a load more review.

I mean, I sat through penguins standing pretty much in one place for over an hour, and that was one of the best things I've seen.

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[Anonymous Coward]

you are mixing up millions vs billions

the cost of project ~700 million

the cost of the war ~800 billion +++ much more in reality. depending on who reports it and who analyzes it. some have argued that it is closer to 1.5 trillion

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

no I'm mixing up 100 millions and billiards ( a thousand million).
a billion is a million million. 'Bi' or 10^(2*6) a 'tri'llion is 10^(3*6).

Go look it up.

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[Tim the Gecko]

I don't think you will find any use of the old British "billion" in mainstream British newspapers for the last 30 years or so. For example, The Economist published a style guide in 1986, which defined billion as a thousand million. If you want to improve the accuracy of written English in these comments, maybe you could provide improved versions of the following:

• get their at the speed of light
• Didn't you hear, their going to put a Mosque in it's place.
• tested using a gamer ray source
• that guy who done the write up
• radiation in it's atmosphere

Or perhaps you should get some sleep :-)

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[dziban303]

Looking at your thirty-five posts in this thread, I have determined beyond any reasonable doubt that you are a moron.

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[Anonymous Coward]

In most countries, you would be correct. But in U.S. mathematical parlance, there are no "ard" designations. So it goes:

Thousands: (10^3)
Millions (10^4)
Ten Millions (10^5)
Hundred Millions (10^6)
Billions (10^7)
Ten Billions (10^8)
etc.

And since we are talking U.S. dollars here, I'd imagine the U.S. system is the one that applies to the dollar amounts.

Ahem... "Look it up."

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

Doh,
Classic mistake.
The figure wasn't written in text it was written in numerical figures. The word 'billion' never came into it.
I was mixing up a thousand million and a million (initially)

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

Like there's actually news in the news papers.

How do you know that I didn't in-fact mix up billiard and million?

Why do you assume I think the same way as you do?

Also, billiard is used in many many countries.

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[oliverthered]

Actually I'm being facetious.

'you are mixing up millions vs billions
the cost of project'

That statement is impertinent. Asserting that they knew what I was doing, when in-fact I didn't do that.

Looking at your precious posts, your only criterion for idiocy is poor spelling.

Fuck me, can't your tiny brain even fix that one up, no wonder I'm a little to dry for you.

Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free.

[sjames]

You're only off by THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!

You must be one of those Hollywood Accountants yourself.

opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Sorry, the cost of war in Iraq (financially to the US alone) is 100 times that of this mission to Jupiter.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing our invasion stopped Iraq from flying any more airplanes into our skyscrapers then. I'd hate to think that money was wasted.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[stevelinton]

Actually it's 1000 times...

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

I've been up all night (without any drugs) and I think it's starting to show.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[tsm_sf]

Poe's law (religious fundamentalism) -- "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism thata fundamentalist won't object to.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

should add, I think everyone know it was nothing to do with Iraq, personally I thought that was blatant enough. on both my post and the one I replied to.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Actually, it may not have been the parody that was the problem. It may have been that I done it in the third person. Where I come from we call that sarcasm, legend has it that it's not understood over the pond.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[MRe_nl]

A common mistake.

I suggest you take some drugs.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps more. They're still trying to put a dollar value on human life. Oh, sorry General, matériel.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Well, I've been down the 'so called' doctor and got given some benzos the other day.
Which kept me awake. God knows why they thought
they would make me sleepy, they should know by now the sedatives keep me awake, stimulants help me sleep and anti-psychotics give me psychosis.
(I'm hoping that one day, I'm not so stressed by the anal idiots that I actually remember to ask them, why that is. And if they say the word think or anything like that, then to ask them exactly what those thoughts are etc...)

I've tried food, since that's a commonly available stimulant drug, along with about 10 cigarettes and a could of good strong litres of coffee, and managed to fall asleep for a little while shortly afterwards.

Now, I'm strongly thinking about getting myself arrested and sent to court, in a continuous cycle until. Hopefully it won't take another 20 years for them to pull their heads out their arse.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[MRe_nl]

Ah, food, coffee, cigarettes and Benzedrine.
Breakfast of Champions.
I personally prefer to use all the other drugs.
Try no food, tea, joints and Acid for a couple of days.
It should at least stop your thoughts on getting arrested etc.
That would just be a drag, and too much bother to boot.
And who hid the front door anyway ;).

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[tsm_sf]

Where I come from we call that sarcasm, legend has it that it's not understood over the pond.

Oh I think that's entirely accurate.

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Try no food, tea, joints and Acid for a couple of days.

I'm bot sure what your suggesting?
Can you put the missing or in, it sounds like it may be an interesting proscription.
Do I put milk in the tea, opiates in the joint and then mix the left over opiates with some citric and bang it up?

That would probably chill me out a bit, but opiates keep me awake and make me crash big stylie.

'That would just be a drag, and too much bother to boot.', relatively, even with your proscription it would be a pleasant comfort for me, a drag and too much bother for everyone else involved though!

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[oliverthered]

Well I know it's entirely accurate.

It is after all only pulling a leg end!

Re:opps, out by a factor on 100.

[tsm_sf]

Aha, a fellow punter. Only a matter of thyme before the mods root us out.

Another poor robot sacrificed

[CuteSteveJobs]

We seem to be made to suffer, it's our lot in life.

Attempt no landings there.

[mbone]

This radiation will make it hard to ever do direct human exploration of the Jovian moons. The radiation peaks strongly in the equatorial regions, and all 4 Galilean satellites of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) have equatorial orbits. An unprotected human on the surface of Europa would be killed by the radiation within minutes (not quite as fast as from the vacuum of space, but still very fast), and so people on Europa would be restricted to moving around in something like tanks, for survival. Clearly, unmanned spacecraft (or at best tele-presence robots operated from a few million km away) are going to be the means of exploration there for a long time to come.

Re:Attempt no landings there.

[stevelinton]

If I recall correctly, Callisto is outsaide the main radiation belts and has a much less harsh environment. Another possible target would be a manned base INSIDE Europa, protected by a few km of water and ice.

That proves NASA didn't get to the Moon in 1969.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the amount of shielding on the Juno mission proves that NASA didn't have such capability to shield the asstronaughts on their mission to the moon in 1969. So much shielding was necessary for logic circuits to perform without error, yet not enough for biological neurons of a bunch of evolution-believing Catholics to function that they would allegedly jeapordize the mission with their antics of a swing of gold and their first meal of commie-union after allegedly arriving. Just think about how much more advanced NASA is today, and how much more plausible it would be to just reenact a falsified moon landing in 1969 and then actually go to the moon in a later mission to clear-up all the lack of details with actual footage. Explains alot about the asstronaughts were all quiet and couldn't answer simple non-classified questions from the press and asstronomers about the auras of celestial bodies and the lighting conditions but later in each of those asstrongaughts' career biographies all could remember such details when each were well-over 80-years old.

It all stinks like NASSA alright.

Someone had to do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, I cannot do that.

most heavily armORed

[dirtyhippie]

... am I the only one who read that as "armed" ? :)

Re:most heavily armORed

[AP31R0N]

Indeed. The probe will have a GAU-8, an array of SA-10s and come with lotus notes installed.

Pb

[Anonymous Coward]

engineers chose titanium because lead is too soft to withstand the vibrations of launch

So admittedly Pb is a superior shielding material except for the vibration issue? (given Pb is about 2.5X the density of Ti).
I don't imagine that's a particularly difficult engineering problem to overcome?
I guess given the cost of Titanium/processing, the kickbacks to the in cahoots sub-contractors is much more financially attractive (call me cynical).

Re:Pb

[mbone]

I guess given the cost of Titanium/processing...

The cost of Deep Space missions is so great you could make everything out of solid gold and it really wouldn't matter, as long as it saved a little weight. My guess is, using Ti instead of Pb saved a little weight, so they went with it.

Re:Pb

[stevelinton]

Lead is also too soft. It might not survive launch.

Re:Pb

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's just a comfort zone issue. Titanium is not THAT expensive. In this application, they only have to cut and weld a few plates of it together (relatively easy and routine operations in the aerospace industries).

Although molten lead sticks to steel and aluminum like shit (much like soldering. I'm sure there are a few dozen soldering joints on-board; I wonder if they replaced those with something more vibration resistant)(they also used to use Pb as automobile body fillers; an automobile isn't exactly a vibration free zone). So an aluminum chassis with a layer of melted on lead wouldn't necessarily be uncompetitive. But this is still more complicated and unfamiliar than cut & weld.

Juno articles still plagued..

[multimediavt]

And in other news, articles about the Juno spacecraft continue to be plagued by unit conversion errors.

The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds).

Really?!?! Because, the unit conversion for kilograms to pounds is x2.2. 1 kg = 2.2 lbs NOT 2.5 lbs!!!

For God's sake! The Metric system is not that hard to remember! If you don't know, LOOK IT UP!!!!

Re:Juno articles still plagued..

[imsabbel]

Its a meassurement with 1 significant digit. Thats a more correct way than the typicel " about 1 inch (2.54cm)" type conversion that implies a higher accuracy in one type of unit

Gas giants à la Iain M. Banks

[Type44Q]

I can't even run across the word "Jupiter" anymore without my thoughts immediately turning to The Algebraist.

(Damn you, Banks! Where's my sequel?! :P)

Re:That proves NASA didn't get to the Moon in 1969

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, need to get back to the asylum immediately. You might hurt yourself while you are out.

Cost effective.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant that there is no COST EFFECTIVE way. There is a way to do most things (but not all) but for many things, the cost is prohibitive.

My day as a moderator

[shiftless]

... It's a type'o, simple as that. Either that or someone forgot to rub out the little horizontal bit on the t to turn it into an i, when they were having a little joke with themselves to lighten up the day, working for the man an all.

lol. +1, funny.

next post. ... we finally have our answer: dental x-ray machines, alien dental x-ray machines. that is what inspired pre-homo sapiens species to begin the journey to modern man: the divine inspiration of advanced dental technology

LOL. +1, funny.

next.

SETI at home project ... communicate with the aliens ... invisible, black monoliths around Jupiter ... force of Dental X-Rays ... denial of service attack on Jupiter, igniting it into a second sun ...Zionists ... Muslims ... Jews ... coming of the second son ... hell on earth where I'm standing ... Christians ... Bible was correct after all ...

-1, head explodes

I agree with you with one small caveat

[Kupfernigk]

200kg to 1 sf is 400lb, not 500. Picky I know, but 500lb is still wrong on any scale.

Re:That proves NASA didn't get to the Moon in 1969

[camperslo]

...hey George, there seems to be a dip in the water supply drug injection to sector 314...

The purpose of the mission

[bugs2squash]

Is to search for the other Juno that was described here. As the first SUV is now several light-library_of_congresses away and could be anywhere within a volume of 10^76 cubic football fields of its projected location.

USD and NASA

[OrangeTide]

I had no idea the UK started printing USD, or that NASA has moved to Europe.

I guess should go look it up, or you should learn about context.

Re:USD and NASA

[oliverthered]

context.
What this context

http://costofwar.com/

I see no mention of the words billion or million. Only numbers.
The context was my head.

WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays

Wow! Dental X-rays are damn strong then.

Bad car analogies

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminder: You're on Slashdot

Why is this considered "Dangerous"?

[CeruleanDragon]

Doesn't "danger" indicate the potential for loss or harm to human life? It's not a manned flight, so there's no "danger" to anyone...

Just like Predator drones exist to keep humans out of dangerous situations. Well, the humans on the controlling end, anyway...

Won't the solar panels get hit by radiation?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

So they've shielded all the electronics, but won't the solar panels get damaged by the radiation?