Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Give NASA Planetary Marching Orders
coondoggie writes "The community and team of scientists that help NASA prioritize space missions has come out with its exploration recommendations for the next decade: get to Mars, explore one of Jupiter's moons and study Uranus. From the report: 'The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have been extensively studied by the Galileo and Cassini missions, respectively. But Uranus and Neptune represent a wholly distinct class of planet. While Jupiter and Saturn are made mostly of hydrogen, Uranus and Neptune have much smaller hydrogen envelopes. The bulk composition of these planets is dominated instead by heavier elements; oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur are the likely candidates. What little we know about the internal structure and composition of these "ice giant" planets comes from the brief flybys of Voyager 2. So the ice giants are one of the great remaining unknowns in the solar system: the only class of planet that has never been explored in detail.'"
I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
Look, these orbiters and probes (yes to Uranus) are projected to cost in multiple billions EACH. As much as I love space exploration and think NASA's done a bang-up job (in their unmanned program at least), these planetary bodies aren't going anywhere and do not directly address any pressing problems (climate change is the one exception but for that we should be looking at the rocky terrestrial like inner planets like Venus and Mars and not the gas giants).
So why not put these programs on the slow track for a little while and spend a Billion developing some really good deep space propulsion systems? Finish VASIMIR, improve ion engines, develop high power nuclear reactors (not just wimpy RTGs), try laser beaming, solar sails or even magnetic bubbles! Anyway, if you can get a propulsion system that's 10x more efficient than our current chemical rockets you could send much more massive payloads quicker! This would substantially reduce the launch cost since it would "only" cost 10s of thousands of dollars to send a kg instead of 100s of thousands to the outer planets. This in turn would allow designers much more flexibilty to reduce cost/increase perfornance since they wouldn't be under such pressure to reduce weight. And by reducing or eliminating the need for time-consuming gravitational assists (6 years to Mercury!), it would likewise reduce support costs as well as increase science return (instruments won't be decades obsolete on arrival).
- The distance to the outer planets is great enough that it makes me think of some science fiction stories (like Arthur C. Clarke's "The Songs of Distant Earth"), where newly developed technology could allow spacecraft launched later to overtake the earlier more primitive ships. While the travel times here will be measured in years or decades not centuries or millennia it still gives me pause. Unless there is some extremely fortuituous occurrence like the planetary alignment that made the Grand Tour possible (Pioneer, Voyager) it is better to wait AS LONG AS you spend the time (and money) making things stronger, faster, better, cheaper.
(For some of these reasons, I support Obama's focus on developing new technologies before trying for the Moon (again) or Mars. We know we can do it, the question is can we do it affordably enough to SUSTAIN a manned presence?)
Let's become a spacefaring civilization!
"Get your ass to Mars!"
Get Uranus to Mars!
Scientists Give NASA Planetary Marching Orders
Seriously? Did they provide the budget as well?
Last time I heard about it, the scientists were having troubles themselves with a bunch of politicians promoting fact-free science... unless the said politicians will do nothing to adjust the law of gravitation, I don't see how NASA can mars to march and up Uranus (errrr.. whatever...) ... Newton, "the founding father", wrote that law pretty harsh... without relaxing it the gravitation well is deep enough to require some non-trivial budget.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
We need to figure out what it takes to colonize the Moon. We need to build the infrastructure that can keep us there and commercialize the exploitation of the Moon and nearby asteroids. We have almost all of the materials and the technology to build a working Lunar space elevator now. Once we have that, getting supplies and raw materials on and off the Lunar surface is practically free.
There are so many great reasons for tackling the Moon first as we venture out into space.
To me, going to Mars or Uranus with probes vs going to the Moon means that we don't want to build up the technology and infrastructure to become a space faring species. It says that we're more interested in satisfying a few scientific curiosities rather than figuring out how to live away from the Earth's surface.
I find their list to be extremely disappointing. I was hoping to see mankind take its first real steps toward the stars in my lifetime. Ah well...
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Isn't it about time we committed to a plan to install at least one orbiting observatory satellite for each of the major bodies within our solar system? If we aren't ready to commit to further manned missions, then lets get our remote eyes and ears out there on a permanent basis, rather than the once-in-a-generation flyby mission.
Sounds like they are assuming Uranus and Neptune are similar enough, calling them both "ice giants", that we'll learn a lot about both by studying one of them. We'll want to study both, eventually, of course. In the meantime, why Uranus first?
The sunlight is a little brighter, and it's a little closer and so we can get a probe there sooner, cheaper, and with less fuel used. And Uranus has one characteristic that sets it apart from all the other planets-- it's tilted so far over that it is on its side. So perhaps that makes it more interesting.
But Neptune's largest moon is much more massive than Uranus' largest. Cassini used Titan's gravity to visit places in the Saturn system. Titan is massive enough to make that easy. Uranus' moons may be too small to make that trick workable, while Triton may be big enough. We'd also like to study the sort of extreme seasonal changes Uranus' tilt produces. To do that we'd want to view at least one entire Uranian year, which is 84 Earth years. But how? Multiple probes? Or increase the longevity of our current probes? Or we settle for a briefer view. If we do, I'd suppose we'd rather see Uranus nearer a solstice than an equinox. If so, then right now the timing may or may not be the best. The next solstice is in 2028. That's good for a leisurely preparation of 2 to 5 years to launch followed by a route of 6 or 8 so years for a probe that hopefully will last another 10 years after the trip. It's not so good if we can move faster, and want to. Also, as Neptune's year is even longer-- 164 Earth years, we may prefer to start on Neptune sooner as we will be able to catch up faster on the faster orbiting Uranus.
Seems like if the extra distance and time doesn't make it too costly, Neptune would be a better first choice.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"