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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!"