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Crowd-Funding a Mission To Jupiter's Moons
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Like so many great leaps for mankind, getting a human to one of Jupiter's moons must begin with a small step. And Objective Europa is aiming to do exactly that. A small team — architects, futurist designers, private space pioneers and even Jacques Cousteau's son — is beginning the planning stage to send human beings on a one-way trip to the Jovian moon Europa. The effort is headed up by Kristian Von Bengston, the founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, an open source DIY space program based in his native Denmark. And he's quite serious about transporting a man or woman beyond our atmosphere, Mars and the asteroid belt."
As long as we attempt no landings there.
Who expects to live long enough to take possession of their collector edition t-shirt and fake rock?
I think our society has become too risk averse. Not only are many people more terrified of 1 in a million occurrences like terrorism and serial killers than truly dangerous activities like driving, many want the government to prevent others from engaging in risky behavior even when they only risk harm to themselves.
Case in point, I'm pretty sure if this was attempted there would be considerable debate on whether someone should be allowed to volunteer for a suicide mission like this. Yet no one ever questioned the sanity of anyone wishing to fly on the space shuttle with it's 1 out of 67.5 chance per flight of killing you in a massive fireball..
The radiation level at the surface of Europa is equivalent to a dose of about 5400mSv (540 rem) per day, an amount of radiation that would cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day.
There are also COTS technology order of magnitude cheaper and better for space technology that was available during the cold war. Not for all subsystems, but for some of them. You have higher specific impulse technology (but low thrust, bad point for human mission, but good for mass), cheaper sensor (anything you want, gyro, sun, star, ... you could not have found that easily before, now it's just about making a few phone calls and cash, it's not cheap, but also not millions of $), you can find better space hardened processors/ram which are not comparable to what was available during cold war.
You can also book a launch to earth suburbs "easily"(still expensive) but if this is from Copenhagen Suborbital, I suppose that they want to use their own launcher, if they finish this project)
On the other hand, there are still a lot of place where not a lot of progress have been made, like radiation protection which must still be massive, because humans have a tendency to die easily. Maybe we can change humans ?
They speak of a time frame of 30 to 50 years, 50 years being more than the time between Sputnik and the ISS
Will they make it in 50 years ? Probably not. But it's a hobby, you still have to do something in your free time, no ? And even if it's not a hobby but a paid job, there is not enough job on earth if people only do useful stuff, so why not trying to do something else ?
[What it must have been like w]hen the oceans were being conquered with ships set to explore and no guarantee of returning.
But we'll be killed!
Nonsense. Simmons, what do you suppose the edge of the world looks like?
Uh, a great cliff... Oh, in the ocean, right. So, a giant waterfall off the edge?
Precisely. All the water pouring from the ocean for hundreds of years... Then why isn't the ocean dry?
...Rain! Rain must be filling it back up.
Obviously. Now, by what mechanism would water reach into the sky to first fall?
Ah... uhm... A bucket? No...
Fool, think! What moves water in the air?!
Oh, Wind!
Truly, it does. What moves ships upon the water?
...
Sails!
Wind!
Indeed. So, there is nothing to fear, you see?
With a firm mast and steady sail, if the edge be reached then just like rain we shall follow our jibs into the skies!
If you're lucky we may even wave good day to St. Peter, or meet the maker Himself!
So, we'll be Dead?!
Quite. Now fetch me an sturdy umbrella just in case. Columbus has volunteered to go first.