Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moon Europa

Kristian vonBengtson writes "Objective Europa aims to send human beings to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, on a one way mission in search of extraterrestrial life while expanding the borders of exploration and knowledge for all mankind. The starting point of Objective Europa is purely theoretical (Phase I) but will move into more advanced phases including prototyping, technology try-outs, and eventually a crewed launch. Objective Europa is a crowd-researched project made up of an international team of volunteers. Many people from a wide range of backgrounds have already joined and become a vital part of the mission. ... [Europa's] deep ocean and active geology provide a solid platform for extraterrestrial life, making Europa one of the most enticing locations to explore in the solar system. The 600-day flight required to reach Europa is manageable with today's technology, and the many challenges of such a mission pose a perfect starting point for new research and innovative thinking."

Comments

FFS

[geek]

"Objective Europa aims to send human beings to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, on a one way mission in search of extraterrestrial life"

Seriously, before you throw your lives away, at least get a minimal amount of evidence that life exists there. I'm sure lots of "special" people will apply for this but none of them will be the types we actually want going there.

Just send a fucking probe. Don't BE a probe.

Re: FFS

[techprophet]

I guess you could say that they're signing people up to be... *glasses* ...probed! YEEEAAAAAA!

Re:FFS

[gl4ss]

well it would still be an adventure.

but I guess the real reason for this is the success a similar thing for going to mars had. I mean success in getting money from suckers.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

One way trips and probing (oh my)? I'm IN!

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

The volunteers don't really care about finding evidence of life.

They want to be the Neil Armstrong of Europa--the _dead_ Neil Armstrong of Europa.

And if they can be on camera in front of the entire world, then mission accomplished.
BE a probe, be a very famous probe.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

i love how everyone assumes we're just going to jump on a rocket and head over there, you don't think probes will be sent initially? should we not plan beyond that?
they're starting "phase 1" which is research and determining what tech we can use and what we still need to invent. seems to me that's pretty damn reasonable.

Re:FFS

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah. By the time this mission could launch, our robots will actually be a lot more capable of doing useful research on Europa than the human settlers, especially when you control for all the mass that needs to be launched in order to keep people alive (and not crazy) for as long as this would take. Instead of people, why not send a nuclear submarine that could use its reactor to melt through all the ice and then navigate the sea beneath? If we have a chance of finding something cool, it will be down there.

Re:FFS

[Agent0013]

Well we could send all the telephone sanitisers, hairdressers, and advertising account executives. I would throw in the politicians and lawyers also, but that's just me.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a viral marketing ploy to boost DVD sales of the movie Europa Report. Suicide space missions are the new cool.

Re:FFS

[Charliemopps]

There are conditions on Europa very similar to the conditions in certain places on earth that contain life. There are large chunks of shit that have been flying back and forth between there and here for billions of years. They've retrieved man made objects that have been in space for decades with bacteria on it that survived and re-animated after being thawed on earth. It would be more astonishing if there we didn't find life on Europa... and pretty much every other planetary body in our system.

Re:FFS

[The Grim Reefer]

i love how everyone assumes we're just going to jump on a rocket and head over there, you don't think probes will be sent initially? should we not plan beyond that?

Then why even bother sending people? If the probe doesn't find life are the people still going to go? What is the plan beyond sending some people to be cooked by Jupiter?

they're starting "phase 1" which is research and determining what tech we can use and what we still need to invent. seems to me that's pretty damn reasonable.

What the fuck is reasonable about it? What if a probe does find life. We're going to send a bunch of bacteria/virus laden meat-bags to contaminate the Europan (or is it European, damn that's going to be confusing) biosphere...

To die there. Just how much thought has been given to how this will affect any life that may be there? Part of me thinks the idea of going there would be pretty damn cool. But it's nothing but a childish way to get into the history books at best. At least go somewhere where there is some possibility of surviving.

The goal here seems to be go, plant flag, possibly destroy ecosystem, get in history books and die.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just picturing that scene in South Park: Free Willyzyx where -- at the end of the day, after Worf's said his lines, the police chase and commotion, the rocket is launched for its noble mission -- what's left? There's a dead whale carcass lying exposed on the barren moon.

Re:FFS

[The Grim Reefer]

Well we could send all the telephone sanitisers, hairdressers, and advertising account executives. I would throw in the politicians and lawyers also, but that's just me.

I'd send the politicians and lawyers first. Advertising account executives and MBA's would be next. If that doesn't kill all life on Europa, then we should surrender to our new Jovian overlords.

Re: FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

(_) "Looks like techprophet"
(_)-- "is signing up to be..."
(-_) "...probed." YEEAAAAAAA!

Re:FFS

[TheRealMindChild]

It looks to me like assisted suicide in the disguise of scientific research

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

get in history books and die

Automatic Darwin of the year award?

Re:FFS

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yep, $25 application fee, get 100k applications, screen out all but 100 applicants, make them do some impossible tasks until they flunk, then oh well, you all fail.

Thanks for the moneeies.

Re:FFS

[rasmusbr]

It looks to me like a student thesis project in art or sociology or whatever. I mean the website...

I don't think anyone is actually planning to do this.

Re:FFS

[elysiuan]

If we go by Arthur C Clarke (and really, why shouldn't we?) it would be Europan which has a nice ring to it.

Re:FFS

[Teancum]

Yeah. By the time this mission could launch, our robots will actually be a lot more capable of doing useful research on Europa than the human settlers, especially when you control for all the mass that needs to be launched in order to keep people alive (and not crazy) for as long as this would take. Instead of people, why not send a nuclear submarine that could use its reactor to melt through all the ice and then navigate the sea beneath? If we have a chance of finding something cool, it will be down there.

I doubt it. While I will agree that there is considerable "low hanging fruit" in terms of very legitimate science that can be done by sending robotic probes, there will reach a point in that research where having actual people physically there will make a whole lot of sense. With the distances involved, bandwidth for sending data can be a considerable problem. Some local synthesis of the data (like was done with the Kepler mission... which had terabytes of data to sift through) can take place in an automated fashion, eventually even that will eventually need to have somebody physically there to evaluate all of that data.

There is a reason why automated probes don't go running around Antarctica, even though sending people there happens at considerable expense. Even with people there in Antarctica at the various research stations, there still is a huge amount of bandwidth sending that research data back to the various countries involved... and even that bandwidth is seen as very limited.

The question isn't if people should go to Europa, but rather when. A good argument could be made that there is no need for human researchers to go for at least a century or more as there is definitely plenty of research that can be done in the meantime with robotic probes including spacecraft dedicated explicitly to Europa.... including the nuclear submarine you have described. Such a vehicle was even described in this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space.html

Re:FFS

[Stan92057]

Which is the reason i didn't pay money to the mars Mission. I think 99.99 % of those who did pay wont be going. i haven't seen any criteria of who should go, as apposed to those who are going no matter what. But then what do we expect for 40 bucks lol.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send a fucking probe. Don't BE a probe.

That was surely once said in a porn shoot.

Re:FFS

[jdschulteis]

If we go by Arthur C Clarke (and really, why shouldn't we?) it would be Europan which has a nice ring to it.

If we go by Arthur C. Clarke, we should attempt no landings there.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Specials" as in Blade Runner . . .

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send a fucking probe. Don't BE a probe.

It's not all about science .. what if I just want to be the guy who goes crazy with a nail gun .. Buscemi-style?

Re:FFS

[turbidostato]

"They want to be the Neil Armstrong of Europa--the _dead_ Neil Armstrong of Europa."

Only they won't. Part of being Neil Armstrong was from the very beginning that he came back.

I don't think JFK's words "...and returning him safely to the earth" were a mere poetic license but an essential part of the plot.

Re:FFS

[turbidostato]

"why not send a nuclear submarine that could use its reactor to melt through all the ice and then navigate the sea beneath?"

Because submarines' flying abilities, even when nuclear, compete in the same league as pigs.

Re:FFS

[Shadowmist]

Yeah. By the time this mission could launch, our robots will actually be a lot more capable of doing useful research on Europa than the human settlers, especially when you control for all the mass that needs to be launched in order to keep people alive (and not crazy) for as long as this would take. Instead of people, why not send a nuclear submarine that could use its reactor to melt through all the ice and then navigate the sea beneath? If we have a chance of finding something cool, it will be down there.

The nuclear submarine would still face one major problem. The ice layer surrounding the ocean is MILES thick, maybe as thick as the crust here on Earth. Perhaps a nuclear sub might be able to melt its way through. (that assumes that you could get that much payload to Europa.... a pile with that kind of wattage just for waste heat is going to be HEAVY. That still leaves the rather thorny issue of the ice tunnel immediately freezing above it. How in tarnation are you going to get your data through?

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Only they won't. Part of being Neil Armstrong was from the very beginning that he came back.

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. Uhhh... Houston, we have a problem. We appear to have a LOX leak..."

Nope. I don't see how that would detract from Neil Armstrong being Neil Armstrong. He certainly wouldn't be considered less of a hero for dying on the moon. Ditto for Buzz Aldrin.

Re:FFS

[Teancum]

Considering that Neil & Buzz landed on the Moon with only 8 seconds of fuel remaining in their landing engine, they came pretty close to becoming permanent residents on the Moon anyway... not to mention that the original landing site was horrible as well (Neil Armstrong deliberately avoided that spot and traveled a couple more miles down range for a better spot... hence why the fuel was so low). They were real engineering test pilots that day in July of 1969, which is part of why they deserved the recognition they got too.

It is also an example of why you don't want to have necessarily ordinary folks with no training or qualifications on a "first trip" to some place exotic like Europa. You can do that once the trip to that location is ordinary and boring.... sort of like the places Space Adventures sends people now. Sadly, customers for Space Adventures still need to spend six months at Star City in Russia before they go into space, but at least it is mostly ordinary (although rich) people who go.

Re:FFS

[gagol]

Seems to me it would be people we will not miss. Natural selection and all... make nice CGI and forget the mission, just launch thr spacecraft and forget about it. Only idiots would apply.

Re:FFS

[Mr. Slippery]

While I will agree that there is considerable "low hanging fruit" in terms of very legitimate science that can be done by sending robotic probes, there will reach a point in that research where having actual people physically there will make a whole lot of sense.

For the foreseeable future, the cost of sending humans beyond Earth orbit and bringing them back safely will always be too high compared to robotic probes. That the idea of disregarding the "and bringing them back safely" part is being discussed as a semi-serious proposal shows only that for some folks, manned space flight has nothing to do with rational cost/benefit analysis of scientific data gathering. For them it is instead some sort of near-religious holy quest. ("Some folks" being a general comment and not directed at you, Teancum.)

There is a reason why automated probes don't go running around Antarctica, even though sending people there happens at considerable expense.

Considerable expense?! Compared to even LEO, Antarctica is free. During the summer months there are 5,000 people there. Call me when we can support 5,000 people in LEO, much less out of range of resupply rockets. I should live so long. (Tell you want, I'd settle for living (in good health and the other usual long life caveats) until the population in orbit reaches 1,000, same as Antarctica in winter.)

With the distances involved, bandwidth for sending data can be a considerable problem.

The bandwidth problem does not change when a human is transmitting versus a robot. It is useless to station a human in space if they cannot report back, right? (Unless one assign some metaphysical value to "human eyes have seen such-and-such" -- but that's not a science mission, it's religious questing.)

Some local synthesis of the data...can take place in an automated fashion, eventually even that will eventually need to have somebody physically there to evaluate all of that data.

On what basis do you believe that a human could evaluate that data better than an expert system designed for the task? Especially one with continual (though time-lagged) feedback from Earth?

A good argument could be made that there is no need for human researchers to go for at least a century or more.

In a century, if we're still a technological society with a presence in space, we'll have robots capable of out-performing humans at any given task for which we might send humans into space.

Thrill-seekers (doin' it for the lulz), performance artists (doin' it for the "inspiration"), and religious questers (doin' it to martyr themselves doing what a robot could do more cheaply) aside, anything beyond Luna -- quite possibly, anything beyond LEO -- will always be for robots.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

How in tarnation are you going to get your data through?

Leave the radio transmitter on the surface and winch a cable from the sub. The only issue is having a cable on board that will be surely long enough.

Re:FFS

[rioki]

They would have not been stranded on the moon, they would have fired their return rockets. They where almost in perfect alignment for rendezvous with capsule in orbit. If you can get off the surface of the moon, it is not that big of a deal to get back into orbit from higher up. I am almost certain they trained for this situations, since technically anything could go wrong with the landing system.

If the return system had failed, that would be a different story.

Re:FFS

[arisvega]

Because submarines' flying abilities, even when nuclear, compete in the same league as pigs.

Not quite.

Re:FFS

[tverbeek]

"The goal here seems to be go, plant flag, possibly destroy ecosystem, get in history books and die."

So the model here isn't Neil Armstrong, but more like Christopher Columbus.

Re:FFS

[wooferhound]

"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there."

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, they would have aborted the landing, similar to what Apollo 10 did.

Re:FFS

[ModernGeek]

Sounds Familiar

Re:FFS

[Teancum]

They technically should have fired their abort profile anyway. Also, they were not in "perfect alignment for rendezvous", as the command capsule was already well beyond immediate intercept range.

Simply put, your suggestion that "if you can get off the surface of the Moon, you can get back to orbit from higher up" is wrong. Yes, they could get into some sort of orbit, but not necessarily one that would put them in an ideal location to be able to get back home. If you want to get a glimpse of some of the difficulties involved in such a mission profile, at least try to play Kerbal Space Program a few times and try that lunar orbital rendezvous yourself. It isn't nearly as easy as you suggest. Real life is much harder than KSP too, but at least it gives you a glimpse into the actual difficulties for orbital mechanics.

More to the point, timing is everything, and Neil Armstrong pretty much closed the window for a possible abort well before he tried that final maneuver to land. Once on the surface of the Moon, the time to depart is much easier to do so you can take the precious little fuel on the ascent engine and be able to be in the same place as the command capsule with a minimum of delta-v adjustment. You can wait on the ground for an hour or two for an ideal insertion into orbit.

When I say that Neil Armstrong had only eight seconds of fuel remaining, it wasn't just eight seconds until "BINGO" with a reserve still available.... that was just eight seconds until the lunar lander was just a thing that would then have a ballistic trajectory to wherever it was moving. The fuel tanks were basically dry.

On the other hand, Neil Armstrong did have with him "Dr. Rendezvous", literally the guy who invented the mathematics of orbital rendezvous in space and earned a PhD from MIT trying to figure out how to get that accomplished in the first place. If anybody could have figured out how to get back to the command capsule under those conditions, it would be him.

Re:FFS

[Teancum]

I tend to be pessimistic in terms of "artificial intelligence" progress that some people seem to keep thinking is going to happen with computers and robots. Doubly so for "expert systems".... that can admittedly be useful in niche applications but tend to miss a whole bunch of things in the process. Even chat bot programs are usually something I can spot after a time, even though they've improved slightly since the original ELIZA program. Some legitimate progress has been happening, but it is extremely slow in coming and I doubt that any sort of self-aware robot like HAL or Data will ever be developed by computer scientists in the future. This is something I've studied in detail and have devoted my professional life in terms of investigating. A century more won't many any bit of a difference, even assuming that Moore's Law will even apply.

There is also the example of Harrison Schmitt going to the Moon and doing field geology work, where his eye and on the spot knowledge of geology was incredibly useful for obtaining samples that even the other astronauts simply weren't able to gather... and certainly got things done during his brief tenure up there on the Moon that simply wouldn't have been done had he or some other geologist never went there in the first place. I would argue that he did more for actual science in space than almost all of the other robotic space probes combined. It is a pity that more actual scientists never got the chance to go up there, and even more disappointing that an extended stay shelter was never built on the Moon.

I'm not saying to be a luddite and dismiss robotic probes either, as there is most definitely a role for those to be used. If there is a niche and role to use them, please use them and even use them first. I just think those who are so religiously devoted to robots need to realize that there is a place for people in the cosmos too. Besides, the extreme cost for travel into space is something I also think is temporary.

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't seen Pink Floyd's Animals album cover
I rest my case ..

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Send a probe. They have proved in the past, to been far more reliable and cheaper and far less prone to mistakes than astronauts

Re:FFS

[Shadowmist]

How in tarnation are you going to get your data through?

Leave the radio transmitter on the surface and winch a cable from the sub. The only issue is having a cable on board that will be surely long enough.

And quite likely dealing with a crush pressure that's more intense than the bottom of the Mariannas Trench?

Re:FFS

[idunham]

Woosh!

Don't they know

[Anonymous Coward]

All these worlds are yours EXCEPT Europa.

Re:Don't they know

[Noughmad]

Humans. So predictable.

So what this really is:

[jbeaupre]

It is a role playing game at this point. Tabletop exploration of Europa.

Re:So what this really is:

[moteyalpha]

How does "I want to do something and don't know how" take precedence over things that actually start the right way.
I have wanted space technology since I was a child and wanting is not a project. First you study and then you design and then you test something that will serve to do the job and -then- you decide how to apply it. I have worked on this for decades and found a technology that I am reasonably certain will allow cheap travel in and out of the gravity well. All I was ever interested in was getting more technical people to help develop it and to make the first prototype like Copenhagen Suborbital.
I agree with many of the other comments , that this is just somebody trying to make money by exploiting people's gullibility.
I registered a site and have been working to put content on the various projects that would allow completing a sytem that would make space travel a reality. When ridiculous fantasy like this gets more attention than science, it makes me wonder.

Re:So what this really is:

[jbeaupre]

I work with a lot of startup companies. We have a saying that might apply. Lots of people think that the idea is the key. We say that say ideas are cheap, execution is key. And sometimes a bad idea done well can beat a good idea done poorly.

I know that doesn't give any real help. But it does help explain why some things take off when better ideas don't.

Re:So what this really is:

[moteyalpha]

I have worked with startup companies too. The first started with 1000k for year in a do or die configuration and we eventually made several billion for the parent company.
One of the people who was hired there is now the secret weapon for Micron. Sometimes it is the people and that person in particular was a modest genius, which is rare.
In this case I am not looking to make a company that makes money. I hear about a lot of people who would pay to die on Mars or Europa and wonder what they are smoking. Effective space isn't any more of an engineering challenge than many of the things I have already designed. It is a lack of creativity that haunts space technology, it requires a really profound advance to even be reasonable to try.
I just started going public with information last week and I guess that I expected people to look at what I have put forward and say "Eureka" as I did.
I worked in industrial systems process design using relay logic and ladder diagrams. I saw this future ( computers ) when I saw the first 7400 integrated circuit and then I helped create it. Now I have made something of my own and I see another future where people live in a solar empire on every planet and moon, I just want that one to happen sooner.
Trying to translate that leap to something that can be easily understood by most people is sometimes harder than solving the problem in the first place. Sadoway at MIT combines both skills as a teacher and a creative genius. Rare. I get most of what he teaches, but I really don't understand how he came up with a liquid metal battery Ambri

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wanted to go to Hoth. This is the next-best thing!

Attempt No Landing There!

[Anonymous Coward]

All These Worlds Are Yours Except
Europa
Attempt No
Landing There
Use Them Together
Use Them In Peace

Re:Attempt No Landing There!

[Teancum]

Why should anybody care about what some kind of god-like being said in a work of pure fiction?

If I wanted to live in an icy wasteland...

[harvestsun]

... I'd just move to Greenland. Probably wouldn't even take me 600 days or millions of dollars to get there.

Re:If I wanted to live in an icy wasteland...

[VortexCortex]

Apparently, you do not live in the USA.

Re:If I wanted to live in an icy wasteland...

[SteveFoerster]

Nah, it just wouldn't be the same. Greenland doesn't have enough radioactivity and it has way too much air.

Obligatory Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave..."

DAMN HIPPIES !!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Jupiter so it is a moon of Jupiter.

Re:DAMN HIPPIES !!

[wooferhound]

That's No moon . . .

Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

"Objective Europa aims to send human beings to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, on a one way mission in search of extraterrestrial life while expanding the borders of exploration and knowledge for all mankind.

If you think it would be fun to go to Europa even if it means you will die there, that's totally something you should try to do. As for science and exploration, there is really nothing that a human being is going to be able to see or do, beyond what can be done by a robot.

Adding humans to a space mission just makes everything harder, because now you need to bring a whole bunch of shit like water, food, waste treatment machines, CO2 scrubbers, radiation protection, space suits, and extra rocket fuel to propel all this extra mass and even more rocket fuel to propel the extra rocket fuel. The only time when sending humans on a space trip would be beneficial to the human race at this point would be if the earth became full, and we needed to lower the population without killing people or sterilizing them.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Because they are orders of magnitude more productive.

The principal investigator for the Mars rovers said that if he were on Mars he could do in 45 seconds what the rovers do in a day.

Besides, visiting a foreign country is different from looking at it through a webcam. A robot probe is just an improvement over a telescope. Humans want to go to places.

What worries me is that the site has only one passing mention of radiation, for a mission to Jupiter orbit. Aren't humans in that region going to be almost literally fried?

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

harder isn't a reason to not do something

its planning a mission its not going on a mission yet, we should put every effort forward to advance space travel and exploration our worlds resources are finite at some point if we cant master space we will cease to exist.

I believe these to be the most important types of research man can ever do.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If you think it would be fun to go to Europa even if it means you will die there, that's totally something you should try to do.

What about people who - at the moment of selecting the flight crew for such a mission - suffer from conditions that would kill them or debilitate them before an otherwise normal lifespan elapses for them? If you're bright and physically apt and you know that at 25, you'll be fine for a few more years, but after 30, there's a 50% chance every year that you'll get Huntington's and by 40, you'll be dead, perhaps dying a bit sooner after benefiting mankind in this way is not such a crazy idea.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Agent0013]

If you think it would be fun to go to Europa even if it means you will die there, that's totally something you should try to do. As for science and exploration, there is really nothing that a human being is going to be able to see or do, beyond what can be done by a robot.

I can think of one thing a human can do that a robot will not be able to do. That is get infected with the European bacteria and come down with the first interplanetary cold or flu. That would be some exciting TV there!

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Dr. Spork]

So what's a human supposed to do on Europa? Operate a hammer and icepick? That doesn't sound very productive. That 45-second figure on Mars sounds hyperbolic, since on good days, the rovers can actually go pretty far and take lots of pictures.

But here's what I don't get about people who make comments like yours: Instead of looking at current missions and wishing that humans were there to do it better, why not instead ask what humans would do in space, and wish for (and design) machines that could do it as well. I mean, be concrete. For all the mission specific objectives (beyond: what happens to a person there?) that manned missions have - whether it's reconnaissance, construction, experimentation, etc. - I am pretty sure that it would be less expensive and less risky to make robots that could preform them equally well, less expensively and more safely. I think that's been the case since basically the Apollo era, when human lives were cheap and autonomous systems were miserable. That's the good reason why the Apollo era ended in 1972. The NASA home run of the 70's was the Voyager program. Then we pissed away the 80's shuttling people to LEO for no very good reason.

And if you compare the primitive rovers of today to manned missions, keep in mind also that the latter would be several orders of magnitude more expensive, and what amazing advances we could make if those budgets were going to robotics and autonomous systems. Maybe those robots really could do in 45 seconds what yesterday's rovers take a day to do. I mean, for fuck's sake. We have cars that can drive better than my mom.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[hedwards]

You seriously think that a robot can't become contaminated? Anyways, that's what quarantine is for. In the extremely unlikely case that there's something on a planet with no lifeforms similar to humans, there is a virus or bacteria that's harmful to us, what do you think the odds of us picking it up is?

Pretty much zero. Even with the flu, if you stay 10 feet away from other people and don't put your hands to your face the likelihood of catching it is minimal. And that a virus that's adapted to spreading easily amongst humans, can you imagine one that's never encountered humans before? It's unlikely to even be capable of infecting human DNA.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[butalearner]

What worries me is that the site has only one passing mention of radiation, for a mission to Jupiter orbit. Aren't humans in that region going to be almost literally fried?

Wikipedia says there is enough radiation on the surface of Europa to kill a human in a single day (it's tidally locked with Jupiter, but I'm not sure if that helps the far side or not). I imagine they're headed to the subsurface ocean, if it exists, so they won't have to worry about it after they melt/drill their way through as many meters of ice as it takes (the Mars One site claims that five meters of Martian soil provides the same protection as Earth's atmosphere). But yeah, they'd definitely need to do something far more drastic than Mars One to protect the astronauts as they approach Europa until they land and get to a safe depth.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Of all the reasons I stated for why it was bad to send humans to Europa, the humans dying on Europa was not one of them. I don't even care if we send healthy people to Europa to die, if that's what they want to do.

What I am against, is pretending that this is necessary for scientific discovery or exploration. We can actually fit more and better scientific instruments on the spacecraft if we don't need to take any meat sacks and all the stuff required to have the survive the journey.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Because they are orders of magnitude more productive.

They also are orders of magnitude more difficult to get to mars or Europa healthy and stay that way for any length of time. If you could spend the same amount of money that a manned mission would cost on an unmanned mission, you could afford an order of magnitude more and better robots as well.

Besides, visiting a foreign country is different from looking at it through a webcam. A robot probe is just an improvement over a telescope. Humans want to go to places.

As I said, it's fine if you want to go to Europa and see it for yourself before dying. This doesn't help science at all. Having one person there doesn't magically make everyone else able to experience Europa. All the human can do is send back pictures and data just like a robot would. A robot isn't just a better telescope. A robot can use any instrument that a human could use.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Bacteria don't need to have evolved with humans to be able to infect them (e.g. like viruses). All that is needed is for bacteria to be able to survive inside a human and for whatever they produce to be toxic to humans. This doesn't seem like such a stretch considering some bacteria can live in harsh environments like volcanoes and that most things are toxic to humans.

I think a bigger danger is humans contaminating Europa. You can kind of sterilize a robot. You can't sterilize a human. Humans contain entire ecosystems in their bodies.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Graymalkin]

The principal investigator for the Mars rovers said that if he were on Mars he could do in 45 seconds what the rovers do in a day.

I think you're talking about Steve Squyers, the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover missions. He's a really smart guy and he's not wrong in his statement you're quoting. To wit, Apollo 17 astronauts collected about 110kg of lunar rocks during 22 total hours of EVA and drove a grand total of 36km while the Spirit rover only drove about 3.6km and examined (but did not collect) about 25 rocks over the course of 8 months.

However you simply cannot use this data to imply that humans sent into space are magically more productive than robotic probes. A field geologist would need to do a day's worth of work in 45 seconds on Mars because they would die of asphyxiation in about three minutes. To prevent that they would need to carry around their own oxygen. To keep it from floating free it would need to be contained in some sort of mask. The freezing temperatures would then kill that geologist within a few hours so instead of a mask they would need a whole insulated airtight suit. To keep from dying of dehydration within three days they would need water. Now that they would survive the night they would need food or else they would be ineffectual in their explorations after a few days and dead of starvation within a few weeks.

From there it only gets worse. In order to do really interesting work the field geologist would need some tools, not the least of which is a camera and a transceiver to talk back with Earth about their findings. To do anything more complicated would likely require more complicated tools. To keep these out of the elements (dust storms, intense UV radiation, Martian attack, etc) the field geologist would likely need some sort of habitat.

So really the field geologist needs literally tons of logistics behind them to do the work of an automated probe. That's a lot of non-mission specific mass to send to Mars just to support the single capable field geologist. With the extra mass comes expense and added complexity of the whole system.

Why not skip the extra bullshit and send more automated probes to Mars that were designed by an army of field geologists? You could send a dozen such missions for the same cost as a single manned mission and end up covering every major geologic region of the planet. You could also fill up its orbit with a squadron of multispectral imaging satellites that could relay data as well as collect their own.

I understand the desire to plant a human being on Mars but at the same time the pragmatic part of me interested in the actual science would rather see a dozen automated missions sent first. Putting inanimate objects in space is Hard, putting living things in space and getting them home still alive in Very Hard, putting people on the surface of other bodies is Extremely Hard, and putting people on the surface of other bodies having them do useful work while there is a damn moonshot (pun intended). Getting them home from said body is a "nice to have" and a minor miracle when it occurs.

Humans can be more effective in some places than robots but they're not necessarily more efficient than robots. If you've got limited will/funds the robot is usually the better option.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[turbidostato]

"I understand the desire to plant a human being on Mars but at the same time the pragmatic part of me interested in the actual science would rather see a dozen automated missions sent first."

But then, the really pragmatic part of me knows that there will be no way for those dozen automated probes to gather the willness of citizenship and so, be financed, unless there's the expectation of sending a man to plant his feet over there.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Shadowmist]

Because they are orders of magnitude more productive.

The principal investigator for the Mars rovers said that if he were on Mars he could do in 45 seconds what the rovers do in a day.

Besides, visiting a foreign country is different from looking at it through a webcam. A robot probe is just an improvement over a telescope. Humans want to go to places.

What worries me is that the site has only one passing mention of radiation, for a mission to Jupiter orbit. Aren't humans in that region going to be almost literally fried?

On the budget it would take to send that ONE human to Mars and keep him alive in one place, We could have more rovers operating on Mars than NYPD has cop cars.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[black3d]

We won't be sending humans on a one-way trip. That's a pipe dream at this stage. Short of a dictatorship forcing people to go, the government is not going to send people on a one-way trip to a moon with no prospect of survival. Those who volunteer for such an endeavour are generally not going to be useful to your mission in a scientific capacity.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

That 45-second figure on Mars sounds hyperbolic, since on good days, the rovers can actually go pretty far and take lots of pictures.

And on bad days, nothing happens, meaing it takes 0 seconds to do what was done. I think a good comparison here is between the Mars rovers and the corresponding manned lunar rovers of the Apollo program. They travel about the same distance. Apollo 17, for example, had three excursions of the lunar rover, each a bit over seven hours, for a total of somewhere around 22 hours of time on the Moon, the longest set of the Apollo program. They covered almost 36 km of distance over that time. The MER rover, Opportunity traveled a bit more than that over almost ten years.

So say about nine years to travel what the lunar rover did in 22 hours. Divide 22 hours by 9*365 and you get almost 25 seconds. I imagine the longer time of 45 seconds is because of the somewhat faster speeds of the MSL rover.

As to the scientific value of each, it's worth noting that the lunar missions were sample return with a considerable quantity of material returned. Any scientific comparison is going to strongly favor a sample return mission over missions that don't have sample return just because of the much higher value of returning samples for study on Earth.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Evil Pete]

The problem with sending people to Europa. Well problemS. In random order

• 1. This is Jupiter space. Heavy radiation levels, therefore heavy shielding on everything. Complicates everything.
• 2. How thick is the ice on Europa? 3 km, 5 km, 10 km? Good luck getting a submersible through that and back out again.
• 3. Two years there. Two years back. What is the likelihood of failure of components?

It is just so dodgy. I would love for humans to go to Europa, it would be amazing. But you have to be realistic. This not like a trip to the local shops to buy a litre of milk. It is across a good chunk of the solar system, a long way from help, in an environment that is totally inhospitable. No explorers before have had to face an environment as harsh as space. If a canoe split a leak, you could float to an island or whatever, live off the wildlife, catch fish. Not going to happen out there. A tiny crack in the hull and you are dead if it is not patched.

Verdict: scam.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess. You are one of the people who think that we are all going to be replaced by automatons in ten years.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, for fuck's sake. We have cars that can drive better than my mom.

If your mom is even a bit like my mom that doesn't really mean much. My pet bunny drives better than my mom. (at least if you count wrecking the car as a minus. I'm pretty sure the car would be mostly ok, and exactly at the same spot after i let my bunny drive).

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TangoMargarine]

We haven't sent a dozen automated missions already?

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans can be sterilized. The atmosphere on Europa is such that humans aren't going to be going outside without some sort of a space suit. The suits can be decontaminated.

As far as the bacteria go, bacteria can't survive the long on Europa. And the ones that do, are going to be so maladapted to conditions in the human body that they'll die out pretty much instantly.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

We won't be sending humans on a one-way trip. That's a pipe dream at this stage.

Every trip into space there is a fairly high chance of everyone dying. In addition to the 14 astronought that died in the space shuttle accidents, we have had numerous people die on the ground and in test flights. Granted these are not suicide missions, there was every intention for these people not to die, but the US government also routinely sends people on actual suicide missions. These are usually covert rather than public spectacles.

Short of a dictatorship forcing people to go, the government is not going to send people on a one-way trip to a moon with no prospect of survival.

As I said our government is fine with getting people killed when they think the payoff is high enough. They just don't want the negative public reaction. In this respect, we are really no different than a dictatorship.

Those who volunteer for such an endeavour are generally not going to be useful to your mission in a scientific capacity.

That hasn't stopped us before. We sent a school teacher on the Challenger mission that blew up.

I don't think we should send humans because I think it's a pointless waste of resources, that only detracts from an science that might take place. If people are willing to volunteer on some private mission to Europa, I'm fine with it. I do not share you're belief that the US government would never sanction a manned trip into space with a low likelihood of safe return to earth for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Graymalkin]

There's currently about a dozen active deep space missions including three Martian orbiters and two rovers. Robots can send back pretty pictures that make good magazine covers and desktop backgrounds (in addition to doing science) and they continue to get funding. There's also no sense of hurt national pride if one of them unceremoniously litho-brakes during a mission. Lose a Mars probe due to Imperial-Metric conversion error and no one bats an eye, lose some astronauts and everyone freaks out.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Graymalkin]

We've sent a number of automated missions to Mars and we should send quite a few more. To paraphrase myself from another reply; we lose a Mars probe due to a conversion error and no one cars, we lose a single astronaut and the whole program is shuttered.

For the money it would take to develop the infrastructure to send that one good field geologist to Mars we could send many probes designed by good field geologists with all their important tools built-in. If the probes last beyond their initial missions they can continue on with secondary missions. Look at the Mars Exploration Rovers, Deep Space 1, or the Voyager probes for great examples of this.

Once a human's food or water runs out their mission ends. Growing/recycling food and water sounds great but is extremely complicated and something we're barely able to do in LEO aboard the ISS. The ECLSS system on the ISS breaks down with alarming regularity. It's a learning experience to be sure but it's something that would need to be perfected and then re-perfected for any manned mission outside of LEO where resupply is unavailable.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

And according to wikipedia the cost of the apollo program was:

$20.4 billion, or $109 billion in 2010 dollars, averaged over the six landings as $18 billion each.

The cost of the MER mission was $924 million.

If we look at distance covered per $, the apollo missions averaged $109billion/90.2km = $1.2million/meter

If we look at distance covered per $, the MER mission averaged $924million/43.46km = $21260/meter

And if time is really such a factor, we could have sent over 100 Mars rovers for the cost of the Apollo program, and that's being generous and assuming there would be no cost savings from leveraging existing R&D.

As to the scientific value of each, it's worth noting that the lunar missions were sample return with a considerable quantity of material returned. Any scientific comparison is going to strongly favor a sample return mission over missions that don't have sample return just because of the much higher value of returning samples for study on Earth.

There is no reason an unmanned mission can't bring back samples.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

Higher cost is a different argument. There we need to keep in mind that access to space is getting cheaper over time. It's a lot less expensive to do things in space now than it was in the 1970s.

That dynamic will change the relative costs of a manned mission versus unmanned missions. And given that the former do orders of magnitude more than the latter currently, we need to consider that the price can decline to the point where purely robotic missions no longer makes economic sense.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher cost is a different argument. There we need to keep in mind that access to space is getting cheaper over time. It's a lot less expensive to do things in space now than it was in the 1970s.

That dynamic will change the relative costs of a manned mission versus unmanned missions. And given that the former do orders of magnitude more than the latter currently, we need to consider that the price can decline to the point where purely robotic missions no longer makes economic sense.

Access to space is getting cheaper, but not access to labor.

Robots have a tendency to be able to do more with less over time. Technology improves so you get smarter and cheaper robots over time

Labor is the reverse: people want to do less but get paid more over time. Entitlement and corruption means you get lazier and more expensive workers over time. God help you if they unionize. Devil help you if they have government backing.

If you ever find a person who has all the skills and experience you'd want, AND he is willing to work for cheap? You don't want to send him to space. You don't want to risk losing him. Keep him on the ground where's it's relatively safe, let the robot send/bring stuff back for him to work on.

This is not to say we shouldn't send people to space, but don't send them to do missions. Send them simply as cargo and guinea pigs... er I mean tourists. Make people pay to get up there (and sign lots and lots of waivers). Their money can be used to fund more robot missions (or those few human workers you keep around on the ground)

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[david_thornley]

Okay, take him at face value and figure that a human will be 1920 times as productive as a robot, although I think there's a lot of cherrypicking and hyperbole in that statement.

Now, let's look at the costs. What will it cost to get the PI to Mars safely (quite a few months one way), support him for surface exploration, and get him back? Factor in moving him to various Mars locations, since the rovers do not land all in the same place.

I rather think he'd be at least two thousand times as expensive as a robot, which requires no life support on the trip there, virtually no supplies on the surface, and doesn't have to come back. Heck, I think just getting him there alive would cost thousands of times more than a robotic mission.

Humans can be orders of magnitude more productive and it still will be more cost-effective to send robots, which will be orders of magnitude cheaper.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

That dynamic will change the relative costs of a manned mission versus unmanned missions. And given that the former do orders of magnitude more than the latter currently, we need to consider that the price can decline to the point where purely robotic missions no longer makes economic sense.

It is, but it's changing in the opposite direction. Computers are getting cheaper and more powerful. Better algorithms are being developed. This is why we are seeing an explosion in the use of drones. We are doing unmanned missions on earth because in many circumstances manned missions no longer make economic sense.

Yes manned missions are becoming less expensive. Unmanned missions are becoming less expensive at a higher rate.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

Access to space is getting cheaper, but not access to labor.

Access to labor is a trivial cost once you have the infrastructure in place.

Labor is the reverse: people want to do less but get paid more over time.

You don't want that sort of person in a hazardous environment. They're likely to get themselves and others killed and damage valuable equipment.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[black3d]

I understand what you're saying, and indeed, many astronauts, and dozens of test pilots have been killed in high risk endeavors. But I don't agree this is necessarily a counterpoint to my argument - that being, the government will not send astronauts on a known one-way trip to Europa where there is no possibility of recovery or continued survival. Clearly, by your last sentence, you disagree with with my sentiments and that's fine - I just don't find "people have died before, unintentionally" to be a realistic counter-argument.

I should really clarify - I am only talking about the mission to Europa. "the government is not going to send people on a one-way trip to a moon with no prospect of survival". I fully agree there would be circumstances where even the US government would happily send people to their death - as you point out, they've done so before - although most instances (largely, during war times) are not public knowledge. I'm just saying, a scientific mission to Europa is not going to be one of those instances.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

What about sending old or terminally ill people?

What about sending people to permanent colonies? Human beings don't live forever. None of us survive indefinitely, even on earth.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[black3d]

No, I don't believe they're going to send old or terminally ill people to Europa either. Nor to establish a permanent colony there, although if they were going to, that would fall within "continued survivability". You're getting further and further off-topic. I've never spoken about the likelihood of putting manned bases on Mars, or unrecoverable colonization trips to deep space, or whatever else you can conjure up. You're arguing for the sake of it - bringing up the fact that people die eventually as a counterpoint to a suicide mission being unlikely?

My original post was only ever pointing out that they will not send people on a one-way scientific mission to Europa. It's not going to happen. If you want to argue, structure your argument around that statement, not around other unrelated concepts you've imagined. You're saying "why send people?" - I'm saying "They're not going to send people - at least not one way, which means, not likely at all." You should be taking comfort in that fact, not trying to make up abstract arguments which have nothing to do with any of my posts on the subject.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

You're getting further and further off-topic.

I was unaware that you were in charge of deciding what the topic of this conversation was.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[black3d]

Talking about the likelihood of a manned mission to Europa, in a story about a manned mission to Europa, replying to a post about whether we should send people to Europa, is on topic, whether I decide it is or not. The irony of your statement, while you're changing topics, is delicious.

You clearly have nothing productive to add to the discussion if you don't want to talk about the the possibility of a manned mission to Europa. You're speculating down an endless path of "what-ifs" and examples that have nothing to do with the mission in question. Don't bother replying - won't be reading. The chances of you contributing anything useful are.. about the same as the chances of humans being sent on a one-way scientific mission to Europa. Not going to happen.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Yes but you started talking about how one-way trips are something that the government would never do. I never even suggested that this would be the government doing this at that point, but you wanted to talk about that for some reason. I was willing to go down that road because I don't mind allowing the topic to evolve.

Now you are bitching about the topic changing...

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

You still have the fundamental problem of control and communication. Mars can be up to a light hour away and the outer Solar System is even worse. That's terrible when you're trying to operate machinery remotely and it also shows up in large delays when making any decisions about the activity in question.

Further, you need to deliver that computer to the destination and it'll need tools for doing its job. Those things aren't govern by Moore's law. For example, there's a certain minimal amount of infrastructure one needs in order to return a kilogram of rock to Earth or drill a few hundred meters into soil. Radiation hardening also creates a scale limitation. Make it too small then it breaks when it gets zapped by charged particles.

Humans are just another payload. While humans have quirks that make them somewhat more expensive than most payloads, computer/robotics systems will have many of these same quirks (such as sensitivity to radiation, need for a controlled environment, the need for resources such as energy and management of those resources, etc).

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

You have the control/communication problem with human beings too. What happens when a human is not sure of what to do and he/she needs to wait for orders from earth, or earth needs to wait for the humans on mars to send data back to them.

You solve the communication problem for humans and machines in the same way. You make the algorithms smarter so they don't to be micromanaged. The only decisions that need to be made on earth are macro decisions like "what should we study next week" rather than "how should we drive around this rock" For humans this means a high level of training (which astronauts have). This was not possible back when computers were not as powerful. The proficiency of computers is growing exponentially. Just consider how many jobs computers are doing even in manned missions.

Yes humans are just an expensive payload, but why use them when there are more cost effective payload options?

Humans have basically hit their computational limit. The increase in human productivity is basically due to computer augmentation. At some point computer augmentation will be so great that the human contribution will be negligible.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

What happens when a human is not sure of what to do and he/she needs to wait for orders from earth, or earth needs to wait for the humans on mars to send data back to them.

You don't have it as often. Both humans and moderately advanced robotics can find things to do while they wait too.

Yes humans are just an expensive payload, but why use them when there are more cost effective payload options?

Currently, there aren't.

Humans have basically hit their computational limit.

It's not a computational problem and we're nowhere near any such limits of humans. Basically, we have at most a few weeks of Mars surface work and research for humans spread out over four decades.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

You don't have it as often. Both humans and moderately advanced robotics can find things to do while they wait too.

That's my point. Latency is becoming less of a problem as the away team becomes smarter. The theoretical limit is that the away team is as smart as the earth team and no communication is required at all, and therefore latency is not an issue ever.

Currently, there aren't.

Actually there are, and Nasa uses them. They are called robots. They are even starting to be used for unmanned missions on Earth because they are more cost effective in many capacities here.

It's not a computational problem and we're nowhere near any such limits of humans.

If we are talking about the effectiveness of machines vs. robots, it is 100% about computational power. It certainly isn't about strength or shininess. Otherwise we were bested a long time ago. It used to be that humans were better at every kind of computation than robots except doing arithmetic. Humans are currently still better at abstract thought, but now computers are also better at flying planes and spaceships, playing chess, and telling you the best route to take, etc. Soon they will be better at actually driving cars and visual processing.

Currently, on average a robot is much more cost effective. Yes humans are better at some things, but they are not worth the 100x+ cost.

Honestly for what task is a human being on mars going to be more cost effective in the near future?

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

If we are talking about the effectiveness of machines vs. robots, it is 100% about computational power.

Not at all. These missions are notorious for being rather lightweight on computational power.

The theoretical limit is that the away team is as smart as the earth team and no communication is required at all, and therefore latency is not an issue ever.

And here's an issue with that. Who gets trusted with this sort of system? Say a business wants to set up a mining operation using self annealing, von Neumann machines that happen to be at least as smart as humans. What sort of controls would be in place to keep them from overrunning the Asteroid Belt, possibly even the entire galaxy?

Keep in mind that by the time said business figures out that their controls have been subverted and some sort of "repair" expedition arrives (possibly involving space marines with nuclear weapons), there may have been a vast explosion in the population of these machines and they may be spreading throughout the Solar System.

Humans can get out of control too in pretty much the same ways. But at least they want and need certain things; they act and communicate in certain ways; and it takes time and a lot of resources to make more viable humans (even if you're going the Star Wars cloning route). A population doubling time of 30 years (for a typical fertile human society) is a lot less risky than a population doubling time of one month.

Even in the Brave New World of superhuman robotics, you need some sort of real time off switch (or at least the ability to escalate to combat such threats on their own terms). And humans aren't going to accept another computer system as the control.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Not at all. These missions are notorious for being rather lightweight on computational power.

Yes, exactly. The reason that a robot can't currently do as much as a person is because it is lightweight on computational power. The reason we send robots is because they are cost effective. Meaning the efficacy/cost is better with a robot.

And here's an issue with that. Who gets trusted with this sort of system? Say a business wants to set up a mining operation using self annealing, von Neumann machines that happen to be at least as smart as humans. What sort of controls would be in place to keep them from overrunning the Asteroid Belt, possibly even the entire galaxy?

What's to prevent humans form doing this? Let's say the Chinese set up a mining operation with human astronauts. What sort of controls do we have to keep them from overrunning the asteroid belt or the entire galaxy?

Humans can get out of control too in pretty much the same ways. But at least they want and need certain things; they act and communicate in certain ways; and it takes time and a lot of resources to make more viable humans (even if you're going the Star Wars cloning route). A population doubling time of 30 years (for a typical fertile human society) is a lot less risky than a population doubling time of one month.

That's going to change. As computers and nanorobots become more advanced, we will inevitably incorporate them into our own bodies. Maybe at first it will just be robots to clean out our arteries and kill cancer cells where they might pop up. But I think eventually it will also include things like adding more memory and processing power to our own brains, and finally replacing our weak physical bodies altogether.

Even in the Brave New World of superhuman robotics, you need some sort of real time off switch (or at least the ability to escalate to combat such threats on their own terms). And humans aren't going to accept another computer system as the control.

No, we are going to become the new computer system.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

What sort of controls do we have to keep them from overrunning the asteroid belt or the entire galaxy?

Well, we can kill them with the usual sort of weapons. Point is that it takes a while for humans to get out of hand.

That's going to change. As computers and nanorobots become more advanced, we will inevitably incorporate them into our own bodies. Maybe at first it will just be robots to clean out our arteries and kill cancer cells where they might pop up. But I think eventually it will also include things like adding more memory and processing power to our own brains, and finally replacing our weak physical bodies altogether.

Well, then these improved humans, will it be cost effective to use them for anything in space?

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Point is that it takes a while for humans to get out of hand.

If you really fear a robot uprising, you can also design your machine to take a while to get out of hand. What's stopping people from designing a machine that has a lifespan and doubling time similar to humans? One would think those would have been stepping stones before we reached self sustaining self replicating machines. Learn to walk before you run, you know?

Well, then these improved humans, will it be cost effective to use them for anything in space?

Humans can be space tourists, space customers, etc. Instead of being part of the production line, they can be on the receiving end of the final goods. Improved humans can ENJOY space. People on Earth can be designing the robots, and enjoy the results of the robots' labor.

That's part of the allure of technology and capitalism. You let the capital - the machines - that you own work for you, and you just enjoy the results. And technology enables us to control our capital even if we're physically far away.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Well, we can kill them with the usual sort of weapons. Point is that it takes a while for humans to get out of hand.

We can kill robots with the usual sorts of weapons too (i.e. bullets, missiles, bombs, nukes). There's a few weapons that don't work as well like biological and normal chemical weapons, but then there are a few new weapons that would work like EMP, hacking, etc.

Well, then these improved humans, will it be cost effective to use them for anything in space?

Yes, for a few potential reasons.

1. These new humans could be made more robust for space travel (i.e. resistance to radiation) and require fewer resources to function (i.e. require sunlight rather than food, toilets, oxygen, etc). They could even be much smaller, requiring less rocket fuel to propel. They would essentially be human consciousnesses running in robotic bodies.

2. A human consciousness may no longer be limited to 1 body. It may be possible to upload a human consciousness to a small robot, send it to mars and then merge the consciousnesses back together once an hour, or once a day, or when the robot comes back to earth. If the robot is killed, the consciousness would only lose a few memories that were created since the last sync. These removes the restriction of needing to be extra super careful which is currently only done on manned missions.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

That's part of the allure of technology and capitalism. You let the capital - the machines - that you own work for you, and you just enjoy the results. And technology enables us to control our capital even if we're physically far away.

That depends on the capital staying owned. As I recall, there's a saying, possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you're a light hour away, you don't possess that capital. And if it should decide to do something else, like say, colonize the galaxy, what are you going to do?

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on the capital staying owned. As I recall, there's a saying, possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you're a light hour away, you don't possess that capital. And if it should decide to do something else, like say, colonize the galaxy, what are you going to do?

More reason to use machines instead of humans. Machines can be designed and programmed to minimize if not completely eliminate that possibility. Possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law, you can possess (and keep possession) of a machine easier than you can possess a human (if you can even possess another human being)

And even in the unfortunate event that something does go wrong and you lose possession of your machine, chances are it's easier to rebuild a machine replacement than a human.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[khallow]

Machines can be designed and programmed to minimize if not completely eliminate that possibility.

Machines that are smarter than you can't be so programmed. I'm sure someone will give it the college try and their failures while possibly highly profitable will also be instructive for the rest of us.

Re:Whyd do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Machines that are smarter than you can't be so programmed.

Still a better alternative than human workers, who can't be so programmed regardless of intelligence.

I'm sure someone will give it the college try and their failures while possibly highly profitable will also be instructive for the rest of us.

That's a good thing. Trial-and-error is a part of progress. It is trial-and-error that we have machines in the first place: we tried, failed, and learned that machines generally are better than human workers.

Profits are also a good thing. Without profit, you wouldn't have savings to make future attempts, improved attempts based on lessons learned from your previous failures. If you failed but are broke, then you're SOL. This too is something learned from trial-and-error. Some people tried ideas with profit in mind (most business initiatives). Some people didn't (most government programs). Those who did keep profit in mind end up generally better off, for themselves and rest of society. People learned from that.

Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride....

[rts008]

Wow, the second voluntary exodus plan to emerge recently.

It seems to make a statement about Earth, when thousands seem eager to make a one way trip to their probable deaths, to leave this planet.

Now, what that statement actually means is open to interpretation...

Been there...

[fahrbot-bot]

...done that. Interesting, but went badly for the crew ...

Re:Been there...

[Noughmad]

It's not like we weren't warned...

skeleton in an space suit

[themushroom]

Game Over. You and all of your friends are dead.

Re:skeleton in an space suit

[Man On Pink Corner]

Exactly. I'd rather stay here, and live forever. Don't those morons know GTA5 just came out?

Re:skeleton in an space suit

[FatLittleMonkey]

Yeah, but in a space suit.

Re: skeleton in an space suit

[loufoque]

Some people have taste, you know

Jovian radiation belt

[Anonymous Coward]

will fry any human without proper shielding, like a meter thick sphere of Pb?

Think of the moons!

[stewsters]

Send a probe. If the moon really is able to harbor life, sending humans risks contamination.

Re:Think of the moons!

[VortexCortex]

Send a probe. If the moon really is able to harbor life, sending humans risks contamination.

If your forefathers had thought the same way, then this whole planet would be devoid of life...

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Why not just sign up to a UFO Death Cult like Heaven's Gate?

Why are they sending humans?

[Plazmid]

Humans are messy and carrying a bunch of biosphere from Earth to support them could potentially end up disrupting Europa's biosphere if it has one.

One can easily sterilize an unmanned space probe, but preventing even the slightest smallest leak of sewage, spacesuit leak, or the one little bit of plant waste that gets accidentally vented from a greenhouse is probably more challenging than actually sending humans to Europa.

Re:Why are they sending humans?

[oodaloop]

Exactly. Send an imperial probe droid to look for life on all the planets and moons. Seriously, doesn't anyone watch Star Wars?

How is it throwing your life away?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

You can die in pain in dirty diapers in a nursing home, or you can die of radiation-induced cancer doing something that's never been done before and making historic discoveries. Either way is an equal level of deadness.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[GarethIwanFairclough]

Cancer? Maybe, but it would be more likely that they'd die of radiation poisoning long before a cancer had time to spread. With that said however, dead is dead no matter how it happened.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[mi]

With that said however, dead is dead no matter how it happened.

If it is the same to you, sir, I'd like my deadness to a) set as late as possible; b) be as painless as possible.

Neither objective is particularly achievable via a one-way travel to an icy rock.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds cool, but it is not evolutionarily selected for, as it is one-way, without the ability to establish a lasting colony. Anyway, I'm all for space exploration, but people do not seem to understand how many orders of magnitude there are in distance between low-earth orbit (which is becoming routine, but still not "easy") and a moon of a planet that is halfway across the Solar system. This is like "we invented the wheel... next step, warp drive!"... how about we work some on the intermediate steps, hm?

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can die in pain in dirty diapers in a nursing home, or you can die of radiation-induced cancer doing something that's never been done before and making historic discoveries. Either way is an equal level of deadness.

You seem to lack a decent imagination, sonny boy.

I plan to die in bed with five world-class hookers, and an ounce of cocaine.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Blaskowicz]

b) is achievable if you go there with cyanide pills.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Anonymous Coward]

b) be as painless as possible.

When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, just like my grandfather. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[turbidostato]

"You can die in pain in dirty diapers in a nursing home, or you can die of radiation-induced cancer "

So you also will die in pain in dirty diapers, only without lightly dressed nurses around.

Let me think...

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[khallow]

Anyway, I'm all for space exploration, but people do not seem to understand how many orders of magnitude there are in distance between low-earth orbit (which is becoming routine, but still not "easy") and a moon of a planet that is halfway across the Solar system.

Those orders of magnitude of distance aren't particularly relevant. For example, the ISS travels at roughly 7.7 km/s relative to Earth. That's roughly 1.6 AU of distance every year. Europa averages 4.2 AU away. We can travel distances considerably longer than Europa in a human lifetime at velocities achievable in low Earth orbit.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those orders of magnitude of distance aren't particularly relevant.

Tell that to the crew of Apollo 13.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[kermidge]

when i die, i'd like to go peacefully.
    in my sleep.
        like my grandfather.

not screaming,
    like the passengers in his car...

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q1/carwreck.html

I first saw this circa 1990 in an excerpt from rec.humor.funny on GEnie. Netfunny is the Web version, posted by the original editor, Brad Templeton (interesting fellow, he); copyrights run from 1987-2008. I've tried to find the earliest version but with little success, since dates are not often given at the many sites of quotations a search returns. Of all the versions I've read, this one seems the best but it may simply be because it's the first one I saw, however the phrasing is the simplest, the arrangement the more effective.

Anyway, Europa seems a fine place to explore. The one-way "me, too" thing is so much horse apples; the crowd sourcing of research is novel to me. If humans go, unless it's part of a large expedition that's taking a five-year run or so at the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for example, wait for a decent fusion drive, stay under g, with a trip time of months not years - then come back. (And as for Mars One, I think the more difficult aspects will be production of food (Vegans aside, meat will be needed, earthworms and chickens, so take along a starter kit of Earth soils) and replacement parts. Likely gonna need some vitamins, although trace minerals ought to be available from the land.)

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[rioki]

Except that you need to overcome the gravity well of earth and (parts of) the sun. Here, I have an illustrative xkcd refecence: http://xkcd.com/681_large/.

You are comparing apples and oranges here. The speed in LEO is (mostly) constant. The (bits of) the ISS where once injected into orbit with significant energy and since then not much additional energy is needed to get the ISS going. (In LEO there is still some atmosphere and slows down the ISS and this is equalised occasionally.) But when you go to a different planet (or moon of), you need to thrust sufficiently to get earth escape velocity, which is significantly more than LEO. In addition, if you are going to the outer planets you need overcome the gravitational pull of the sun. (The inner planets you speed up by "falling" to the sun.)

Have you seen the rockets built for voyager? These where huge and it was for a small probe that was smaller than a compact car. Getting into space is hard and the rocket equation is a bitch.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[khallow]

Except that you need to overcome the gravity well of earth and (parts of) the sun. Here, I have an illustrative xkcd refecence: http://xkcd.com/681_large/.

If you look at that particular diagram, you don't see "orders of magnitude" difference between Earth and Io especially once you including kinetic energy (a good portion of the energy required to get to Europa is just consumed staying out of the Earth's atmosphere). And energy is not particularly hard or expensive to come by.

Have you seen the rockets built for voyager?

Launch the pieces of the vehicle and its propellant via rockets used today into LEO and assemble. Solar-electric propulsion with aerocapture maneuvers using Jupiter's atmosphere would work. I think the bigger problem would be coming up with the funding and a means to try out the technology. That is currently many orders of magnitude.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[khallow]

Sorry, it's been a little while. I meant the less aggressive technique of aerobraking which allows for multiple passes through atmosphere rather than aerocapture which attempts to shed all excess velocity in one go. You have to worry a bit more about Jupiter's nasty radiation environment with aerobraking, but that is at least something that has been well tried.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Launch the pieces of the vehicle and its propellant via rockets used today into LEO and assemble.

People say that a lot for this sort of thing, but I don't think it's been done, except for the ISS. When Apollo was setup, just rendezvous of two different things was considered potentially impossible. Plus, what's the real advantage to this assemble in pieces, except for getting around the maximum lift capacity of modern rockets?

I maintain that LEO is 100 km... average distance to Jupiter is 8 million times further. 8 million. I understand that you can just drift and all, but if I were going that far, I would for one hope to be able to come back. I would be more assured of that if someone had traveled within a factor of 1000 within the distance I planned, first, just like before planning a marathon, I'd like to know that I can walk halfway across a football field. Or if I were driving across the US, I would first want to know that I can drive across town. And even then maybe I need to get the car checked out, if it was the first time I ever considered such a journey. To get a lump of metal to arrive just requires amazing aim... to get a lump of meat there, I'd want more assurances.

Re:How is it throwing your life away?

[khallow]

People say that a lot for this sort of thing, but I don't think it's been done, except for the ISS. When Apollo was setup, just rendezvous of two different things was considered potentially impossible. Plus, what's the real advantage to this assemble in pieces, except for getting around the maximum lift capacity of modern rockets?

Aside from that very important thing of not requiring a huge, expensive rocket, it also reduces the risks from a launch failure. There's nothing on a spaceship, including its crew, that you can't have back ups of.

Second, there's nothing magical about assembling things in orbit. The ISS, for example, didn't have a particularly difficult time of it. And docking spacecraft with each other is becoming rather routine. That's another route to assembling things in orbit.

I maintain that LEO is 100 km... average distance to Jupiter is 8 million times further. 8 million

And I noted how irrelevant that observation is. You can just drift and all. I think it more significant, the time duration of the flight. Even with considerable propulsion power at their disposal, say nuclear propulsion, it's still a long trip. I can't see it becoming less than two years one way (Hohmann transfer trajectory with Jupiter is 2.75 years, you can hustle that a bit with better propulsion) without a substantial revolution in relatively affordable propulsion.

To get a lump of metal to arrive just requires amazing aim

Or course corrections.

to get a lump of meat there, I'd want more assurances

But of course. I'll just say that I doubt there's many people who think this group will get to the point of bending metal for actual space activities, much less the point where they have assurances to offer.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Do explorers flee their home, or rush toward their destination?

Someone's Trying to Make Money Here

[BoRegardless]

Can't think of any other reason to put out this sort of wacko mission. Let's see, if it costs 20 Billion and I take just a 1% cut in salary and bennies ... my retirement is guaranteed.

Re:Someone's Trying to Make Money Here

[Anonymous Coward]

My thought was along the lines of; this sounds rather like the paid application process for the suicide mission to Mars. A project with no hope of getting off the ground(pun intended) that makes its organizers millions of dollars for simply taking applications. I was musing about such a scheme only a couple of nights ago, but I gave up thinking, who's going to fall for that again...

Suddenly there's a Slashvertisement for just such a scheme and I'm making nothing!

It says there's still hope for humanity

[amaurea]

While I think this particular project (and the one to mars) are unrealistic due to not being robustly funded and planned, I think the concept that some humans may be willing to greatly shorten their lives in order to go off and explore something new shows that there is still hope for humanity. Isn't it nice to hear that some are curious enough and adventurous enough to do this, instead of simply being focused on entertainment and producing more humans?

I would not be brave enough to do this myself, even if I actually believed these projects were serious, but I wouldn't belittle those who are willing to sacrifice themselves like this. It seems to be implicit in your post that people only have one objective: to be as comfortable as possible, and so the only reason they might have to leave the Earth is if it is too uncomfortable here. I.e. no nobler motives exist. That seems like a pretty depressing world view, and I am glad to see indications that it might be false, such as this story.

Re:It says there's still hope for humanity

[rts008]

Thanks for the reply. :-)

What my motive was....stirring up the mud puddle in order to start some interesting debate/comments.

If I had a realistic chance to go to Europa or Mars, I would probably jump on it.

I've always been one of those that just HAD to see what was over the next hill.

I hope this fails

[Nethead]

The last thing we need is a bunch of humans spewing bacteria on a planet/moon that we're trying to examine for extraterrestrial life. One small slip and they could fuck things up for the rest of time.

Clarke had it right. Attempt no landings.

Re:I hope this fails

[viperidaenz]

It'll be fine, they'll be dead before the ship lands, so no one is going to open the door.

NASA knew there were radiation belts around Jupiter.
The Pioneer probes they sent were designed to handle a fair bit of radiation.
Pioneer 11 didn't directly pass through one, but lost most of the pictures it took of Io.

20 years later when they sent Galileo, it still suffered the effects of radiation, losing data.

NASA has already ruled out any possibility of a manned mission to Europa, because the radiation on that moon is impossible for a human to survive with current technology. Io, Europa and Ganymede are all too close.

Everyone wants to go to Europa though, because it has oxygen in its atmosphere and (frozen) water on its surface.

Re:I hope this fails

[Megane]

It could be done, if we could drain the radiation belts first. They're not radioactive (in the fission sense), they're just full of high-energy particles that are trapped by the magnetic field. But we haven't even tried it on Earth yet, and Jupiter and its field are a lot larger.

Re:I hope this fails

[Shadowmist]

Everyone wants to go to Europa though, because it has oxygen in its atmosphere and (frozen) water on its surface.

Europa does not have an atmosphere. It has a fluctuating mesophere like our moon from occasional venting, and water ice as hard as Earth rock, but if you're thinking of skinny dipping on Europa, you're a bit shy of reality.

Re:I hope this fails

[viperidaenz]

Some people think it may have liquid water under the surface.

Re:I hope this fails

[viperidaenz]

oh... and the term mesosphere, means the middle section of Earth's atmosphere. It is a part of an atmosphere.

The atmosphere of Europa may be of very low pressure, but it's still there.

Re:I hope this fails

[viperidaenz]

Jupiter collects in the order of 100TW of power from the Sun's charged particles. Where would you drain that amount of energy to?

Re:I hope this fails

[Shadowmist]

That's not exactly news. The big unknown however is how much ice is between us and that water. Estimates could be anything up to 20 miles of ice, which could pretty much be a deal breaker for any conceivable technology in the near term. The other big unknown is how much pressure would that water be under. You could be talking at a minimum something with greater crush depth than the bottom of the Mariannas Trench.

Re:I hope this fails

[Shadowmist]

oh... and the term mesosphere, means the middle section of Earth's atmosphere. It is a part of an atmosphere.

The atmosphere of Europa may be of very low pressure, but it's still there.

And so is the atmosphere of the Moon.... but then you're talking about an "atmosphere" so thin an ephemeral that it's density was multiplied by the exhaust of the Apollo rocket engines which landed and took off from it.

Okay, this is even dumber....

[mark-t]

... than the plans for a one way mission to mars.

At least the one-way trip to mars has the merit of *SOME* sort of contingency for actually surviving there (not that I think it will be effective... I still believe that such manned missions to mars are merely a drawn-out way to commit suicide, and I don't expect anyone will live more than 2 years after launch).

But what the hell are their contingencies for surviving on Europa?

Re:Okay, this is even dumber....

[rubycodez]

what contingency what that be, neither place can support multicellular earth life and quick death is certain without oxygen, warmth, food, water, and adequate radiation shielding.

With today's technology?

[viperidaenz]

Didn't someone figure out that the one-way trip to Mars would be one-way for more than logistical reasons? The other being, with today's technology, the radiation exposure would give you cancer on your 9 month journey.

The folks on the IIS are within Earth's protective magnetosphere.
The folks who went to the moon didn't go for 9 months.

Re:With today's technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

The folks on the IIS are within Earth's protective magnetosphere.

That must be uncomfortable. How many people can you even fit into a webserver?

Re:With today's technology?

[rubycodez]

cancer not an issue, the radiation levels are lethal by the outright mass death of cells. Anyway, there are methods for shielding, I'd say the main objection to a "crowd-sourced" space trip to anywhere would be the lack of billions of dollars and experience that only a few space agencies on earth possess.

Re:With today's technology?

[viperidaenz]

The problem is there is no current method of shielding that is effective enough that you can put on a space craft.
You've got to either carry something huge and heavy, like a a bunch of lead to absorb the radiation, or generate your own magnetosphere, which requires more energy than we can generate on earth, let along in a space craft (the Earth has current flows in the order of a billion amps)

Re:With today's technology?

[rubycodez]

Actually, light weight nucliei are better for shielding in space because much less secondary radiation produced. The slower protons cause more damage than the high energy ones which pass through the body without time to interact.

No need to recreate an "earth's magetosphere", there are alternative designs such as having opposing strong fields that in the center of the ship where the crew is the field intensity is low. Also combined electrostatic and magnetic designs. Quite an engineering problem though.

Re:With today's technology?

[rubycodez]

but you are right, nothing like today's craft would be useful at all, they are death traps outside low orbit.

taking advantage...

[globaljustin]

Isn't it nice to hear that some are curious enough and adventurous enough to do this, instead of simply being focused on entertainment and producing more humans?

no

put it this way, "isn't it nice to hear that some mothers care so much about providing for their kids they will engage in something as dangerous as prostitution?"

yeah, really life affirming...

people are desperate for 'meaning'...it's one of the defining characteristics of modern humans

using that desperation and reframing it as a 'win-win' is total bullshit marketing language tricks

this crap is dumb and wrong and actually hurts the cause of real manned space exploration by putting false ideas into the public's head about what is really possible

No, no, no, that's the wrong music!

[RevWaldo]

None of this wannabe Solaris soundtrack jazz. Here ya go:

http://youtubedoubler.com/a7Kj

.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[rts008]

Hmmmm...I give up.

Why, or why not?

Wait, is this a trick question?

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[rts008]

I well and truly understand that.

I'm just not convinced that's a universal motive in these things.

Radiation Issues? Let's call TEPCO

[Gman2725]

[humor attempt] It's my understanding Jupiter has some seriously intense radiation issues even for shielded space probes. Oh wait nevermind, we can just use the TEPCO method. Only bring devices capable of registering the maximum reading we want to admit. [/humor attempt] Otherwise you still have to get through the asteroid belt, then somehow avoid the debris orbiting the planet itself in the rings. Then there's the magnetic field the size and strength of Donald Trump's ego to contend with. All to go to a planet to drill down through ice of unknown thickness in the hopes of finding liquid water that may or may not contain anything from living organisms to non water liquids. We don't even know how stable the ice crust is to know if we could land anything on it as it could have thin spots caused by heating and currents from below or be subject to instability from tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity. That being said, I'd gladly volunteer all of the U. S. legislature as crew since it's a one way trip.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[rubycodez]

Plenty of explorers and experimenters have died too. For example, how did we learn certain plants are poisonous? (just think, at least one dead human for every major type of plant in the "nightshade" family, that's quite the body count). There are worse ways to die and more useless ways to die than after exploring in space. In the time it took you to read my post some people choked to death on tough food, some were run over by cars, some were gunned down by street punks, some fell into a hole and died, some died of flu, etc. etc. etc.

Re:Why do we need to send humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Radiation protection is key. The recent NASA stab at a Europa orbiter (not lander) was canceled after the cost estimate ballooned to $4 Billion. The main reason the cost went so high was radiation protection. Something on the order of 200-1000 krad exposure was expected after a year, assuming everything in the probe lived behind 3 mm of aluminum. The high cost was necessary to develop better flight-proven rad-hard electronics, research mass-effective shielding, and accurately model the effects of secondaries caused by the shielding and spacecraft structure.

I honestly have no idea how anyone can expect to send humans to Europa with anything resembling today's technology.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[narcc]

It's it obvious? Hale-Bopp brought closure to Heavens gate! We missed our chance.

Re:Why do we need to send humans?

[Grog6]

Jupiter's radiation belts are pretty extreme; there's some info in the Galileo data. :)

We can't possibly carry enough shielding for the x-rays alone... and get there in a reasonable time.

A Jupiter mission will have to launch from Mars orbit, IMHO; unless we learn a new engine technology.

Although;
I still think we should send as many people to Mars as will go; I'm sure when the postcards about the Ham Bushes and Blanket trees come rolling in from Mars, and how we were completely mistaken on the whole there not being an Atmosphere thing, ticket sales will skyrocket!

Of course, we'll need lots of Security people and Politicians to go; we could build them special ships. :)

Who knew the actual Problem isn't popprob, it's PolProb.
.

You can't go home again

[OrangeTide]

Wolfe didn't mean it literally, but these guys do.

(actually... Wolfe wrote it in a book so isn't it literal? whatever)

One way mission?

[wjcofkc]

Don't mod me anywhere. I just want to join the voices pointing out that this makes no sense. A one way mission? That at least halfway makes sense with a Mars mission, but we know a whole hell of a lot less about what it would take to survive in orbit around Jupiter and we have no idea if there is even life to be found. What are they going to live on? How long a they planning on living? It would take a multi-trillion dollar space station to even make an attempt at a renewable, sustainable environment - and it still may not work. If they don't find life, what...let their air run out and die? Commit suicide? We don't have the technology for this. We may be able to pull off a return mission, no entity private or government is going to spend that kind of money when a probe can do the same work at a fraction of the cost. I am all for manned spaceflight, believe me when I say I am a huge nerd about it - the kind that crusades about our need to spread out among the stars to ensure survival of species. But this is something we are not ready for.

I suspect this effort equates to one of two things: Either it's literally a joke and we will be getting the punchline at some point, or someone has a plan to walk away from this with a lot of money after it fails to go anywhere.

Re:One way mission?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect this effort equates to one of two things: Either it's literally a joke and we will be getting the punchline at some point, or someone has a plan to walk away from this with a lot of money after it fails to go anywhere.

I think the idea is that on this first ship we send the hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants...

Someone just watched Europa Report

[BobjoB]

So basically someone just saw Europa Report and decided to copy the entire movie premise. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/

Re:Someone just watched Europa Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, indeed.

They expect to find the thing.

is this a joke?

[binarstu]

I looked around on the site a bit and watched the introductory video, and underneath the shiny veneer, there really is not much there. The video, for example, certainly looks pretty, but contains no useful information. Instead, it has a few amusing text bites, such as, "FAREWELL CREW... BEFORE YOU DIE... YOU MAY SHOW US LIFE". The whole thing seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. After seeing the site, I really wonder if it is a joke intended to point out how ridiculous the "one-way trip to Mars" plans are. I suspect the site is intended to drum up a lot of interest and volunteers (much like the call for Mars trip volunteers), so that the punchline can be delivered later when it is revealed that the whole thing is based on a completely silly proposition.

Or, perhaps I just hope that this is a joke and not for real...

Re:is this a joke?

[Warbothong]

There's a difference between emmigrating to Mars permanantly and dying soon after reaching Europa. There's lots of focus on "dying on Mars", but the point is that you get to live on Mars first. Maybe your lifespan will be reduced, due to radiation exposure, the risk of accidents in the colony's habitat, lack of quick access to specific medices, etc. but it would still be appreciable. With Europa, there's not going to be much living to do at all.

I am all in favour of a one-way colonising mission to Mars, although I think it would be much more efficient to do it with robots first and add the humans later, and do it on the Moon first and Mars later.

Arthur C. Clark had something to say about this...

[techdavis]

"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." (2010: Odyssey Two). Do we really want to tempt fate that way? Next thing you know, we'll have computers killing astronauts, Jupiter turning into a star... just too risky ;)

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[Anonymous Coward]

We do, every single time we vote.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[TapeCutter]

95% of adults living on this planet firmly believe in an afterlife.

Why Europa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, apart from Io Europa has got to be the hardest moon to get to and back out of.

1) Its deep in the Jupiter gravity well
2) Its got a deep gravity well of its own
3) Its right in the Jupiter radiation hot spot where everything is going to get cooked.
4) Its relatively boring. (except life may exist 300km under the surface)

Why not pick any of the numerous other moons.

  Himalia would be a great one. Easy to get to (outer sat, and back out of (low escape, much further out of Jupiter's well), out of the peak radiation zone, big enough to be worthwhile, small enough to be interesting. We know nearly nothing about it. It is approximately the same size as Enceladus, in a similar system so may have cryovolcanisim. We have the technology now to do it and come back. While there you could send out probes to the other moons and control them in near real time making work much faster. Or you could actually visit in person a few other outer moons. Elara?

  I don't know, ten billion dollars? The main craft would be re-useable for other manned missions to the moon or other moons or planets. VASPIR engines, ISS style life support with greater recycling, 3 person crew. Supplies could be sent immediately so ready in orbit around the moon. It would be one of the easiest bodies in the solar system to move water ice from. Becoming a a refuelling resupply point for out solar system adventures, robotic or manned.

Some examples

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Being able to fix a stuck wheel has some value, as does being able to make new instruments on the scene from parts in the lab.

But that line of thought presupposes that gathering data is the only thing humans care about.

Re:Some examples

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a budget with enough zeros (but one less than the cost of a manned mission to Mars or the Jovian moons), and I'll make you a machine that can build instruments on the scene and fix a broken wheel. Hell, it will be able to build a new wheel. And it will do it a lot better than some clumsy human would. I don't want to give away too much of my plan, lest you scoop my funding, but you can bet it will include 3D printers. For the price, I probably could even set up some sort of extraterrestrial construction operation. I'm not one of the people who thinks that gathering data is the only thing worth doing in space. I also think there is mining, manufacturing, energy harvesting - and eventually, colonization. I just don't think that human presence would speed up, improve, or reduce the cost of any of these. Even the hard work colonization will best be done without people, and only once the habitats are up and running and growing vegetables should people move in.

The only thing I can think of which would benefit from some human presence in deep space before that would be for latency-decreasing reasons. We can't "drive" the Mars rovers because the signals take too long to travel. Someone in Mars orbit wouldn't have that problem. And the cost of developing a geologist automaton that's as good as an exogeology Ph.d might be too high. So that's an argument that humans should be operating the machines for some time to come. What I'm saying is that don't see much value in is flying people around and landing them on various bodies, simply for the sake of making footprints there.

Re:Some examples

[Teancum]

First of all, 3D printers really aren't that good yet. There is definitely some promise there, but nothing that you wouldn't by far and away make huge piles of money with simply doing terrestrial applications first.

The cost of a government mission to Mars has been proposed to be about $100 billion dollars. That is expensive, but it is definitely in the range of something that a 1st world country could afford to accomplish if they cared enough about the issue to actually accomplish the goal. Perhaps you might be able to develop one of those fancy 3D printers with that kind of money... perhaps you couldn't (since it hasn't been done yet). The cost of a comprehensive robotic mission to an outer solar system location is still on the order of about $1-$10 billion. With that money, you would also need to build a nuclear reactor capable of making fuel for the RTGs that you will be needing in that part of the solar system as well or perhaps use that $100 billion for building a practical nuclear fusion device instead. Solar panels simply don't work when you are that far away from the Sun.

I've seen private proposals for going to Mars that are considerably less than that $100 billion figure. Elon Musk is claiming something less than $1 million per seat going to Mars (perhaps as low as $50k per person), although using the Robert Heinlein suggestion that getting to LEO is "halfway to the rest of the Solar System", let's use the Space Adventure's cost of manned spaceflight to LEO of about $50 million per person and multiply that by four. That is a budget of $200 million per person, and let's say we need a dozen people for the trip for a grand total of about $3 billion (playing fast and loose with the figures. I think that is a reasonable budget for a private flight to Mars if some serious entrepreneurs got involved. If you think this figure is off, consider it is at least in the ball park for what is being suggested by the Inspiration Mars Foundation's trip to Mars with a crew of two.

If you really think you can build this self-replicating Von Neumann machine that can repair itself and do all of these other wonderful things on a budget of about $3 billion, plus get that vehicle to to Mars or Jupiter, I think you are going to be so stinking brilliant that you would get a Nobel Prize in Physics as well as land several contracts with NASA. Either that or simply call your proposal here to be utter bullshit and can't be done. Going into space is hard, and there is a role for astronauts to play as well, at least while our technology isn't at Star Trek levels like your idea requires.

Re:Some examples

[Mr. Slippery]

Being able to fix a stuck wheel has some value, as does being able to make new instruments on the scene from parts in the lab.

If you can send 50 or 100 probes for the price of a manned mission, having humans there to make repairs is pretty pointless. "Hmm, send a human to fix that stuck rover, or send a few dozen more rovers?"

But that line of thought presupposes that gathering data is the only thing humans care about.

If we're talking about doing science in space, gathering data is the only thing we care about.

If people want to do art or religion or something along those lines in space, fine, just don't pretend it's science. Let those space missions compete for arts or religion funding.

Re:Some examples

[Rich0]

"Hmm, send a human to fix that stuck rover, or send a few dozen more rovers?"

That was my thought as well. If it costs 100x the cost of a mission to fix it, redundancy is a better solution. For what we spent on missions to maintain the Hubble, how many Hubbles could we have launched?

Isn't there too much radiation

[Stan92057]

Isn't there too much radiation emitted from Jupiter for any kinda human survival on any of its moons?. No i didn't duckduckgo it :}

Radiation

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

It turns out that others have done some real work on this. There may be on the order of a meter of regolith which could be heaped on a shelter much faster than one could burrow into the ice. The leading hemisphere gets less radiation than the trailing hemisphere. I personally would look into a long deployable loop of superconductor to provide a pocket magnetosphere.

Unfortunately, the number that all those measures are chipping away at is one lethal dose per day. Add in the exposure while getting there in the first place. Lifting enough radiation shielding is probably out of the question for anything short of Orion. Maybe launch from a moon base with a bunch of lunar soil? Intercept a crumbly asteroid and mine it for shielding?

Re:Radiation

[viperidaenz]

Current methods still won't stop you getting a lethal dose of radiation on a journey from Earth to Mars, let alone Jupiter, which is over 6x the distance.

Objective Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

My comments on their website were these:

"Is it April 1st? Whatever, I presume this is a joke. Lovely.

This is one-way mission to Europa to indulge in new science and then the crew just die there, in orbit or on the surface - have I got that right?

It's not like a one-way mission to Mars where there might be a slight possibility of living out your natural life-span in a marginally cold environment - we are talking about Summer on Europa at about -180 C

Sooo, this is going to be a mission crewed by the terminally ill, the very old or the psychotic for their last altruistic hurrah's and self-aggrandizement

Ignoring youthful psychotics for the moment,since the very old and/or terminally ill might not be fit enough to withstand the journey, what exactly is your vision statement for this project, what's the value proposition? ;-)
"

What could possibly go wrong

[future assassin]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/

Suprise Suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Desk monkies telling someone else what they can and can't do....
how about you get the fuck out of what other people want to do with their lives?

in the 17th century, people use to risk their lives exploring the world in ships....
but in the 21st century, people ( at their own de3scression... they arn't being forced) can't explore new worlds.

fuck you douchebags.... fuck off out of what other people want to do, and go back to sniffing your mum's underpants in the basment of her house

The "why send humans" posts...

[rabbin]

There is an alarmingly widespread mindset on slashdot that seems to suggest that every action taken by humans must be solely motivated by improving the "success" of our species (where "success" is resource acquisition, improvements in technology, whatever else increases the expanse and longevity of our species), as if we're in some galaxy-wide race to proliferate ourselves. But increasing the expanse and longevity of humanity does not necessarily mean we will be happy (the only thing which humans truly seek to maximize, even if we're quite often ineffectual at doing so). It only has the *potential* to create a condition for it, and while it is certainly a worthy pursuit for this reason, to make it one's sole pursuit (or even something close to it) is absolute insanity (as one never stops to do that which makes them happy). Life is not a fucking RTS.

So when we talk of sending humans to europa or mars, there is no miscalculation about e.g. the inefficiency of using a human body in those environments when compared to that of a robot. The fact is that sending humans is *the entire point of it*. We want to observe the *human experience*--it is the next best thing to experiencing it ourselves (humans have this wonderful thing called empathy, the ability to (approximately) experience something through another ... well, most humans do). The satisfaction of curiosity, the overcoming of all of the challenges and risks, the feeling of being on the frontier of human exploration, etc etc all experienced through another--this is why we want to send humans. In other words, there is no reason other than the most fundamental which humans possess (it makes us happy) and there is nothing as sufficient--it is what people live for.

Now perhaps this "human experience" and "empathy" stuff doesn't matter to you (given that you're reading this I suspect you're lying or in denial, but so be it), or perhaps you really don't think the costs/risks are worth it (i.e. you don't think it will make you happy). Fine then, don't support the effort and move along. Just don't try to claim there is some sort of objective foolishness to sending humans instead of robots, as that simply means you have a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and why so many want to send humans in the first place (and I could understand why one would be upset with NASA or other taxpayer funded efforts using humans for this purpose, but in that context you have your vote).

Re:The "why send humans" posts...

[TangoMargarine]

Or as I like to say, let's settle on other planets (preferably other solar systems) so that WHEN the first extinction-level event comes along it doesn't wipe us out.

Re:The "why send humans" posts...

[david_thornley]

When the next extinction-level event hits Earth, the most habitable spot in the Solar System will be Earth. It will take a very long time before the human race will be able to thrive if the Earth is eaten by a giant mutant space goat. It's worth working for, but it is a very long-range goal.

Re:The "why send humans" posts...

[TangoMargarine]

As somebody said else around here somewhere, if we don't start working on it now, we're just going to put it off forever. And of course we'll start putting it off because nobody wants to be the ones to pay for it.

Nuke Jupiter

[Anonymous Coward]

We could send a nuke to the centre of Jupiter and set it off just for shits and giggles.

This is a sad statement

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had the technology to send kilotons of materiel and personnel anywhere in the solar system, fast, for 60 years - google "Orion nuclear rocket" or get the book "The Curve of Binding Energy" by John Mcphee. It's pathetic that people are contemplating these lame suicide missions in the twenty first century because of a long obsolete test ban treaty that closed the sky, seemingly forever.

600 days to Eurpoa? How precisely?

[miniMUNCH]

What is the basis for asserting a 600 day travel time... because it seems way too early to possibly assert a travel time without a launch window, a spacecraft/payload design specification, and a suitable launch vehicle.

The current, relatively small, Juno mission to Jupiter is going to take 5 years to get to Jupiter.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/spacecraft/index.html#.UjqKkj_lcyY

Galileo took about as long...

How do they plan to get orders of magnitude more payload to Jupiter 3X faster than Juno?

Message from HAL9000 incoming:

[kheldan]

All these worlds are yours except Europa.
Attempt no landing there.

Contamination...

[Squidlips]

Before this ridiculous mission gets off the ground, the moon need to be thoroughly investigated by robots that have been thoroughly scrubbed of bugs that could reproduce and contaminate Europa and drive any exiting life to extinction. It is almost, but not quite, impossible to do this with a an unmanned mission and totally impossible with a manned mission, even if the astro-idiots die of radiation poisoning on the way...

Not going to happen

[liamoohay]

At least not for a very long time. Long before you have reached Europa, the radiation will have cooked your brain and reduced you to a jibbering idiot (assuming you survive at all).

Someone has too much time on their hands

[cundare]

And how would humans survive there? No source of energy other than gravity. Solar is not an option. Also, what about the radiation? Remember that Jupiter is essentially an unlit star with both an enormous magnetic field and powerful radiation belts (a million times more powerful, in fact, than the Van Allen Belt) that extend beyond Europa's orbit. Humans couldn't get near Jupiter without extraordinary (and likely, at today's level of technology, impractical) shielding. See, e.g., http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3010/hiding-from-jupiters-radiation. Yes, I know I'm a buzzkill & that these types of things are fun to talk about while you sit around the bong with the dudes. Sorry.

Is this the newest Meme?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

So every few months we are going to get news about some "planned mission" to send humans to some moon or planet?

Join the Efforts of a Manned Mission To Jovian Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Relax, it's just some European lads joking.

Three times further than Mars, landing on an ice-plain . . . hmmmmm. To paraphrase another poster who put it so well - assisted suicide in the name of pseudo-science. More particularly, why send people when robots will do it better? We can (marginally) decontaminate machines - how do we decontaminate humans prior to landing on Europa? Imagine the scenario: "Objective-Europa Control! Objective-Europa Control! (panting) - we've found new life - extraterrestrial life - on Europa - our mission is a success!". Later: "Aaagh - negative that - it's something off our space-boots".

Such fun.

Re:Stop the planet, I want to get off this ride...

[rts008]

95%?
Where did that data emerge from?

But what I really want to know is...so what?

This has been feasible since the 1960s

[ka9dgx]

The Orion project was to be the successor to Apollo, once we got done playing around with toy rockets. Imagine being able to launch 1300 TONS of cargo to Interstellar space. The technology was worked out in the 1960s, the engines were tested at full power, we just lacked the political will to do it.

With modern materials, we could do a better job now, and a launch would only result in the fallout equivalent of a single 10 Megaton bomb. Considering the stream of badness coming our way from Fukushima, this isn't really a bad trade off.