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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Don't they know

[Anonymous Coward]

All these worlds are yours EXCEPT Europa.

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?

[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?

[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.

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?

[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.)

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/

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...