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Astronomers Make the Science Case For a Mission To Neptune and Uranus
KentuckyFC writes "The only planets never to have been the subjects of bespoke space missions from Earth are Neptune and Uranus. Now European astronomers are planning to put that straight with a mission called Odinus, which involves twin spacecraft making the journey in 2034. Their justification is that the mission will help explain how the Solar System formed, how it ended up in the configuration we see today and may also explain why 'hot' Neptune-class planets are common around other stars. They also have to overcome the common misconception that Neptune and Uranus are just smaller, less interesting versions of Jupiter and Saturn. Nothing could be further from the truth. For a start, Neptune and Uranus and made of entirely different stuff--mostly ices such as water, ammonia and methane compared with hydrogen and helium for Jupiter and Saturn. That raises the question of how they formed and how they got to the distant reaches of the Solar System. However it happened, Uranus ended up lying on its side, probably because of a cataclysmic collision. And Neptune's largest moon Triton orbits in the opposite direction to its parent's rotation, the only moon in the Solar System to do this. How come? Another question still unanswered is who's going to pay for all this. The team are pinning their hopes on the European Space Agency which has already expressed interest. But would an international collaboration be a better option?"
Yes if you get the lenses right.
#1 The Event Horizon...
Space research represents very little of our national budget about 0.48%. I think the random acts of violent aggression in the world has cost us far more, and continues to do so.
I'm opposed to food stamp cuts, but there are orders of magnitude difference in the costs here. NASA is incredibly cheap, as far as national programs are concerned, and years of budget cuts there haven't done anyone any good. I'd be willing to wager a fair amount that satellite imaging, communication, weather monitoring, and mapping have done more good with respect to helping starving people than the equivalent amount spent directly on food would have.
Did we have any idea of the possible benefits the space race would yield when we started it? I doubt it. Scientific knowledge doesn't go away when you acquire it, and it's literally impossible to say what utility this research could have.
Now... if you want to talk about the value of corporate crop subsidies versus food stamps, then we can be talking the same ballpark for prices and relative human cost.
> Another question still unanswered is who's going to pay for all this.
You may divert my taxes to this instead of (everything else).
NO!!! Don't jack up tax rates!
NO!!! Don't borrow more money!
Ya know what, nevermind.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I had not heard about that.
Why wouldn't putting a self sustaining outpost on the moon be more worthy?
It's not really a question of it being worthy. It's a question of it being super expensive and the fact that we don't really have all the technology we need to do it yet. Most notably we don't really have adequate radiation shielding for a moon base for manned missions, nor do we have the infrastructure in place to supply such a base. Not saying we shouldn't do it but that is mission that is orders of magnitude more expensive and difficult.
A robotic spacecraft being sent to the outer planets is something we know how to do and the price is comparatively modest. We can do that mission with existing technology. A moon base requires development of a lot of stuff we don't have yet even if it isn't manned.
Speaking as a person who actually has children, I welcome deep space exploration. Just because basic research has no immediate applications doesn't mean that it is useless. When it comes to the pursuit of knowledge, a nation should look beyond immediate economic returns. The expansion of the sphere of economically useful scientific knowledge is dependent on the expansion of knowledge per se.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I remember reading somewhere that massive as they are they could not had been formed so far from the sun. But when they moved to the distant reaches of the solar system they did a real fucking mess that caused massive collisions that hit Venus, Mars and the Earth. In the Earth case it was the event that created the moon but Mars and Venus were smaller and didn't had the same luck. This could be the reason of Venus' retrograde orbit and the impact that created Mars' Valis Marinelis. Such an event could also have destroyed the convection mechanism of the nucleus that creates the magnetic field and extinguished the water on those planets to evaporate.
The fact that such planets are normally found near extrasolar stars is interesting. It kinda tells us that the solar system as we know has been shaped by their migration. IANAA and I don't have a source for that so feel free to correct me. Its just amazing how everything related to the solar system formation is connected to those 2 big god damn fuckers.
Hear hear. Let's completely eliminate half the crop subsidies, and transfer the other half to foodstamps to eliminate any economic hardships that may cause. We can then start cutting food stamps after we've eliminated the massive corporate fossil fuel subsidies. (What do you suppose complete legal immunity to the consequences of your fracking is worth in insurance dollars saved?)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Because their horoscope told them.
Since this is a EUROPEAN proposal, it is apparent that you did not RTFA.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Well, I can think of two reasons. First, establishing a self-sustaining outpost on the Moon would cost a lot more money than an unmanned Uranus probe. Secondly, a self-sustaining Moon colony isn't basic research, it's *engineering* research and has to be judged by different standards than pure research. One of those standards is economic feasibility.
It's not at all clear that an *economically* self-sustaining manned outpost on the Moon is feasible with the level of technology immediately available to us. Given the added cost of man-rating a Moon outpost, it's likely that anything we could do with a manned outpost could be accomplished cheaper robotically. The research into human adaptability to space could likewise be more cheaply achieved in Earth orbit.
Without unlimited funding, the shortest practical path to landing humans on Mars and manned expeditions to the outer solar system may well start with robotic probes. Even the Moon landing was preceded by unmanned lunar probes like Luna, Ranger and Surveyor, and the case for unmanned vs. manned gets stronger the further a mission has to go. Manned exploration beyond where our species as yet gone is going to require moving a lot of extraneous mass to support the crew, and that is almost certainly going to involve basic advances in generating thrust efficiently. Those likely won't be man-ratable until there's been an un-manned exploration program much larger than any currently being contemplated.
You put those factors together and what you've got to do to advanced manned space exploration beyond the Moon is orbital manned missions with robotic exploration of the Solar System.
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yeah, how dare NASA go all cheap-ass and use convenient alignment of planets to visit, photograph and measure all the gas giants in one swoop, and even after that to amass enough gall to turn it into interstellar mission!
Perhaps the reason that we have never sent a dedicated mission to Uranus is that the scientific benefits would not outweigh the social harm caused by the puns that would be sure to follow.
No it wouldn't. Our knowledge on how to colonize inhospitable planets would increase significantly, but very little of that translates to the challenges of surviving in space where you have to deal with microgravity and hard radiation. Basically almost everything learned colonizing the moon (except stuff about to the moon itself) could also be learned from underground bases on Earth. (And if you're colonizing the moon and putting your outposts on the surface I can only assume you were dropped on your head way too many times as a child. A few yards of rock make pretty much all of your radiation and extreme thermal fluctuation problems go away)
A lunar outpost doesn't really make much sense unless you're mining and refining rocket fuel for missions to the other planets and/or are seeking to establish a long-term military presence. As an added bonus several of the mass driver or skyhook options you would want for getting fuel into space efficiently can easily double as powerful kinetic-energy weapons
And thanks to the Moon's low mass, lack of substantial atmosphere, and considerable orbital velocity, you can make an awesomely powerful lunar tumbling skyhook that's only a few hundred kilometers long, can be made without exotic materials, and is capable of picking things up directly from the lunar surface and throwing them on transfer orbits beyond either Venus or Mars without ever subjecting them to accelerations over 1/4G
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
All we have to do is tunnel below the Moon's surface.
Oh is that all? An pray tell, where can I get one of these robotic tunnel borers on the moon? You're talking about getting a HUGE piece of equipment to the moon which has to operate remotely, reliably and requires virtually no servicing. We don't have tunnel boring machines that fit that description here on Earth, much less ones that can operate on the moon. You can't really just hand wave this problem away. Excavating machines are necessarily very heavy and thus extremely expensive with current tech (chemical rockets) to get to the moon. You're likely talking multiple launches of Atlas V class rockets which deliver the machines with pinpoint accuracy to the moon which then somehow have to be put together. And it isn't just the machine to do the tunnel boring, you need structural materials to support the excavation and all the other building materials for the base. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but what I am saying is that it is a VERY challenging and expensive problem for which we do not presently have the technology.
Even better, it's hypothesized that there's already underground tunnels on the Moon, left over from its formation.
So we're going to rely on hypothetical tunnels to shield us from radiation? Great plan...
You know, I'm sick and tired of these Uranus/your anus jokes.
I can't wait until the glorious future when they put a stop to this crap and change the name of the planet to Urectum.
The Voyager probes did a fly-by of the planets. I believe the idea here is to put the probe into orbit rather than just flying by and have a longer term mission.
"For a start, Neptune and Uranus and made of entirely different stuff--mostly ices such as water, ammonia and methane compared with hydrogen and helium for Jupiter and Saturn."
Huh? The composition of Neptune's atmosphere is about 90% hydrogen and 19% helium. Sure, there's ices in there, but "entirely different" and "mostly"? No.
Voyager just flew by the planets. A mission specifically to them would see a probe orbiting them for a while to study the planets and moons in depth.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Twenty years to wait? Whatever technology is used for the probe and its sensors is going to be technologically obsolete countless times over by 2034. Honestly if you can't drum up funding for this and get it built and launced inside of five years shouldn't you just hang it up?
(...)
The best option would be an American mission. That way American scientists and engineers and citizens can combine their efforts to accomplish something together. Who knows? It might even create a job or two.
And if the European Space Agency wants to launch a mission, they are welcome to do so.
Because scientific knowledge and discovery has NEVER EVEN ONCE resulted in better economies, new products, innovation and applied science in commercial products, or advances in the general state of manufacturing arts.
There's no better investment of government money.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The problem with pooling resources if you have to pool bureaucrats and sources in the process. If you think it's bad for NASA having to build parts in various congressional districts to create jobs and being subject to the whims of each new congress, try adding 5 more countries worth of complication and your project will likely drown in red tape no matter how much money you throw at it.
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Agreed. I work in a lab developing equipment for the calibration of sensors on earth monitoring satellites. There is active research going on even for space vehicles close to home and it is difficult to tell where else this research will be of use.
This is about the gathering of knowledge purely for the sake of science.
That seems like a good enough reason as any.
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Here's an idea: instead of spending all this money now to launch probes from Earth, why not spend it instead on building a base with launch infrastructure on the Moon? No atmosphere, no environment to worry about, lesser gravity well...the list of advantages is quite large. The only disadvantage is it would take a while to get going. But the same could be said for the space industry 50 years ago. So we could spend a lot of money on a lunar base now and get huge payoffs later, or keep spending almost as much on Earth-launched probes for the next several decades and advance the human presence in space not one whit.
NASA still hasn't figured this out. The public is not *interested* in these pure science missions, regardless of how beneficial they are to scientists and engineers. The public wants the glory, grandeur, and *adventure* of Apollo. And without public backing, NASA's budget gets whacked again and again and again. NASA needs to come up with things that capture the public's imagination like the glory days of the 1960's. Then they'll get the money and political clout to do big things. I'm sure most American's don't give two damns about a mission to Uranus or Neptune.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There's no question that it *can* be done. It's a question of opportunity costs. If we build a manned Moon outpost, what gets cut to make room in the space exploration budget?
My argument is that in the not-so-long term the cause of manned space exploration is better served by a phase of robotic deep space exploration and manned orbital missions.
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Isn't the ESA international by nature? Perhaps the submitter meant to ask about a joint venture with other space agencies, but the EU itself, as well as the ESA, are both already international entities.
Just not in prison..
There's nothing as nice as surprise wakeup sex.
Unless you're in prison.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
you'd be lying on your side too!
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
The only planets never to have been the subjects of bespoke space missions from Earth are
Am I misunderstanding the definition of "bespoke" and its application within sentences?
I think you could substitute "tailor-made" for "bespoke" in any context - including actual tailoring - and get exactly the same meaning. It's a linguistic metaphor, yes. Do you object to any other commonly-used metaphors?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The ISS may have been a special case since it was designed to be built in modules which each country can make a module. I grant that NASA and the ESA have collaborated well on occasion and hope they will again. I can't see 3 or more space agencies at once collaborating effectively very often though.
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Why didn't they say "orbiter" or "dedicated mission" instead of "bespoke"? Bespoke is a somewhat obscure word.
Table-ized A.I.
I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, but this mission isn't likely to happen soon. The paper referenced in the original post is a write-up of a case made to the call for ideas put out by the European Space Agency for future large missions, specifically looking for one to be launched in 2028 and another in 2034 (L2 and L3, in ESA-speak, with L1 being a mission to Jupiter and its icy moons, selected a year or so earlier).
Problem is, the Uranus/Neptune case didn't win either the L2 or L3 slot. A wide range of scientific ideas and mission concepts were proposed, aired publically, and assessed by a senior survey committee, before the two top-ranked ideas were approved by ESA's Science Programme Committee in late 2013.
And those two future missions will be a new high-energy astrophysics observatory for L2 in 2028 and a gravitational wave observatory for L3 in 2034.
The senior survey committee liked the science case for Uranus and Neptune, saying "The SSC considered the study of the icy giants to be a theme of very high science quality and perfectly fitting the criteria for an L-class mission", but then went on to say:
"However, in view of the competition with a range of other high quality science themes, and despite its undoubted quality, on balance and taking account of the wide array of themes, the SSC does not recommend this theme for L2 or L3. In view of its importance, however, the SSC recommends that every effort is made to pursue this theme through other means, such as cooperation on missions led by partner agencies."
So, it certainly won't be an ESA-led mission in the foreseeable future, but ESA could participate in a wider international mission if someone else leads it.
You can read the whole report here.
The main bit of technology that we'd really need to develop, before anything else, is the ability to set up manufacturing sites on the Moon, and to mine and refine ores on the Moon and use them for manufacturing there, rather than having to lift everything from the Earth's surface.
I think you are badly underestimating the amount of infrastructure required to manufacture anything on a significant scale other than on Earth. Want to make steel on the moon? In no particular order you will need a large source of iron ore, carbon, oxygen, alloying compounds like chromium or vanadium. You'll need equipment to mine, transport, process, store, all of these plus their byproducts. You need furnaces capable of generating and withstanding temperatures higher than 1375C and not just little ones. You'll need a vast source of power with all the attendant infrastructure that goes into generating that power. You need the ability to test the steel and to adjust production to keep the chemical composition correct. You need another complete infrastructure to turn the steel into useful products. Then you need another set of infrastructure to actually do something useful with the products you have just made. Bear in mind that ALL of this tech will have to be developed for an environment where we have little experience, unproven tech and where the difficulties and costs are multiplied by orders of magnitude.
I haven't even touched on the economic problems either.
Quite frankly, simply getting some equipment to the Moon is the least of the problems we face in doing extraterrestrial manufacturing. We take the infrastructure we have here on earth for granted sometimes but you can't do that elsewhere. This is one of many reasons why the notion of mining asteroids is largely absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually all for trying to manufacture in space but let's not pretend that the challenges are trivial. We're talking about something that is MUCH harder than the Apollo missions and vastly more expensive in all likelihood.
NASA has contributed more to our society far more than most (e.g. plastics, ceramics, things that we rely on for our daily lives, that sort of thing), and we spend FAR less on space exploration than our cluterfucked government GAVE to the financial industry as "punishment" for fucking over the entire nation.
Voyager 2 was a bespoke Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune mission