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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.
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.
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.
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This is all leading up to a "Fuck Uranus" joke, right?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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
I believe that, with current tech, it's also easier to find A) larger planets and B) planets closer to stars. If you had a system identical to Earth some distance away, it would be much more difficult to detect our planets than the ones we've discovered thus far elsewhere. We're still learning a lot about planet creation and it may just be that large planets closer to their stars are easier to find and that's skewing our models. Or it could very well be our models are correct and the easier-to-locate planets are also the more common planets.
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...
"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?
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.
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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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.