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NASA Wants To Go To Europa
MightyMartian writes "'NASA and the White House are asking Congress to bankroll a new intrastellar road trip to a destination that's sort of like the extraterrestrial Atlantis of our solar system — Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa.' Since Europa seems one of the most likely worlds in the Solar System other than Earth where we have some hope of finding extant life, let's hope Congress gives the green light to this project."
"All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa. Attempt No Landing There. Use Them Together. Use Them in Peace."
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sounds hot!
Ezekiel 23:20
But its buried beneath 100 miles of ice. If they're expecting to find some trace of life in some trace of water vapour that may or may not have been ejected near where the probe lands in the few days before any DNA or proteins would be destroyed by the hard vacuum and radiation then I think its wishful thinking at best. At worst a waste of multi billion dollars when it could be spent on other more fruitful missions. Another probe to Titan that could travel around and examine the lakes and atmosphere would be far more worth while.
...NSA is already all over Europe.
It's their anti-science position. Going to Europa and finding alien life might encourage the teaching of evolutions in schools.
It will also interfere with their plan to teach that the Earth is a the center of the universe, and the eventual mandate to make it official policy that the world is flat.
That will put the godless atheists in their place: in the lower left corner of the flat world, where the climate is terrible and all the icky stuff collects at the bottom.
Except it won't - they'll just claim it was faked or staged in some way. The mentality of these sort of people is that they will automatically and unquestioningly reject anything that does not fit their world view.
While exploring space is many people's dream. The cost is enormous and the US has so much debt now, should we really be investing in our dreams
vs repairing roads and bridges?
O RLY? http://costsmorethanspace.tumb...
The mentality of these sort of people is that they will automatically and unquestioningly reject anything that does not fit their world view.
This is exactly what they say about liberals/Democrats. Both sides think the other side is stupid, ignorant, and/or crazy.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
We have a mission.
Then another one that lands and tries some new water fueling technology whatever it may be: for fuel cells and hydrogen fuel or something.
Then it's developed further so not only is Europa a moon for exploration but also a fueling stop.
And I also dream of the day when we can say that we can't go to war because of budget issues: we got a space mission on after all!
And I wish for the day when people bitch and moan about military spending and saying, "Look! The Chinese and Russians are WAY ahead of us in space exploration! WTF do we need another fucking aircraft carrier! We need another rocket!!"
But I am crazy and stupid.
It's their anti-science position. Going to Europa and finding alien life might encourage the teaching of evolutions in schools.
It will also interfere with their plan to teach that the Earth is a the center of the universe, and the eventual mandate to make it official policy that the world is flat.
Just let them believe that they are going to invade Europa (the continent) and they will probably stand in line to support this idea.
The mentality of these sort of people is that they will automatically and unquestioningly reject anything that does not fit their world view.
This is exactly what they say about liberals/Democrats. Both sides think the other side is stupid, ignorant, and/or crazy.
And they're both right!
This is exactly what they say about liberals/Democrats. Both sides think the other side is stupid, ignorant, and/or crazy.
And they both are.
Ground breaking, paradigm shifting revolutions in science are rarely in applied research, it's in basic research. And likewise, space exploration has rather few immediate gains, but the needs of space exploration often lead to other discoveries that have very earthly applications. When you look at the early space programs, up to and including the moon shot, it sure gave us paradigm changes and developments we would not have seen without. From "hard" science, like electronics, computers and safety to "soft" science in the fields of organization and process analysis and optimization. These things were a necessity for the space programs but they also led to development and a boost to these other fields that we now take for granted but would most certainly not be even close to where we are today without the needs of a space program.
My pet example in this context is lasers. The theory behind them was developed as early as the 1920s. It took until the 1960s for a laser to become reality. Only in 1980 it became economically feasible. But our modern economy, especially our entertainment industry, could not even consider existing without it. That's certainly not what the inventor had in mind, but that's where it is used today, with great success. Who can predict what great developments and discoveries could come out of the obstacles faced by this project? I'd say we could easily end up with revolutionary discoveries in the fields of metallurgy, superconductivity, generation/transfer/storage of electrical energy, information transport, imaging along with a better and more efficient handling of process organization and management.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Initially, going to Europa indeed was a joint project between NASA and Europe's ESA, named EJSM ( Europa Jupiter System Mission):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Then a couple of years ago ESA announced that any talks with NASA being unconclusive (not bringing commitment), Europe would move alone; the mission was simplified, now called Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), fully European-funded, and scheduled for 2020.
It *is* developing right now.
IMHO there is still room for cooperating here.
Herve S.
"I think we are settling for exploring close planets just because we have no technology to go to where we actually do believe life could survive."
You can't expect to successfully run a marathon on Saturday after if you haven't run a single mile in the past decade. Each step in exploration requires a previous step of smaller magnitude. Often it's the things we're not looking for when we explore that allow us to go further or explore deeper in future missions.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Someone should look up the meaning of interstellar, this trip although close wouldn't even be interplanetary.
This is like taking a vacation to the big ball of twine vs Disney Land because you can't afford it.
That is a terrible analogy. By comparing space exploration to vacation you are suggesting that the science has no value other than to satisfy someone's curiosity, which is simply not true.
A better analogy: Going to Europa is like a manufacturing company investing in a robotic production machine. It costs a lot and takes a considerable amount of skill to setup and use, but once it's going the payoff is enormous.
We should be taking money from other things and putting them into the space program. We need these investments. See: http://www.investopedia.com/fi...
I wonder if its possible for America to fix this horrible "if you aren't with us, you are against us" mentality. There seems to be no concept of a middle ground, no grey. Everything is either black or white. How did it end up like this?
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
There seems to be no concept of a middle ground, no grey. Everything is either black or white. How did it end up like this?
Well, a "winner-take-all" election system didn't help. It led us to this place where politicians must increasingly pull away from the middle. If you have too much overlap with your opponent, then there's less to distinguish you from them, and no reason to vote for you. The concentration of power into two parties over time exaggerates the effect.
Newt Gingrich made use of television to really amp up the effect, and the splintering of media into self-reinforcing channels meant you didn't have to seriously consider any other viewpoints any more.
Really, this pretty much covers everybody in-between, too.
NASA has been trying to gut the planetary exploration programs for the last few years to feed the pork-barrel manned missions. This is a very odd turn of events. Stealing money from real science (un-manned missions from JPL/ Pasadena) to feed the pork monster (manned missions from Houston) is not new. In fact Carl Sagan started the Planetary Society to stop this poaching way back when.
Meanwhile, the Democrats won't go because space exploration probably involves 'radiation' of some sort - and did you know that all astronauts have been vaccinated? There is no telling what deadly changes in mental state this might be causing!
Maybe it would help if they offered to takeCongress along with them for the ride. While they are at it there is no reason to leave the whitehouse out. They can even save some fuel by not bringing them back!
Everything is either black or white. How did it end up like this?
I'm no philosopher myself, but you might want to read up a bit on Hegel's dialectic for a possible answer (Out of the clash between Thesis and Antithesis arise Synthesis.)
One of the corollaries of this theory is that if you manage to build up some of these opposing poles with sufficient skill, you can control the "synthesis" (midpoint) being arrived at as well as neutralize the two extreme poles in the process.
You could look around at the world for 2 opposing poles being somewhat artificially being built up, mostly through "media" working the sheeple into a frenzy. One particular example is the Religion vs Science angle, and our beloved /. does it's own sweet part in the polarization. (And I must confess that with both a strong religious conviction as well as a scientific training, I do not find the subjects conflicting, to the contrary... It is simply the agendas that some elements in both camps push that are causing conflict.)
It's a bit of a guess what Marxist Philosophy in real life officially means, but one view is that the Marxist Dialectic (based on Hegelianism) is that it is not the synthesis that is the ultimate goal that needs to be arrived at, but the struggle between the two is the end. So should a stable state be arrived at with some synthesis, a new opposing pole to that synthesis is to be found so that a new struggle may ensue.
Perhaps highly academic, but once one learns about the existence of such ideas, one starts to see patterns fitting those ideas all over the place. I see the previous paragraph in practice practically every day in the politics of the country where I live.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
One particular example is the Religion vs Science angle
One could well ask why it would be advantageous to eliminate both vigorous religion and rigorous science in the general population? My guess is that a dumbed-down populace that also does not have any hope for something better are easily controllable consumers and tax payers.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
This may be a good story to point out that the Space Dub group Sagan Youth Boys uploaded a track from their upcoming album that tracks a voyage to and into Europa.
https://soundcloud.com/sagan-y...
Radio chatter sourced from NASA recordings of Luca Parmitano's July 16th 2013 spacewalk.
And they're both right!
Only if you also include "venal".
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I have a great idea -- let's create a greatly restricted government so people can be free from having other people's ideas shoved down their throats.
The problem is the power itself, not who wields it, or how.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What NASA Headquarters is proposing is not a mission, it's a recipe for failure. They want to spend no more than $1 billion on a mission we planetary scientists have told them costs $2 billion.
Suppose you're planning a trip for two to New Zealand. You've got the budget all worked out: airfare costs about half of the total, even during the off-season, and you're skimping on hotels and meals and skipping the helicopter tour to save money. Then your spouse comes along and says you can only spend half as much. You can't make the plane tickets any cheaper, so unless you consider sleeping in the Auckland airport a vacation, she's saying you're not going to New Zealand at all.
It costs a billion dollars to send a bucket of bricks to Europa. Doing science once you get there is extra.
These types of projects aren't likely to get publicly funded because too much of tax revenue is now required to be spent on entitlements. Whether this was intentional or not is debatable but the unintended consequences are clear. A project like this getting shot down will disappoint some people but they will get over it. Private space companies will have to take this on.
no reason we can't do both, the funding for both are miniscule compared to federal budget
by the way, NASA's budget for 2014 is 17 billion, transportation infrastructure gets three times that
so really, stop spouting nonsense
I hate to say it, but the internet hasn't helped either. In many places, it's become a huge echo chamber where people can just hear their own preconceptions parroted back at them, reinforcing their belief that their position must be right.
Why, I've even heard of a tech site where regardless of what a certain OS company does, it is immediately trashed as a terrible, evil idea. Good thing Slashdot is nothing like that.
Yes! If we got rid of NASA altogether, think of all the infrastructure we could build....
Why, the annual savings would be enough for most of one tunnel!
Wrong....just plain wrong. Why is innumeracy so prevalent now? Are numbers really that hard? The $17 billion Nasa will get in 2014 is peanuts compared the rest of the federal budget.
It's also a terrible analogy as it suggests the idea that if we just tried a little harder, we'd make it to Disneyland (after all, the big ball of twine isn't that far from Disneyland.
Going to Europa is like Columbus going to America rather than the moon. Sometimes you gotta take what you can get.
I thought it said EUROPE.
eruopA makes so much more sense
I wonder if its possible for America to fix this horrible "if you aren't with us, you are against us" mentality. There seems to be no concept of a middle ground, no grey. Everything is either black or white. How did it end up like this?
What makes you think it wasn't always like this? If you were to go back in time any number of years up to, say, the administration of John Adams, you'd find that the popular political climate was equally nasty if not worse. Look up some contemporaneous quotes from the newspapers of past eras and you'd find stuff that made the Wall Street Journal editorial page look like a haven of reasonable moderation. Anti-immigrant hysteria used to be far worse, back when it was still directed at what we would now think of as "white people". Dallas, TX circa 1963 was like one giant rally of the John Birch Society. Posers like Rick Perry may mutter darkly about secession over Obamacare, but back in the 1860s the nutters really did secede, leading to a war that killed hundreds of thousands. There are just countless examples of extremist rhetoric and polarization.
What has genuinely changed is the pace at which information (and disinformation) is propagated, and the 24-hour news cycle, where every gaffe or poorly formed sentence is beaten into the ground as an example of the other side's perfidy. And the number of news sources has multiplied, so instead of having just a handful of newspapers (and the occasional pamphlet) run by oligarchs, we have a variety of modern media, especially the Internet. Which means that we all have instant access to the same cesspool of slander and lies, whereas in the 19th century - or even the mid-20th - someone living in a small midwestern town would be relatively ignorant and isolated, and might be fooled into believing that their local newspaper was representative of the national "discussion". (Actually, this describes most of us who grew up in the pre-Internet era, at least those of us who are too young to have witnessed the 1960s or the Nixon administration.)
Seriously, if they use 2 FHs to launch, they can send a red dragon and several orbital crafts on the first one, with a fully fueled tug on the second. Then send 2 orbiters along with the red dragon to land.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Easy to get past them. Simply tell them that oil was detected on Europe. They will fund it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well I want to know why it is like that in america and not elsewhere. I'm from Ireland for example, and we have 3 major parties and a couple of smaller ones. And people switch between them and the parties change their policies. It doesn't seem to be anything like America. It seems to be much more fluid. People don't just take a side and stay there no matter what and assume everyone else is wrong. And from what I read of other countries its similar.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
I'm from Ireland for example, and we have 3 major parties and a couple of smaller ones. And people switch between them and the parties change their policies.
Sure, but Ireland has a population of 5 million, the vast majority of whom have a shared culture (and religion) much older than the entire US. The metropolitan area I live in is 50% larger than that (and much more diverse); the US population is nearly 320 million (officially), and until recently, geographic mobility was relatively limited for many people, so it is quite easy to form isolated enclaves. I have about as much in common with some redneck in Alabama as you do with a Montenegrin peasant. Most other countries are similar to Ireland because they're also relatively small and homogeneous. It's also important to remember that most countries were under authoritarian rule well into the 20th century (and beyond, in many cases), without anything resembling civil society and our rather, um, vigorous culture of political debate.
Also keep in mind that our own civil war killed orders of magnitude more people than yours did, and it took us a century to finish. Some people are still bitter over it in a way that I doubt the Irish are, probably because the opposing sides in Ireland were fighting over a much more trivial disagreement, and were essentially in agreement about the ultimate goal. (Not that this excuses the neo-Confederates in any way.)
We'll never really know if we don't go look. How much is this kind of knowledge worth?
People are still fighting over Ireland... We fought the British for literally hundreds of years. We were fighting them before America even existed. There is still serious tension in the north, there isn't bombings any more, but they sure aren't all getting along.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with the extreme polarization of american politics? I don't see why any of this makes it so there is an even split with no middle ground between the groups. It sounds like it should be much more diverse since you are saying it is inhomogeneous. And that is what I find so strange. America politics seems incredibly homogeneous, way more than you would expect for such a large and varied country. There is an almost perfect split down the middle and each group has very tightly defined goals which are generally the exact opposite of the other one. I find it very hard to understand how all these disparate groups over thousands of miles all ended up in one of these two groups, yet smaller countries are fragmented.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
As long as it doesn't convert us to fucking idiots, or republicans, it should be fine.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The only bill republicans have introduced on greenhouse gasses is one that is trying to strip the EPA of being able to regulate it for new power plants. It was introduced by, you guessed it (well, maybe not you, because so far you've only shown yourself to be dumber than fuck) a congressman from a coal state.
As for the whole "peer reviewed" thing: http://www.desmogblog.com/2014...
So, you're full of shit. And if somehow, for some reason, you're so incredibly stupid to think that people haven't seen republicans have gone off the deep end denying climate science... hell, ALL science... in the past few decades, well, you need to pull your head out of your ass.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Since Europa seems one of the most likely worlds in the Solar System other than Earth where we have some hope of finding extant life
i think we already found life on earth.
A government that is huge does not help either - when you are trying to control and tax everyone by majority vote, you are bound to end up this way. This is why the founding vision was so important, people were allowed to decide for themselves, not elect someone to decide for them and for everyone else.
In short, when everything is political, everything becomes about forcing others to do as you want.
Actually the "people" were never actually allowed to decide for themselves whether to rebel or not. The revolution was a minority position held by influential landowners and buisnessmen who had the networking and the wherewithal to override the majority who wished to remain British subjects.
But I haven't got the money.
Stick Men
That's how we define what is called "history". If it happened before writing existed, it's not part of history.
Although, to be fair, Catholic missionaries destroyed a lot of written records from pre-Columbian America. They literally deleted Inca history.
The other side of the coin would be, if the parties are too fluid in their stances, why would I want to vote for anyone if they're likely to switch to the other side of the issue that gained them my vote in the first place?
Not that I'm defending our "dig your heels in and scream NOOOOOO!!!" system :P Although I would settle for the campaign platform actually being followed after election.
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The Troubles began in the late 1960s and is considered by many to have ended with the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998. However, sporadic violence has continued since then.
Ours, however, only lasted 4-5 years. Which I guess reinforces your point that we can't really meaningfully compare the two (?).
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The $17 billion Nasa will get in 2014
So that just about pays for one whole Super-Sexy K-9050 Uber-Abrams Mark V, right?
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Point A: Earth.
Point B: Jupiter.
(Point B1: Europa.)
From one planet to another, inside the same solar system. Terms are completely accurate as used. Hell, Earth and Jupiter aren't even orbitally adjacent.
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Well, I wondered from the headline, how long it would take for the applicable quote to show up, turned out to be first post. Amazing.
But. if you are going to plagiarize from one of Sci-Fi's truly great writers, unfortunately now past tense, at least give him credit for writing it.
Sir Arther C. Clark, T.B.E.
Sheesh, the chutzpah of some who write on /. knows no bounds.
Eh, stop being silly, you know that's not what i'm talking about.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
Although I would settle for the campaign platform actually being followed after election.
This isn't always realistic, unfortunately. To pick a trivial example, Obama said he'd shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The Republicans (and some Democrats) have basically made that impossible. Rather than dig in and spend all of his political capital on a relative handful of foreign captives, Obama decided to focus on what he believed were the more important issues, like the stimulus and healthcare. Whether his priorities were in the correct order is irrelevant; there is simply no way that he could have implemented his entire campaign platform unless he had a supermajority of safe Democratic seats in both houses of Congress. This is not to excuse some of his more craven capitulations, of course (and I have been horribly disappointed for the last five years), but he could never have actually admitted the reality of the situation on the campaign trail. And maybe he actually believed that he could be that transformative president who would unite the country and initiate a bold new era of reform; people who campaign for president have massive egos almost by definition. (Most people I knew voted for him because they wanted a clean break with the Bush years, and/or because Sarah Palin scared the shit out of them, not because they actually believed that he'd do everything he claimed.)
It is still tempting to fantasize about a world in which Bush had followed through on his goal of a "more humble American foreign policy", however.
Rather than dig in and spend all of his political capital on a relative handful of foreign captives,
That clause makes me sad for several different reasons...
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That clause makes me sad for several different reasons...
Me too, for reasons both ethical and practical. But that's the bitter truth about living in a democracy; based on past precedent, I doubt most democratic governments would behave much differently. It's still better than living in an authoritarian system, but it means we (the voters) are all morally culpable.
It didn't go so well the last time we went there.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
I'm talking about stuff like how our conservative party supports gay marriage now. The parties seem capable of having rational arguments and possible stance changes. Everywhere has polarization, but the American version is extreme. There seems to be zero hope of compromise as can be seen in various recent events. I wanted to know why this is so. Another poster pointed out that america has "winner-take-all" political system, which seems like a very good explanation for the lack of any middle ground. It would force you into an extreme position so as to differentiate you from your opponent.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
Nein! You cannot come to Europa! We have turn it into a fortress!!! Now, to prepare for Operation Sealion!!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)