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Interviews: Ask Former Director of JPL Edward Stone About Space Exploration
Edward Stone is a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology who has served as project scientist for the Voyager program from 1972 to the present. Since the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977, Stone has coordinated the efforts of 11 teams of scientists in their investigations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. He served as director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1991 to 2001. Highlights of his career include: Galileo's five-year orbital mission to Jupiter, the launch of Cassini to Saturn, the launch of Mars Global Surveyor and a new generation of Earth science satellites such as TOPEX/Poseidon and SeaWinds, and the successful Mars Pathfinder landing in 1997. Dr. Stone has agreed to sit down with us and answer any questions you may have about his time at JPL and space exploration. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Do you read XKCD, and if so, what do you think about the accuracy Randall Munroe's typical analysis?
You often see JPL listed as being a 'NASA Center', but if you look at the JPL website, it says 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' followed by 'California Instutite of Technology' (but next to the NASA meatball logo, and in the nasa.gov domain).
I've heard some people joke that if an orbital insertion is successful, then it's "CalTech's JPL" and when something goes wrong, it's "NASA's JPL". Can you explain exactly what the relationship is between the three entities?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If you could choose one robotic exploration mission that is not currently in the works, what would it be and why?
Did you ever wonder why scientists are always so fascinated with Uranus?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
thank you for your time, What in your view is the hardest problem in interplanetary exploration and what does JPL do to solve it.
Why is it that $17 million was spent on a space toilet for the ISS while a Europa mission only gets $15 million (in 2015 and less before that)? Seems to me that NASA's priorities are badly skewed toward manned missions, eh?
Do you think NASA could consider/design a Voyager-like mission with a much higher speed, using three-body chaotic gravity assist method, like this article (pdf) suggests?
Basically, it involves capturing an asteroid in a mutual rotation with the probe, then entering solar gravity assist trajectory with this binary object, then making small adjustments at the right times, so that the probe gets an even bigger kinetic energy boost at the cost of the asteroid losing its energy and falling into the Sun. Maybe there are asteroids or comets with close-to-required orbit where we could take a ride.
To a layman like me, this, while hard, sounds like the most realistic method for reaching speeds relevant for interstellar travel with our current technology. Rosetta spacecraft did perform a successful rendezvous with a comet recently, which looks like a solid stepping stone for a mission like this.
We've been thirty years away from putting a man on Mars now for the last forty years. Do you think that by 2035, we'll have finally moved to being just 30 years away from finally putting a man on Mars?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What professional habits did you develop that helped you be successful enough to hold a high position in one of the world's important scientific institutions?
Every time I hear about people wanting to have a manned trip to Mars, I have to roll my eyes. It seems that we are just nowhere near what is needed to actually perform one, namely a long term space habitat probably needing spin gravity, minimal leakage, and propulsion, especially assuming that such things would need to be tested and the actual Mars shot would be far down the mission scale (comparable how Apollo 11 was the one that made it to the surface of the moon). Talk of a one way trip sound even sillier to me as I figure once we have the ability to actually confidently get to Mars, getting back would be fairly trivial. My question is that if we, the USA or the world, how far do you think we are away from being able to send a manned mission to Mars in terms of time, money, and technology? Second, would that manned mission be cheaper than doing the same work with robotic missions?
If you could add one more scientific experiment hardware to Voyager, in retrospective, what would it be?