We were talking the other day about Gliese 581c, as it has now been named. The Wikipedia article is pretty good, so I thought I'd link it for those who haven't checked it out.There's also the Wikipedia article for Europa, which unfortunately confirms that there is no mission currently planned to examine that moon. I am in agreement with Andy preferring a robotic mission to Europa over a manned mission to Mars.
5 comments:
Yeah, I talked with my step brother. The ice drilling mission is one of the many concepts on the table that never got a green light.
I'm still in the camp that would rather us work more on establishing a
"permanent" moon base than either Mars or Europa projects. Get established there and build your experience and technology to better suit the deep space type missions. Coincident with this we need to develop that next generation shuttle platform to economically launch into space.
Part of all space missions is a technological drive forward that shakes out new products for us consumers. Like Tang. Umm Tang. Ever notice that you cannot find Tang any more?
A moon base or Europa robotic missions would both be about equal in this, although I think we might be able to make better use of microrobotic technologies than we would of moonbase technologies.
However, the other side of the coin, increasing our understanding of the universe in which we reside, and ultimately increasing our knowledge of self, learning about the waters of Europa seems much more important than a moon base. Even for establising technology for space exploration only, with no eye toward your average consumer use 20 years from now, how far can you run with moon base technology? Base on Moon, base on Mars, then what? Going toward the sun yields crazyhot planets, and there is a big distance jump between mars and jupiter, we really run into problems of how to transport people, not problems of how to keep em alive when they get there. But robots to Europa, then robots to wherever else we care to send em, pluto, Oor Belt, whereever
A mission to Europa would be nearly all pure science and exploration. Sure there would be incremental tech advances in imagery, long-distance communication, etc. But most of the data would contribute to geology and planetary biology. Not many direct applications there quite yet.
I think we should be allocating most of our space dollars based on one criteria: What is the most interesting question about space that we can reasonably try to answer? And success should be measured in knowledge gained, with technological advances a welcome side effect, but not the goal.
When it comes to our solar system, it's hard to beat out the questions raised by the possible presence of a subsurface, liquid water ocean on Europa.
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