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Layperson here, but isn't the ocean covered with several kilometers of ice? It seems daunting to get a vessel all the way to Europa, drill through that much ice
by tmountain 6y ago
Layperson here, but isn't the ocean covered with several kilometers of ice? It seems daunting to get a vessel all the way to Europa, drill through that much ice, get the vessel into the water, and subsequently send signals back to Earth. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that--in fact--the thought of what might be in those oceans makes me giddy with excitement, but it seems like an extremely challenging exercise to make a mission like that happen given our current technology.
- fit2rule 6y agoWhile I am radically milquetoast on engineering things, to me it doesn't seem nearly as impossible as mining the deep, deep oceans of Earth. Similar constraints, similar win/fail procedure. If we really wanted to drill into Europa, we'd have it up and running in a manner of years, imho. Getting there, of course, is the other big challenge, but honestly .. a fleet of Starship's, maybe 100 or so .. sent to Europa with enough guts to build a base .. I could see it happening in 20 - 30 years, maybe .. if not sooner.
- inetknght 6y agoI don't think it isn't challenging. I think it's definitely possible; just expensive. And I think it's actually cheaper than a lot might think: the biggest expense until now has been getting there. But with SpaceX and reusable rockets that looks to be a helluva lot cheaper. It's still challenging on a technical level but tractable to the higher ends of science budgets, or even middle ends of, say, oil and mining budgets.
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoOnce you are in an ocean covered with miles of ice, how do you send a signal?
- inetknght 6y agoWhy would you dig deep into an ocean covered with miles of ice without a tether to a station? Suppose it looks like this: ----- upper ice surface ----- ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ~~~~~ lower ice surface ~~~~~ Then a tether station might look like this with a conduit/shaft between beep /|\ ------|---------- | ~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~ \|/ beep Then you can have a swimmer-rover: hi! /|\ ------|---------- | ~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~ \|/ . <-> hi! sorry I'm just a software dude :|
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoIt would be my first instinct too, but I'm assuming miles of cable in frozen ice that probably move will not last for long. But maybe setup a wireless relay? Not easy through that much ice.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoThis mission is starting to sound really expensive
- inetknght 6y agoYup! It definitely would still be an expensive mission! But I think getting there is no longer the biggest expense :)
- splendidHaiku 6y agoleave sending station above ground. send down hot ice melting probe (no drilling) attached to long cable.
- nitrogen 6y agoThe meltwater would have to be removed, or the cable itself heated.
- avhon1 6y agoIce carries radio waves a lot better than water. Once sunk through the ice, the entire probe, or a small buoy, could float up to the underside of the ice and transmit clearly to the surface.
- nagyf 6y agoI've just looked up, and the theory is that the ice is 15-25 km[1] thick. The deepest hole on Earth is 12 km [2]. [1] - https://europa.nasa.gov/europa/faq/ https://europa.nasa.gov/europa/faq/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
- evultrole 6y agoBut to be fair, the limiting factor on earth was that it got much hotter much faster than scientists had expected. We aren't likely to have that issue on Europa.
- vkou 6y agoThe advantage on Earth is that you have dozens of machinists, operators, labourers, and tens of thousands of tonns of supplies necessary for digging these holes. You can't do that with one robot, and a weight budget of a few tonns.
- catalogia 6y agoRather than having to keep the drill bit cool, to drill through ice you could use a heated drill bit. Perhaps using using radioactive material to heat the drill bit and cut through the ice like a hot knife. (Of course, irradiating an alien ocean is perhaps not the greatest idea ever.)
- mhh__ 6y agoRadium-knife: cooks the steak while you slice it! It also means launching a large amount of radioactive material through the atmosphere which may end badly
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ravenstine 6y agoIt sounds to me like Elon Musk needs to combine efforts between SpaceX and The Boring Company.
- lisper 6y agoEx-NASA guy here. Not directly involved in Europa mission planning, but heard a lot through the grapevine back in the day. Europa is very challenging to get to mainly because it's located in an extremely harsh radiation environment. https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/hiding-from-jupiters-radiation/ https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/hiding-from-jupiters... The limiting factor is building electronics that won't fry.
- beamatronic 6y agoThis is a mission where I’d like to see a continuous stream of missions instead of One Big Mission. Let’s bring the assembly line to space exploration.
- lisper 6y agoAssembly lines work if you have economies of scale, i.e. if the incremental cost of production can eventually be brought below the value of the product on the open market and you can start turning a profit. The economics of planetary exploration are fundamentally different because the product is not the thing you're mass-producing. The product is data, not spacecraft. Furthermore, the hardware required to produce the most valuable data, i.e. the data you don't already have, generally needs to be different from the hardware you've already built. That's the fundamental reason planetary exploration is unlikely to benefit much from mass production any time soon.