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This is great news. I can't wait for this mission. > If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water as Earth. I really wish we
by drzaiusapelord 11y ago
This is great news. I can't wait for this mission.
> If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water as Earth.
I really wish we were past the "is there water there" stage and onto the "Lets drop a submarine and see what's down there" stage. I imagine getting through 15 miles of ice might be a wee challenging.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoPlans exist. Here's one for a submarine on Titan - https://www.nasa.gov/content/titan-submarine-exploring-the-depths-of-kraken/#.VYMRb3XN-00 https://www.nasa.gov/content/titan-submarine-exploring-the-d... There was another Titan boat proposal a couple years ago, but it lost NASA's internal funding battles to Yet Another Mars Lander. http://www.universetoday.com/96924/mars-lander-wins-out-for-2016-mission-over-titan-boat-and-comet-hopper/ http://www.universetoday.com/96924/mars-lander-wins-out-for-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer
- Caprinicus 11y agoMars is easily the lamest planet in the solar system. I don't understand why we need to keep going there.
- devindotcom 11y agoThousands of experts disagree?
- clarky07 11y agoby being "lamest" it is most reasonable for humans to go to, and most likely to actually be useful to us.
- kenrikm 11y agoBecause there is actually a chance people could live there for extended periods of time.
- meatysnapper 11y agoMars is the Ohio of the Solar System. Important for political purposes, but otherwise boring and unfulfilling.
- magicalist 11y agoJust to be clear, the Titan "boat" was really a buoy. It would have dropped into a lake and drifted. That still would have been amazing (imagine video from a lake on another world!), but the science would have been limited by the cost of dealing with the environment and the tight budget of the Discovery program. The biggest issue, however, was the problematic development of the needed power supply[1]. There is another option for these missions, of course. A nominal increase in NASA funding to increase the number of missions we can fly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Stirling_radioisotope_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Stirling_radioisotope...
- waterlesscloud 11y agoEven these "cheap" missions are a half billion each, so it's a little more than nominal. Choices have to be made, even if NASA's budget was doubled. TiME was always a longshot proprosal, but I'd personally rather see the lower budget Discovery Program missions doing riskier stuff. And while I love a good Mars mission, Mars gets all the marquee missions anyway. It's kind of a shame to see it eat the resources of the lesser missions too.
- magicalist 11y ago> Even these "cheap" missions are a half billion each, so it's a little more than nominal over a decade or more, though :) I just wish we could have more.
- jdhawk 11y agoI know there is a very good reason for this, but it seems like we're sending a lot of satellites to these moons and planets to perform VERY similar missions. Orbit around, take photos and readings. Why are we creating a new spacecraft every time this happens? Why are they not "mass producing" the same generic exploration sat, with a generally useful set of features, then slightly modifying it for any specifics? Launch in 2020's? snooze. Just launch the same sat from the last mission and start getting data now.
- devindotcom 11y agoBoy, where to start. First of all the conditions around various planets and bodies are very different. Jupiter for example is oozing with ugly radiation so we can't just put a "stock" probe into orbit around Europa, it would fry. Second, these missions aren't actually that frequent. It takes months or years for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination, and its design had to be finalized and tested rigorously years before its launch. That means by the time we even get a close up picture of Ceres, for example, the science of spacecraft building will have advanced by several years and we now can include new sensors and improve fuel efficiency and so on. Third, what do you think science is? Taking photos and readings. That is a huge, huge part of basic science, especially when it comes to astrophysics, astrogeology, astrochemistry, and so on. Landing on a planet provides further opportunities to take photos and readings, but it's phenomenally difficult to do. Finally, if you are bored by cutting-edge space travel and the study of distant worlds that may hold the possibility of life... I don't even know. I'm mystified by your perspective on the universe we live in.
- Achshar 11y agoBut what's stopping us from making exact copies of this probe/sat (say... 10) and launching them all at once? Or at an interval of say 6 months a piece? That way we will have low cost since the r&d will be basically 0 for all the extra models and we get 10x the data and larger time span of coverage. Plus we won't be putting all our eggs in the same basket.
- 11y ago
- ForHackernews 11y ago> I imagine getting through 15 miles of ice might be a wee challenging. Just drop a nuclear probe that can melt through: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3548139.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3548139.stm
- Caprinicus 11y agoSometimes I feel like the aerospace industry is in a race to make the most phallic objects possible. I wonder how hard it is to get a signal through all the ice.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoThere's one design that's a very effective perpetrator. Works in biology; works in space.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoI imagine that the probe would set up a transmitter on the surface, and drag a cable behind it through the ice-hole, then deploy another relay at the bottom - probe signals underwater relay, relay passes it onto the surface transmitter, transmitter phones home.
- ramidarigaz 11y agoGetting under the surface of the ice might not be too bad, but getting a signal back up would definitely be.
- baq 11y agoeasy, pack 10km of fibre. oh wait...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Caprinicus 11y agoNonsense, just put a chunk of something radioactive at the bottom and let it melt its way through, and then drop it when you get to water
- jabits 11y agoOh great, let's hose up the environment on our first visit...we will end up doing this anyway, but radioactive chuncks on the sea floor?
- TheLoneWolfling 11y agoIt's probably substantially less damage than the rocket required to launch the extra mass that would be required if we used an alternative, heavier, method.
- jboggan 11y agoJust make sure that we drop it near a black smoker and accelerate evolution for the Europans. I doubt there is much background radiation on the bottom to stimulate random mutations.
- gambiting 11y agoWater is so good at blocking radiation, that an RTG dropped into that ocean would be absolutely nothing. It would be dangerous to anything within 5 meters of it, which again - is absolutely nothing.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoMight make more sense to put the RTG in the nosecone; why ship something radioactive and useful all that way just to throw it away?