Outlook dims for interplanetary trips

[n2doc]

By Alan Boyle
Last updated 8:21 p.m. ET:

Planetary scientists would love to have some samples collected on Mars for delivery back on Earth, and they're itching to get a closer look at Europa, a moon of Jupiter that may harbor a hidden ocean and perhaps life as well. But they might be stymied during the decade to come, due to the federal government's tightening financial circumstances.

The Mars and Europa missions are the top priorities for flagship robotic missions emerging from a big-picture scientific assessment known as the Decadal Survey. Over the past couple of years, the survey's organizers have received input from more than 1,600 planetary scientists, and the final results were released today in the form of a National Research Council report titled "Visions and Voyages."

The whole idea of the survey is to let scientists weigh in on NASA's priorities for exploration over the coming decade. Two big-ticket missions — the Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Catcher, or MAX-C, and the Jupiter Europa Orbiter — rose to the top:

MAX-C, proposed for launch in 2018, would gather up rocks and soil from a promising area of the Red Planet and have the stuff ready to blast into Martian orbit, where it could be picked up for eventual return to Earth. Such a mission would lead to the first opportunity to examine fresh material from Mars, which could hold clues to the existence of past or present life on Mars.

The Jupiter Europa Orbiter is proposed for launch in 2020 and would reach the Jovian system in 2025 or so. The spacecraft would focus on Europa and two other moons of Jupiter that may have subsurface oceans of water, Callisto and Ganymede. Ice-penetrating radar could determine how close liquid water is to the surface of those moons, and detailed chemical analysis of Europa's top layer could conceivably turn up signs of life.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/07/6212512-outlook-dims-for-interplanetary-trips


Nope, can't afford that! But we can afford a new fleet of bombers AND new subs AND 2 wars AND tax cuts for the rich!

Maybe the Chinese will do these things, eventually.

[kenny blankenship]

1. Maybe the Chinese will do these things sooner - if you tell them that Martian rocks are rich in Pb

[Orsino]

2. I think manned space exploration is pretty much over.

We'll visit low Earth orbit of course, for some time to come, but I don't think we're going back to the Moon or anywhere beyond.

[n2doc]

4. Sure. But these are robotic explorers n/t

[Orsino]

6. And part of the justification for robotic explorers...

...is paving the way for eventual manned missions. As we retreat from manned flight, I think we're seeing a similar cheaping out on unmanned probes.

[sofa king]

9. I think just the opposite.

If one can get to LEO, a big chunk of the work needed to get anywhere else is already done. Solar power is almost free and entirely dependable, water sources (and therefore propellant and life-sustaining chemicals) are identified, and the ability to recycle and sustain human life in space is being tested and perfected on the ISS.

It won't be long before some billionaire ships up what he needs to take his own tour of the solar system. It could have been done forty years ago. Money is the only object, and there are thousands of people on earth with more money than they can possibly spend, ever.

[Orsino]

15. I have to hope that you're right.

But that hope has faded.

[sofa king]

16. Well, I can't blame you.

I for one count us lucky that the US manned space program survived the Shuttles--and that most of the Shuttles survived. I was one of those guys pointing out that the Shuttles were a disaster waiting to happen from the moment they wrote the emergency landing rockets out of it.

Now it turns out that the "four nines" of safety that got us to the moon had dropped to one in ten for the Shuttle missions up to Challenger. The only things that kept all those people safe were the people dedicated to making it safe (usually), against the machine's very nature.

That's why I'm confident we'll be out there soon. There are simply too many excellent people around who are willing to make it work, no matter what.

[AKDavy]

3. Maybe a nation where half the population are Creationists

should set its sights a little lower than space exploration.

[tavalon]

5. I know it seems sad, but we aren't evolved enough

and sadly this is our last human epoch. When this epoch ends, the Earth will still be here and a few very small animals but we won't. And really, are we all so great that the galaxy really has to see us promenade?

[Kennah]

7. Who's to say the denizens of the universe are not watching and shaking their heads?

[tavalon]

8. True enough

If I were from some other planet, I'd stay far, far away from this adolescent one.

[qazplm]

11. or maybe

they have their own troubles/flaws to deal with.

[qazplm]

10. I don't understand how someone gets to your viewpoint

a. there is little evidence that this is "our last human epoch."

b. there is no evidence that any other life in the universe would turn out any different from us if they had the same basic emotions we do.

c. our long term survival depends on finding another place to live one day to keep one lone asteroid or comet from ending our civilization (and possibly all life on Earth).

Now maybe you aren't down with Team Human, but I'm a card carrying member.

[laconicsax]

12. Not evolved enough?

By your comment, I don't think you well understand what evolution is and how it works and the rest of your comment doesn't make much sense either.

[qazplm]

13. its the standard

humans suck and the universe would be better off without us argument that some folks inexplicably seem to hold.

[laconicsax]

14. Got it.

I keep forgetting that we're not just an insignificant speck in the whole of the cosmos.