From: Jei (jei@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Sat Jan 10 2004 - 22:09:31 MST
On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Dr Sebby wrote:
> ...oh i agree with you Mermaid; his reasons are never for anyones benefit
> but his own, but in this time of turmoil any way we can funnel money to NASA
> is that much less spent on big things that go "boom".
>
> ...by the way, why isnt anyone tinkering with a lander that could visit
> Europa and get underneath that ice. it seems a dead certainty that there
> would be abundant and i'm guessing rather progressive life forms down there.
> is it too far away for us to remotely control it or something? what are
> the difficulties in such a venture?
>
> DrSebby.
> "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
I agree, NASA money would be money well spent.
Europa expedition would be the most interesting
expedition we could undertake, apart from Venus,
perhaps. Venus has a thick atmosphere, and undoubtedly
plenty of substances in form of liquids -> strong
possibilities of life, imho. ...But I also think
that a moon, or something that brings "catastrophies"
in the form of regular tidal waves to primitive creatures
living in liquids is essential for life to have moved
from seas to Earth (advantage through survival ->
evolution). -> Europa has the bigger chance of intelligent
life, but lack of atmosphere probably has eliminated all
chance for surface life on Europa..
...
I think the challenge is in efficient fool-proof
communications, and perhaps the fact that the recent
Mars probes have been embarrassingly falling flat on
the planet due to various errors. Europa is a *lot*
more farther away and mistakes like these, they don't
really give a lot of confidence in the people doing
this stuff...
Smashing probes on planets is just ... questionable.
Errors just shouldn't happen at this stage.. (lack
of sufficient testing?)
Undersea communications with a remote probe boring
and diving under an ice bed is, to my understanding,
also a "bit" difficult. Or at the least doing it
cheaply on a remote planet is.
We don't have remote control submarines even now. They
do communicate with sonar, or using radio buoys, I
understand, but doing the same on a remote planet that
is covered by an ice-sheet...
We would need to develop pretty much an independent
system that comes back to the surface and reports back
when it can. Much closer to 100% sure in it's operation
than all these failed Mars probes, I should hope..
Nuclear powered, heats up and melts the ice, dives, records
data, takes pictures, does analysis and reports back (the
most challenging part). Perhaps a surface-station
that drops a sonar under the (miles?) thick ice and an
independent submarine unit that communicates via the sonar.
Also the sea might be noisy, since there's lots of volcanic
activity, and afaik, sonar isn't that efficient (or reliable?)
for communications... might be strong currents too... submarine
unit might get lost... (should attempt to return to surface
somehow for radio communications and bearings..) The orbiter
would connect to surface unit with radio that would use a buoy
(a few miles of cable? = expensive to bring along and might
be easily cut by ice-movements...) to link to sonar that would
communicate to submarine probe (if in "hearing range" == *lots*
of things and communication links that can fail and go easily
wrong and hard to make 100% fool-proof. (How well does radio
traffic go through the "ice" that is on Europa? Is it of water
or was it liquid nitrogen or something else?) Also as Europa does
not have an atmosphere, the probe would have to land using rockets,
unlike the recent Mars probes, slowing down with parachutes and
balloons and just bumping into the planet..
Perhaps when we can launch a remote probe to Antarctica,
and have it autonomously investigate it's lakes under
the few miles of ice, and have it return and report successfully
via radio to us with pictures of the bottom, we should consider
sending something to Europa...
The first real problems seem to be with the landings that haven't
exactly gone according to plans recently, and the communication
with explorr craft under "unknown" sea in more or less unknown
conditions. The chemical composition of Europa's "sea" might
affect and radio sonar/radio..
Venus, on the other hand is rather a hot environment for our
current technology. Europa might be less challenging for now.
Anyway, last best attempts by humanity haven't been 100% successful,
sadly. It seems underestimations and carelesness take their toll,
and not everything has really been "state of the art", but rather
"public domain" cheap as can get, stuff... Military should get more
into the business, they have a reputation of delivering consistent
reliability.
Perhaps NASA/ESA should make it easy to get public donations
for specific probe projects. Or do they already?
Anyway, Micro- and nano-scale machines should perhaps provide
redundancy and efficiency in the future (in key parts) to
accomplish the tasks for these probes cheaply. The key point,
or lesson from past I would say, is fool-proof guaranteed
successful operation, or as close as possible. Better less data
reliably than a bigger chance of no data at all.
Imho, there has been far too many annoyingly stupid mistakes
and disappointments during recent years.
// Jei
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