So let me get this straight
There might be some form of life on Saturns moon Europa. So why don't they send a robot there to take samples???
So let me get this straight. There might be some form of life on Saturns moon Europa. So why don't they send a robot there to take samples???
Because you have to dig a layer of ice that is many kilometers deep
Too expensive
Solar powered
Print more money
Jupiter's moon Europa.
might be some form of life
there might be liquid water on Europa. Liquid water might mean life.
>>So why don't they send a robot there to take samples
as has been noted, you may need to tunnel through kilometers of ice. That's among the least of your problems. An RTG could melt straight down pretty easily. The problem is getting data back to earth. You need a long and heavy fiberoptic cable. We don't know if iceflow and ice quakes mean this is impossible. Adding insult to injury is that Europa's heavily irradiated by Jupiter's rad belts. Our best probes can only last about a month on the surface, getting the transmitter to survive long enough to drill through to the ocean is going to be hard. Oh and we've haven't sent a dedicated Europa probe yet, so we don't even know a safe place to land. The terrain could be VERY BAD. There could be 15 meter tall blades of ice on Europa. Good fricking luck landing on that in one pice
https://www.science.org/content/article/fields-five-story-high-ice-blades-could-complicate-landing-jupiter-moon
NASA's congressionally mandated Europa lander, which just lands, would have the largest mass of any unmanned probe. So Europa drill through is pretty much the boss of the solar system in terms of space missions.
powered
lol no. Not in the outer solar system, not under kilometers of ice
Why isn't bill gates funding this? Why is 300 billion sitting in banks doing nothing when it could be jumpstarting humanites ventures into the new space age? What is he saving all his money for? I seriously don't get it.
There are billionaires with like 300 billion dollars. Is half of it invested? For returns on investment? Yeah invest 700 million in real estate in the most desired destinations around the world, stock exchange yada yada, you wont have to worry about money either way, how many kids does he have? Give them 10 billion each. Why not just give NASA 10 billion? Or 20. Do some investments, make some more money, give them more.
Is it because NASA is untrustworthy frivolous spenders? Get some cool missions going for sake, everyone wanted to be an astronaught when they grew up, you guys won, you are in charge of that department, all of human history present and future is watching, now do some cool shit.
I geuss jwst is not a good advertisment
>geuss
man that takes me back
If an ai probe could go to this moon and dig through the ice and send back samples and could do it for a million dollars it wouldn't be worth it. That's the problem, the coolness, the pertinence, the specialness, the urgency, of choosing the best possible project endevours
>Why is 300 billion sitting in banks doing nothing
Money in banks is never sitting in banks doing nothing, money in banks is always being spent
>money in banks is always being spent
Only if you're a poorgay.
>what is investing
This is how I know you're poor.
Banks don't sit on money. They invest it. Your "money" in a bank is merely a promise that you can get it back when you need it. The reason restrictions on drawing money exist is to allow the banks to invest that money while you're not touching it.
The fact you do not know this is concerning.
Anon, step -1 is sending a probe to Europa, a probe will get to the Jupiter system in 2030:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
Also remember how I said that the rads on Europa suck? Well this puppy ain't an orbiter, it's a clipper. It dips in, fly bys europa, and pulls out. Step 0 is sending a lander. That will happen some time after the Clipper's mission is finished. So there's another moon in the solar system that has water and the rads aren't as bad: Enceladus. Because the rads aren't bad you can make an orbiter that studies the planet, finds the best place to land, and lands on it. That's a mission the planetary scientists want to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_Orbilander
A better question to ask is why NASA isn't doing this. The answer is that it's planetary science and planetary science gets FRICKED when the manned mission budget eats into it. There was a huge Europa mission planned, but it got cancelled when bush wanted to go back to the moon
Cool, I think the lack of return on investment is also off putting. If there is serious detailed plans and hopes for planet/asteroid minin, that might stoke some fun prestige investments.
Also the robotics and ai needed for these unmanned missons.
The thing with radiation is ultimately some equipment on board must be particular sensitive material, and radiation destroys this? There's no way to make every computer mechanical system robust enough
Elon and Bezos are doing exactly what you are talking about lol. Gates is just a brainlet cuck that stole the underlining technology Microsoft is founded on and coasted into monopoly after.
Also, NASA has essentially been defunct scientifically since the 70s. Their is a reason they are out sourcing EVERYTHING to private contractors. They spent a billion on new spaces suits and are now just scrapping a large portion of the project. They can't even make a rocket anymore. The ISS and space shuttle programs have neutered the entire organization for the past 4 decades. Their is a reason the JWST was pushed back 13 years and went 3-4x over budget.
>Why is 300 billion sitting in banks doing nothing when it could be jumpstarting humanites ventures into the new space age? What is he saving all his money for? I seriously don't get it.
Mental illness is my genuine answer. Once you reach a certain level of wealth all of your peers are deranged lunatics.
He's probably funding all sorts of other cutting edge top of the line research in ai and computing and genome and stem cells and biological engineering, and the study of conciousness, and the deepmind
like creations of super computers, and robotics, and bio cyborgism, digging a hole in ice for miles to maybe find some amoebas or germs is not top of the priority list with good reason;. Assume their there, assume tadpoles and fish are there, so what, what then is possible to come in terms of evolution on such a planet?
because we need to give billions to Black folk instead
>so why don't they send
Because all these worlds are ours, except Europa.
Brainlet thread, go back to soifacing at your flying rocks in IQfy.
>life on Europa
I guarantee you they'll make a Black person be the first to contact it because of the name kek
Problem is Europa doesn’t have a magnetosphere to protect against radiation so nothing wean survive there. People always focus on water but the real barrier to finding life on other planets is that you need a magnetosphere to protect your planet from radiation. Earth is the only planet ever observed to have one.
a meter of ice would prevent any harmful effects
because, uh we never left low earth orbit anon
space is fake and gay
the earth is an enclosed system
I think we should shoot some missiles at the big X or the little o below it. I'd rather the next nuclear arms race to be who can melt an ice ball in the outer solar system the fastest.
Costs money moron
Expensive deltaV budget. Basically not enough energy/velocity budget for rockets we have today to travel to Europa, land, deliver a robot, and come back.
Starship might change that in the future though. So we'll see
We probably will when we get Starship up and running. The issue is that getting enough payload onto the surface to drill through the ice will require a massive Delta V budget.
Just have some lump of material decaying into heat and melt your way through.
stay away from saturn, it's no good there
>he didn't listen to Arthur C. Clarke
Any mineable material on any of the planets?
What caused earth to get such a rich elemental make up, and the others so simple and stark?