Finally... I've been waiting for this almost my entire adult life.
Liquid oceans beneath the surface.
A brownish-red smattering of color despite the solid ice on the surface... maybe it's irradiated salt or magnesium sulfate, but it's an awful odd color for ice.
We need to send a probe to Europa, like yesterday, and we need to send one that can get below the ice and look around.
same. So to shortcut the big question "when"? April 2030
> We need to send a probe to Europa, like yesterday, and we need to send one that can get below the ice and look around.
IMO, "need" is a strong word here and if I thought that this is something we needed to do I would re-examine my priorities. We need to feed and house people, we need to stop the war machine, we need to slow consumerism to slow climate change.
Stepping on my soapbox once again to say that putting money towards science doesn't take away money from everything else. There's no shortage of money, or corporations that can be taxes, or people who didn't pay their fair share that can be taxed. Don't get upset with the science, get upset with the politicians who don't give a shit about the programs you care about or enforcing tax law.
Money is infinite but resources needed to send a probe outta space are quite limited
> We need to feed and house people, we need to stop the war machine, we need to slow consumerism to slow climate change.
Sure thing. We don't have to do them in a specific order, there are enough resources to tackle them all at the same time. A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others, but at least someone is doing something about one of those projects.
We need to prioritize. Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness? Shelter, water, fire, and food. Priorities.
> A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others,
$5 billion would go a long way to providing shelter, water, fire, and food for the homeless in the United States.
Money won’t solve that problem. Or it would have been solved before
[delayed]
It's 0.1% of the annual US revenue spread out over many years. So probably more like 0.01% per year. Picking on this one project, which is good science, is silly.
It's also only a little more than what Microsoft paid for Minecraft.
Priorities.
Well, I think we need to do all of it.
Explore space together or in competition, instead of war.
And climate change is a concern for everyone.
Worth noting that the ESA Juice mission will be at Jupiter at the same time as Clipper and the teams are already working together:
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/...
Exactly, mankind has potentially amazing capacity to move into star working trekkish utopia within 1 century (not meaning warp fantasy but how society and individuals in it work). But so many stars would have to align, starting with dropping most religions and killing on spot most dictators that it won't happen.
But we should aim high, higher than we think our potential is, to actually get somewhere.
How about if we aim our compassion higher?
We cannot do all of it. The money and the manpower does not exist to do all of it.
We need to prioritize. Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness? Shelter, water, fire, and food. Priorities. You would not spend your time trying to find out if there is a form of life 20 feet below you.
Right now on earth there are plenty of people who do not have these basics.
"Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness? "
Often enough. Quite succesful, even though I brought most basic supplies with me.
"Right now on earth there are plenty of people who do not have these basics."
And there is a possibility, that this always will be the case. And I would not wait to find out and stop with all general progress till then.
My compassion is with humanity as its whole, not with every single human. I don't see, how we can stop all wars just like that(the main reason for famine today - can you stop the Gaza war for instance?), but I see how little effort can be spend to finance such an interesting mission.
Also, space exploration is a tool to bring humanity together.
> The money and the manpower does not exist to do all of it.
No, they both exist. Motivation by your legislator is what doesn't exist. There's a reason some departments get almost everything they ask for and others get almost nothing: they know how to grease the political machine. That doesn't mean we should fight over scraps for science and social programs, it means you need to acknowledge that there's a game that needs playing. And yeah, it feels real bad that there are lives at stake playing that game, but that's the fault of capitalism, not science.
„The Europa Report“ is IMO a pretty underrated movie: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/europa_report
A hidden gem in the sci-fi genre
a fine excuse to listen to a top tune by the multi talented Thomas Dolby.
Thomas Dolby - Europa And The Pirate Twins
All these worlds are yours - except Europa
Attempt no landing there.
> Clipper is a pricey gamble. Even though it was scaled back from a design that included a lander
> Attempt no landing there.
And what did folks try and do in the sequel? Attempt to do a s*t-ton of moon landings!! Best commentary on the nature of humanity in any work of fiction since the Bible.
I think this message was sent after the landings happened and after Jupiter's ignition.
When they were stranded in Europa it was still an icy moon.
For those wondering, this is from 2010, the sequel book/movie to 2001 a Space Odyssey.
“We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission,” says Robert Pappalardo, Clipper’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission.
I guess there's very little chance of accidentally transferring earth-style life to Europa's oceans with this flyby kind of plan.. that's a plus!
It's ironic that we are searching for life on other planets when we are eradicating the life right here on ours.
Not really. A small minority care about space life. A small minority care about conservation.
Allmost everyone cares about conservation .. but about conserving the immediate life around them, e.g. their life and the close people around them.
Climate change is still too abstract for most people to be a real concern. If they are cold, coal makes them warm now.
I more and more find truth in the simplified statement: "we are little more than confused apes after all"
We are capable of so much more .. but it takes time and whether we have the time to evolve some collective consciouss about the bigger problems concerning us all, remains to be seen.
> A small minority care about conservation.
A small minority care, until it is too late. The everybody cares. It is the job of the scientists and governments to help us understand why we should care. But both are captured by oligarchs and people looking for their own power and prestige.
Just in case, let’s check if one of Jupiter’s moons, packed with salt and freezing near absolute zero, happens to have life. Sounds like a great way to spend public money.
From Wikipedia[0]:
"The scientific consensus is that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface, and that heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid."
Liquid water is hardly "freezing near absolute zero".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean
"near absolute zero" is not nearly correct. The temperature of Europa ocean is believed to be between 0 and -4 degrees Celsius.
Just one aircraft carrier less, and NASA can send probes to most of Jupiter‘s moons and still have money left for marketing…
Yeah but it won't be NASA sending them but CNSA.
Why would salt be a problem? There are single celled organisms known as halophiles that survive extreme salt. Do you know what range of concentrations are reasonable for life, or which salts might be present on Europa?
It might seem like a long shot, but exploring moons like Europa isn't just about finding life... It's about expanding our understanding of life's potential across the universe
nasa's budget is miniscule compared to the funds allocated to the military
What more important can we human beings do than exploring space and improve our tech?
> What more important can we human beings do than exploring space and improve our tech?
This is a value statement. Every answer from heroin to petting my cat is technically a valid answer.
OP's question is written obnoxiously. But it raises a valid point: why should we do these things, and why should it matter to people who don't find it inherently valuable?
> "We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission,” says Robert Pappalardo, Clipper’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission. But even Pappalardo, a cautious scientist who is constitutionally averse to hyperbole, says finding a hint of life is “not out of the question.”
"What an ignorant fool! There could totally be life there!"
I wouldn’t put it that way, but I’d rather space exploration money focus on colonization and improving life on earth. For example, asteroid mining has massive potential. What if rare metals suddenly were no longer rare? What could we make? What if we had outposts on other planets? How might that change perspectives and culture on earth? How might R&D to colonize Mars make life on Earth more resilient and sustainable?
Searching for life elsewhere seems so empty and unsatisfying. Almost like a religious quest for enlightenment or something. If we found a fossil snail on another planet, then what?
> asteroid mining has massive potential
Europa Clipper "is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission" [1]. If you want to mine asteroids, learning to send big spacecraft to the far end of the asteroid belt seems like a no brainer.
> If we found a fossil snail on another planet, then what?
Depends on what we find. Think about the density of medical knowledge we extract from the Amazon basin every year. New biochemistries could be game changing in ways we can't predict. (We have enough trouble predicting how known organic chemistries behave. It is overwhelmingly likely, if alien biochemistries exist, that they show us new science.)
If it's similar to terrestrial biochemistry, on the other hand, that suggests our bodies might do better extraterrestrially than we've assumed. That, in turn, could catalyse the investment and support needed to mobilise a multi-generational effort towards colonising space. (Their morphology could also give us hints on how to survive in that environment. Biomimicry on a whole new level.)
> Searching for life elsewhere seems so empty and unsatisfying.
To me, finding any extra terrestrial life, or even just a fossil of past life, would be the most exciting find in the history.
It would answer humanity's longest open philosophical question. The religious and social consequences would likely change the course of human history.
Imagine humans no longer fighting each other, but rather working together towards a goal. I can think of nothing that would catalyze such a change more than the discovery of extra terrestrial life. Even climate change isn't doing it.
How do you think the discovery of extraterrestrial life would do that? I think most people would say “that’s neat” and continue living their life unchanged.
Yeah... I would go that far. Average human's life wouldn't change in short period. But on a larger scale of time, it could propel us to explore the universe.
> If we found a fossil snail on another planet, then what?
There'd be a massive jump in the likelihood of finding a living snail.
> There'd be a massive jump in the likelihood of finding a living snail.
And there would be an ever bigger jump in the likelihood of some billionaire being the first to eat extraterrestrial escargot.