NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions

coondoggie writes "NASA is trying to decide among eight space exploration missions that include further exploring Venus and comet composition as well landing on an asteroid or examining the space around Jupiter. The space agency today began accepting solicitations for these space exploration opportunities and will ultimately pick one of them to begin perusing in 2009 with a launch date targeted at 2018. The solicitations and ultimate expedition are part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which has as its main objective to explore the solar system with medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations, NASA said. The first New Frontiers mission was selected in 2003 and will result in the launch of Juno, a Jupiter polar orbiter mission set to blast off in 2011."

Left off the list....

#9 Locate and retrieve the lost toolset

Re:Left off the list....

Okay, seriously? Europa. Come on NASA, pretty much the entire scientific agrees... we want to know more about Europa. Just do it already.

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They would except some giant black box told them not to do that.... Perhaps it was an IBM Blade server.

50 Billion dollars

That's what Detroit wants this year. If we gave it to NASA instead I would consider the money better spent.

And if they threw in the rest of the 350 Billion they haven't stolen yet in the TARP, I could go for that too.

I bet with 400B NASA could come up with an electric car. I doubt Detroit could.

Re:50 Billion dollars

Or we could outsource to some other countries and save some money there. India's moon mission was the cheapest. Just an interesting thought!

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Hmmm... There needs to be a "sad but true" mod option because I don't really find this funny at all--insightful if anything.

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When India manages to do more than crash a camera into the moon then we can talk. Don't get me wrong, it is great what India just pulled off...but it pales in comparison to things that NASA has done and is currently doing. NASA's robotic missions are simply amazing. Or does India have an orbiting robot ready to go to Saturn that I am not aware of?

Re:50 Billion dollars

Detroit already did come up with a good electric car [wikipedia.org]. But, in a typically brilliant move for GM, they decided to cancel the program when it was still in the lease-only stage, revoked all the leases, refused to sell the leased cars to the many people who actually wanted to buy one, sent every one of the cars into a scrapyard compactor, and promptly canceled all further electric/hybrid development plans to focus on SUV's. This stunning lack of forward-thinking is just one of the many reasons why GM is in Washington today begging for a handout while smarter companies like Toyota are taking over the auto industry.

Re:50 Billion dollars

But I'd settle for the RIAA being declared a terrorist organization...

One vote for trojans

...because protection is important with all the wierd stuff floating around.

The possibility of humanity being able to stop a killer asteroid rises with more study on such bodies.

Give it a really big nuke power plant

And seriously harden up the electronics. If the Pioneer and Voyager probes can do 30+ years, a modern probe can. Given the fuel efficiency of the ion drive, a probe could also carry enough fuel to perform a great many missions. It may not be able to do everything on the list, but a decent design should be able to tick off a fair few at less cost than one probe for each one.

Re:Give it a really big nuke power plant

Actually, let's get a really big nuke power plant and a bunch of parallel next-gen ion drives. I bet we could push the ISS into Mars orbit. It would be more useful there than as as fireworks display, which is the current plan.

My Gratitude !

Thank you NASA!! You guys are one of the few things that make me very proud of the human race!

bureaucracy and other badness aside, exploration is pretty damn cool.

Posed this question...

... to the 5th grade class that I teach. It's unanimous, NASA should go to Uranus and look for Klingons.

Some things never change.

Blimps, please?

I want to see balloons dropped into the atmosphere of planets. Particularly giant planets. Best pick would probably be Saturn, but I'm sure we could learn interesting about Uranus if we sent a balloon there. And Neptune too, although I'm afraid the winds are a bit too violent there. Jupiter would also be great but I'm afraid the superior "surface" gravity there would make it harder.

I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?) or Titan.

Oh and to clarify my idea : the balloons/blimps would stay aloft for months on end, going up and down in the atmosphere on command to study different altitudes, drifting off the winds, telling us more about them, performing all the analyses possible, and not just about the atmosphere but also (why not) the magnetic field and whatever else might be interesting. And of course a good colour camera, so we can see what it looks like from there, see the clouds, thunderstorms, the moons through the coloured atmosphere, boreal auroras, and so on.. That would be pretty exciting.

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Wouldn't it be near impossible to get a signal through the clouds?

Re:Blimps, please?

Some frequencies go right through clouds beautifully. That's why you see radio telescopes operating on cloudy days.

Re:Blimps, please?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of that would be hard to accomplish in the first place. Your talking about something like a weather balloon correct? I was watching some science channel show where they were talking about that idea, but it would be hard because a large portion of Saturn or Jupiter is made up of hydrogen and helium gas, and to get a gas lighter than that is kind hard.

Unless you were to heat hydrogen or helium in order to make it lighter than the hydrogen or helium that is currently in the atmosphere. Other than that you would have to create a new element that had an atomic mass smaller than hydrogen which I'm not sure if it is possible to even do. Atomic mass of 0 would be an interesting element for sure.

Then again I could be wrong, and if so let me know because that would be interesting.

atomic mass 0 exists

Positronium is it. The mass is roughly 2x the
electron mass, which is essentially nothing.
The half-life is a tad short though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium [wikipedia.org]

There are other choices as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom [wikipedia.org]

Re:Blimps, please?

Not enough solar energy to warm a blimp that way, but radioactive heat sources do nicely, and yes people have studied hot hydrogen balloons / blimps on Jupiter, Saturn, etc. They seem to work ok, if you stay out of the regions with high wind shear (flying a blimp into a hurricane is a bad life path choice...)

Reactors are better, but little radioactive heater units will work in a pinch.

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So much for proofreading crap.

There, fixed that for you.

Venus Balloon Mission

Should be relatively cheap and reliable hardware. While the surface is the definition of a hellish landscape, the cloud tops of Venus are the only place in the solar system (other than Earth of course) with temperatures and pressures that humans could survive in. Not only is that interesting from a human habitation standpoint, but the mild conditions should also improve the lifespan of the balloon probe itself. Sure, you can't dig in the dirt like the Mars rovers can, but you will see a heck of a lot more of the planet from the air than on the ground.

Protect our ass

If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...

We'll be fine

If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...

Don't fret so much. There's always Bruce Willis.

What I'd like

Hellow fellow humans,

I want the humans to send a ship with lots of titanium and plutonium to a spot behind mars where no alien fleet is hidden.

Thank you.

Gahrull the devastator.
Ministry of Discovery and Invasion.
All hail the Imperial Queen.