Axe Falls On Pluto-Kuiper Express

ljhiller writes: "As predicted last month, the planned probe mission to Pluto has officially been shelved, indefinitely. The mission is to be redesigned to be less expensive, with a target launch date of 2020. The Europa mission has survived the axe."

Re:pluto, what a waste of a probe

[MrNixon]

What if in designing the ship, they stumble across an ingenious hack that cuts spacecraft power consumption by 50%, or in studying Pluto, we discover a new element that provides the key to FTL (faster than light) travel (highly unlikely, I realize). Or the Kuiper belts reveal a fundamental insight into stars (or discover a sample of dark matter), allowing us to complete our models of the universe, paving the way for faster exploration?

I realize all of this may be unlikely, but ... we don't know until we try, do we? Going to Mars is cool. I would love to be alive when the first human walks on that planet. But what practical purpose does even that serve us? So we have a select few people living inside a landing craft on a totally inhospitable planet. Great. We could terraform Mars to be more suitable for human life, but that would take (last I heard) at least a few thousand years. So practical, sustained human exploration and habitation of that planet is far off. Why not diversify our research into more difficult, riskier avenues of research. Not putting all our eggs in one basket and all that.

time...

[titus-g]

*Weiler told engineers to develop a cheaper design that could explore Pluto by 2020.*

If only other government departments were as fast...

Re:pluto, what a waste of a probe

[tomzyk]

I guess I basically have 2 points to make here:
1. There doesn't exist enough funding for all of these space exploration projects to be initiated
2. What little funding that DOES exist, is (tried to be) put towards more practical uses.

I'm sure there are PLENTY of individuals that want those places in our solar system (Pluto, Charon, etc...) to be explored. The problem (as always) is FUNDING these research projects. Just look at the X33 [slashdot.org] ;! They've put around $1 billion into creating the "new space shuttle", and they still have nothing to show for it. And yet, the government will probably continue to dump money into the project until it eventually gets off the ground. (pun intended) This is because this project (assuming they get something out of it that works) will allow us to move equipment into space faster and cheaper.

I'm sorry, but figuring out what our solar system was comprised of hundreds or thousands of years ago or whatever, will not make the slightest difference in allowing us to further explore our solar system. Figuring out how to get us off of this rock and then figuring our how to survive on another one should be the first step. After that, THEN we can worry about what lies further out in our system. What good is it to try to learn what is out there when we can't really DO anything with that information. Sure, sure, now you're thinking "it's knowledge. We need to know blah blah..." but again, if we're not going to DO anything with Pluto, then why bother studying it for now? Let focus on more immidiate/practical goals first.

Babysteps people. Babysteps.

Yeah but...

[iamplasma]

While I do think that space travel is something which must be done, even if not for immediate practical purposes, I don't think that Pluto is all that important a destination. Sending a fixed-up version of one of the crashed mars probes would perhaps be a better idea in the meantime. After all, if we are ever going to leave this planet and build colonies, mars is guaranteed to be the first place we will go, and so we need the most knowledge about it.

It Burns!

[Mad Hughagi]

Besides the heat and pressure, one must also consider the dense atmosphere of acid that a creature would have to deal with, raining down acid from above! (such a reactive atmosphere would greatly hinder the ability to perform stable chemical reactions) For a good read on the possibilities of life in the solar system, check out Carl Sagan's "The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective". It's an oldie, but still a goodie!

What about the second rock from the Sun?

[calcfreak901]

Venus seems to me to be rather likely to posess hyperthermophilic life. Granted, this idea has little scientific basis, but its theoretically possible. Now, does anyone know what the boiling point of water under 800psi is?

orbits

[Hairy_Potter]

Its moon, Charon, doesn't even really orbit it; both bodies orbit a point in between them.

This is the way orbits work for two bodies, each one orbits about the center of mass of the two body system.

The Earth and Moon orbit about a point that's within the Earth, but not on the center.

Re:What about the second rock from the Sun?

[B. Samedi]

Granted, this idea has little scientific basis, but its theoretically possible.

Well you never know. Remember that we didn't expect life to be around thermal vents in the ocean but it's there. Of course Venus is harsher then a thermal vent but maybe there is some little microbe that likes huge pressure and ungodly heat.

As for axing the probe I'm pretty sorry to see it go. Just about any space travel is good in my book. Even the crashed Mars probes were worth it because it gets people to realize that this kind of thing isn't easy yet it needs to be done and done right. One of the biggest problems is something I call the Star Trek Syndrome. While Star Trek did have some help in getting people into space it has the problem with people seeing things like space travel being done incredibly easy and they think that it should be like that now. We (people in general) need to remember that anything worth doing is worth working for and that not everything is a guarantee. We've forgotten that putting someone on the moon or even putting a satellite in orbit is a technology wonder that required a lot of very hard and very dangerous work. In short we need to learn to dream again and to take risks again, because anything worth doing is worth risking for it.

Too bad about Pluto, but Europa's cool.

[Tommi Morre]

It's disappointing to lose Pluto, but I'm glad the Europa mission's still on - with that possible subsurface ocean, it's probably the best chance for life in the Solar System aside from Mars (maybe even including Mars). Compared to studying the here-again, gone-again atmosphere of Pluto, I'm a lot more interested in Europa.

Re:pluto, what a waste of a probe

[MrNixon]

Not all solar system science is based human travel and colonization (nor for that matter, is it practical, always).

Why can't we study Pluto and Charon (and the Kuiper belt) for what they are - insights into what the sun's accretion disk was like (bits of the proto-solar system)?

pluto, what a waste of a probe

[supruzr]

Come on now, Pluto isn't really even a 'planet' as far as planets go, it's just an asteroid that has a regular-ish orbit. Its moon, Charon, doesn't even really orbit it; both bodies orbit a point in between them. Sending probes to places like Europa and Titan is a much more promising use for NASA's meager funding. But I agree that Mars should come first. We'll eventually colonize the hell out of it, and we don't need any suprises like giant living dust monsters (Mission to Mars) for the colonists. There may be water on Europa or Titan, but for now, using it isn't practical anyway. Water on Mars IS practical.