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Space Science

Number 9, Here We Come? 136

Posted by Hemos from the to-complete-the-set dept.
matth writes: "CNN has got an article which speaks of NASA thinking about sending a space craft out to Pluto, which happens to be the only planet we have not yet been visited by an Earth-sent space craft. Is it worth it? Should we?"
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Number 9, Here We Come? More

Number 9, Here We Come?

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  • Re:yes (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, we wouldn't want bloody slitty eyed commie chinks achieving something before the mighty U S of A, would we?

    Save us the effort and go somewhere quiet and kill yourself you pathetic racist shitbag.
  • not to undermine the ecological effort, but I think that no matter what proof we come up with that cow-farts (or car-farts) are destroying the environment, we're not going to stop anything until long after it's too late (I believe it's already far too late).

    No amount of proof or evidence is going to convince those with money and power to give it up so that their grandchildren can live. They want their Ferarris and they want them now. Screw future generations.

    That said, spending ANY money on researching the environment is a total waste (why study it if no matter what evidence you find, you won't convince anybody to do anything about it?) - and we should spend all of our money on finding a faster way to deliver pizzas.
  • on the other hand, we may get to Pluto, and find out that because of the atmosphere, we can't see a goddamn thing (not unlike little sis Venus). Mabye be better off waiting.
  • heh- heh, heh heh heh.

    he said sperm.

    heh heh heh
  • There has long been a debate over whether Pluto qualifies as a planet. Some argue it is too small to be considered a planet; so I think a trip to Pluto may help find some other "qualifiers" or "disqualifiers" to indicate planet-hood.. ;)
  • The question should be "what is the return for such an expedition?" If 2004 is the last possible time to get a gravity assist, and the current technology available will only let us get some grainy pictures of a couple of dark blobs in space as our probe goes whistling by them, then perhaps we should wait until the next time around when we can do it properly.

    JPL's track record right now on robotic encounters is a little shaky, and I am not sure we have an acceptable chance of success of a robot managing this encounter on its own. I read somewhere that the encounter is going to be a flyby, not an orbital insertion, and the entire thing will take place over the space of about twenty minutes. Considering that the MCO hit the broad side of a barn (metaphorically speaking), will the PKE even be in the right part of space at the right time? Seems like a lot of money and a long way to go for a small chance at a lottery win.

    If we wait, we could put permanent probes in orbit proper around pluto with better imaging sensors and study it properly.

    Besides, if we wait another 250 years, Captain Kirk can just stop to check on Pluto with his tricorder before going on to blow up the Klingons.
    --

  • > Unless the new location has a LOT of free
    > energy, it will take too much
    > effort/money/energy to make
    > it habitable.

    Which is one of the nice things about being on the moon of course, 50% (100%?) of the time you gets lots and lots of lovely bright sunlight. No atmosphere, no clouds, energy just pouring down at you.
  • I know that some people think of Pluto as a captured asteroid, and some think of it as a planetoid. Maybe a visit to the last planet would tell us what it really is. Plus, hey, why not? Our space exploration programs are speeding up a bit after the stagnant 80's, and I am glad to see it.

  • By many definitions, Pluto does not qualify as one of the solar system's major planets. I think there's much more interesting stuff to be found in the asteroid belt, but perhaps that's just me. Maybe Pluto's distance from earth has something to do with its romance.

    Read more about this in an article [harvard.edu] at the International Comet Quarterly [harvard.edu].

  • Hey, why stop at Pluto? Doesn't someone announce the discovery of a 10th planet on practically an annual basis? Why not stop by and visit one of them too?

  • If it wasn't money coming out of my pocket paying for it, I would be curious to know more about Pluto.

    NASA is merely fishing for additional attractive projects to justify its own existance. There is very little of real value to be obtained from a mission as this, and a there's a lot to lose.
  • how about complaints that no matter how many missions we send to planets (Mars) we never find anything. We keep sending missions out looking for water and find nothing...

    "Well, we haven't seen any w/the cameras, let's dive bomb the $XXX million dollar thing into the surface and see if the explosion will find water".

    Now we are going out to Pluto.. A planet that we know is frozen and so god damn cold that only bacteria MAY live (if there is any possibility of life anywhere else)... Personally, bacteria living elsewhere might be some sort of great scientific discovery, but I don't consider it life. Hell, they found that fungus growing on the Russian space station Mir, I consider that life in space enough...

    I am not against finding intelligent life, but seriously, if we are going to waste all the money that we have finding nearly nothing I don't see how we are intelligent...

    Just my worthless .02
  • I don't agree. Honestly I think it is more worthwhile to explore other avenues ON EARTH before wasting time and money going off into space... Remember, the planet *is* covered by quite a bit of water yet we can't go much more than 1 mile under water.. How many miles is it to Pluto?

    I would rather have a home 1 mile from mainland than be litterally out in BFE on Pluto...

  • No Go (Score:1)

    by Splat ( 9175 )
    I have to question the practicality of sending a probe to Pluto. It will take forever to arrive. I don't know of the science behind it, but I think GETTING anything that far might be a challenge. By the time the probe arrives, it's technology will be very obsolete. Of course that's a problem with ALL space probes.

    I think the money would be better spent on a planet of possible inhabitance like Mars. I know some won't agree, but what's the use in Pluto when it's so far away? Mars is right next doors.
  • is because all the highly trained planatary research scientists would otherwise have to retool their careers, get the McSE and find work maintaining server farms at "Big Al's Streaming Porno Palace".
  • I'd say we should stay home.

  • I would love to have a moon base but there is no point in having a base there at this time. What should the residents of the base do - collect rock samples?
    What I would like to see is a moon base AFTER perhaps 50 years when (if?) fusion power has become reality.
    On the Moon there is a plenty of of helium-3 (not much of it here on Earth) which is an essential ingredient for effective controlled fusion power. If we will somehow find a way to make controlled fusion a reality, a moon base will be well worth it and indeed quite profitable. And when you start having that kind of operation in space the rest will follow. But this will not happen until after 50 or even 100 years.

    Until then we should dedicate our resources to [limited] research in space, we should send probes to all of the planets in the solar system, investigate the asteroid belt, build a new space telescope to replace Hubble (as is currently being done), and [my favorite] continue with the current deep-space research [nasa.gov], planet finding and such.
    Perhaps we could even send a manned mission to Mars in 20 years, if it won't be too expensive.

    What we don't need at this time is another 100 billion mission that has no clear goal. It is quite enough that we are already spending 100 billions or so on Alpha, a space station that will never be really useful. We certainly don't need another mess like that.

  • We need to visit Pluto NOW!!! (Score:4)

    by Skipio ( 13086 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @04:43AM (#545492)

    If there is any place in the solar system we should explore in the next few years, it is Pluto. Why, you may ask?
    The reason is quite simple, after 2020 or so, Pluto's atmosphere will freeze solid. And it will be frozen for many decades. It is either now or after a very long time that we have the possibility to do any serious research on Pluto, the most exotic place in our Solar system. And exotic it is; for example, because of the gravitational forces of its moon Charon, we might find volcanos there, but not the usual ones, but rather volcanos pouring molten water, ammonia and nitrogen. A truly alien world, if you ask me.

    We can go to Mars any time but visiting Pluto is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  • NO! (Score:2)

    by kevlar ( 13509 )
    Pluto is hardly a planet, and its far away! Why would we want to spend resources on sending a probe to a body thats smaller than our own moon, and will take 10 years to get there!? Not only that, but I believe there are far many more reasons to go to the moon, mars, etc.

  • While I'm generally in favor of space exploration, is there actually a scientific point to the trip or is it just the planetary equivalent of Pokèmon?


    Chelloveck

  • Complaints about scarce resources, NASA's finite bank account, and similar such questions should be directed to your Congressman.

    Your suggestion that resource problems are to be dealt with by Congress, pre-supposes that the value of the research is greater than the cost. Maybe that's true, and maybe it's not. (In fact, that's the real question.) Scarce resources and NASA's finite bank account are only Congress' problem if NASA's funding is inequal to what it should be. The issue of money is an extremely important consideration.


    ---
  • And what exactly would you do once your were living on this moon base instead of your crappy condo in Cambridge? Do you really think it would be cheaper and better? Would your net connection be more reliable? How would you afford to move there anyway? How much are lift costs right now? If there were a moon base would they have dropped enough that someone who can only afford a crappy condo in Cambridge could afford to move to the moon?

    All those things you listed are just ways to get to the moon. What's the point of building a moon base?
  • ..as long as on the way it gives us some decent photos of Jupiter and its moons on its assisted route to Pluto, and possibly some other objects on its way, then this project should go ahead.

    I think that spending close to $1 Billion ($1000 Million) on a target with a mission to what appears to be a relatively uninteresting lump of rock would not be so. More interesting would be if the mission comes back with some decent information about the Kuiper belt.

    One question I would like answered is what information is a small probe going to bring back that a damn big telescope (Hubbles successor perhaps) won't ?
  • I want to see the Pluto mission go, but apparently, it's being done at the expense of delaying the Europa mission [nasa.gov], which is more scientifically compelling, although not as time-constrained.

    The obvious question is why not fund both? The reason is that the NASA budget has been effectively frozen for years, and Space Station and Shuttle suck up a large chunk of it. What's left over is used to fund such things as planetary science missions.

  • This is not a flame...I am totally serious with this question.

    What about your job is so important that it must be kept around for you? Does it pay your bills? Do you enjoy it? Would you want to keep it? If you answer yes to any of them, which you probably can to at least one of them, then you have proven your opinion to be applicable to yourself.

    The difference between your job and theirs is that they most likely really dig their job and would like to keep doing it. A scientist is rarely in it for the money. He/she is usually in it for the thrill of discovery. Sometimes there are more gains than money.

    And quite a few of the pleasures you enjoy today have come from someone's pocket at some time or another. I don't like my tax money going to pay for rediculous artistic expressions, but my theatre brother does like it. Go figure.

    ----------
  • just what exactly *is* molten water?

    just curious...
  • In my scheme, planets are non-star bodies never having had any fusion of any kind in their cores (excluding brown dwarfs), that are large enough to be roughly spherical.

    When I was way back in eighth grade, taking "earth sciences," I was told that we're not sure whether or not some minor fusion occurs in the Earth's core? Is this something that's been disproven, or was I just making it up?

  • Re:Obsolete by the time it gets there. (Score:3)

    by Kevin T. ( 25654 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @05:54AM (#545502) Homepage
    Instead of sending a high tech piece of machinery across the system which will be obsolete by the time it gets there, why not send high tech equipment (or even food) half way around the world to real people who can use it before its expiry date comes of age.

    This is a pretty common argument against NASA. It seems to assume two things:

    1) A economy can and should gear toward one particular goal or product sector, like "guns" or "butter."

    2) A NASA probe launched in 2004 will be obsolete by the time it reaches its distant destination, presumeably because your Gateway Yourware lease has been renewed three times in that time.

    These are both, of course, false. No economy is able to efficiently produce only one product, and no society is able to satisfactorily move toward one goal. To think of it in the simplest possible terms, imagine you have 1000 people with advanced degrees at your disposal. Some are lawyers, some are medical doctors, some are engineers -- the distribution of degrees is not under your control. You're always going to end up with a number of them who are entirely unqualified to meaningfully work on a world hunger project. Fortunately, you can solve the problems of world hunger with only 1% of your GDP. So why not put the astrophysicists and computer scientists on your team onto a project other than world hunger?

    In other words, we're talking about 500 million, here. My _county_ has a larger budget than that.

    Also, I'd like to point out that a large number of the engineers and scientists who work for NASA and the defense contracters (who would probably bid on the PKE probe) make good enough salaries that they, as private individuals, send money or equipment halfway across the world to real people, usually their families.

    As for your perception of obsolescence, you're either buying the Dell/Gateway/Compaq FUD that you need to upgrade a machine every five years, or you're simply employing Zeno's paradox:

    "Can we send it now, sir?"

    "No, we've got a better camera in development."

    "How about now, sir?"

    "No, this new engine will do it better."

    "Now?"

    "Wait on the improved energy source. This is going to be one _rocking_ probe!"

    "Uh, sir?"

    "The bastards gave our funding to a 'faith-based' endowment to promote space exploration. Bleeding Scientologists...."
  • I can't wait for a human mission to Pluto. Then a recreational mission. Then a skiing mission. Where better to go to avoid the summer heat.
  • However, Pluto has enough unusual qualities that there is some real raw science benefits. Why is it so different? Can we send a probe with enough capability to help determine whether it really is a captured rogue, for example?

    Sorry, but I don't see how these are such "unusual" qualities that they bear any real scientific precedence compared to all the other stuff in our solar system to explore. These sorts of questions are akin to "Is Pluto REALLY that small?" (Yes) "REALLY?" (Yes). Boring.
    It's only so "different" from other planets because our naming conventions decided to name a chunk of ice a planet. Just because we misnamed it doesn't make it physically special- there are thousands of similar chunks of rock and ice floating around out there- many of them considerably closer. It would be a real shame if NASA based precedence of its missions on just some strange sense of syntactical completeness "well, we haven't done Pluto yet..."
  • Aside from the complaint of too little money, I'd like to hear compelling arguments against doing it.

    Complaints about scarce resources, NASA's finite bank account, and similar such questions should be directed to your Congressman.
  • Must ... resist ... making ... joke ... asking ... why ... not ... visit ... Uranus ... and ... hyperlinking ... goatse.cx ... (Whew. I made it.)

  • Re:Better question is, why shouldn't we? (Score:3)

    by gorilla ( 36491 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @05:45AM (#545507)
    Why are you assuming that finding life is the objective?

    There are plenty of scientific goals which can be accomplished without ever expecting to find life. The current mars surveyer mission is giving a more detailed map of mars than we've ever had before and because of this we are learning about the planet, for example indications that it may be still volcanically active.

  • Sending probes out to explore Pluto is a complete waste of money and time. What's out there that we haven't seen elsewhere. I mean, why does NASA need to spend half a billion dollars just to go see Mickey Mouse's dog?
  • Myths? Like most of what is "known" about gravity? Sure it can be measured buts there is lots of strange things going on and the current level of science seems to be lacking something major. Hopefuly gravity probe B will help solve some of those issues. Pluto has an advantage that its magnetic field isn't strong so it might be the best place to study gravity.
  • I expect that Mars is the main goal of their current program. Why go to the moon? Its been done and if you fail there, it looks bad. If you fail going to mars, its a PR write off or a chance for a political spin for more political power.

    Once its been done, you've got to do one better. Russia gave on up the moon but it had been done. The next stage is mars and the US can't pull it off right now. China can't either but that won't stop them from tring. They have to prove to the world that they are a new super power.
  • Cool... Anyone want to buy a Buran shuttle?

    http://www.buran.ru/htm/forsale.htm [buran.ru]

    I don't speak/read Russian, so anyone want to comment on this?

  • I was told that we're not sure whether or not some minor fusion occurs in the Earth's core? Is this something that's been disproven, or was I just making it up?

    As for fusion, nope - nowhere near enough pressure or temperature, plus, no hydrogen there. I don't even think there's enough pressure/temperature to fuse anything (i.e. at the level below that required for a sustained chain reaction, otherwise they'd be stars) in the gas giants. AFAIK, the reason Jupiter puts out more heat than it receives from the sun is continued release of gravitational energy as it slowly falls in on itself.

    You (or your science teacher) may be remembering (or was originally thinking) about fission of heavy elements, which would presumably descend to the core. Radioactive heat from decay of heavy elements in the cores of rocky planets is actually pretty significant.

  • > We keep sending missions out looking for water and find nothing...

    Obviously a poster who hasn't looked at data from Europa or Ganymede lately.

    If solid water's OK, add in the north Martian polar cap. (And possibly a layer of permafrost near some more rugged terrain in the south)

    If you're looking for life, that's different. (My bet is "no, we won't in our solar system", but I'd want to see long-term undersea probes of Europa and serious excavation of Mars before I'd be convinced I was right.)

    But if you're looking for places that might support life - plenty of those. (Human life, probably only on Mars. Life of any kind, I'll add Europa to that mix.)

  • >It certainly beats waiting around 248 years before the planet becomes warm enough to thaw its atmosphere out again.

    I'm glad people have brought this up - as much as I really wanna see what's under Europa's shell, Europa will still be there 5-10 years from now. Pluto's atmosphere won't.

    Does anyone know anything about the feasibility of using an ion-engine spacecraft (long-term low-acceleration) to get there quickly, and more importantly, could such a spacecraft decelerate quickly enough (possibly with assistance from conventional thrusters) to be captured by the Pluto/Charon system?

    A flyby would be better than nothing, but an orbiter would be awesome, as we could monitor the freezeout as it happens. I doubt the physics (not much mass to capture it, lots of speed to bleed off on approach if we're gonna get there anytime useful) permits an orbiter, but can anyone do some handwaving to convince me otherwise?

  • Every opinion is worth listening too, but - what if everyone thought like that?

    Where would our civilsation be? Back at stoneage? Why invent the wheel? We dont need to travel - everything thats really needed is close enough to walk to.

    Going to the moon, to pluto is not only a scientific goal, but a extension of our limits as a civilsation. We dont NEED to invent anything, we could drop internet right now and everyone could be fine, we could stop using cars and everything probably should be just fine.

    Its not a waste of money in my opinion, and the first one to get money out of space travel / mining will be the next generations richest country.
  • You just brought up a good point. The first colonist on Mars may be Chinese.

    They are one of the oldests continuous civilizations on earth, with well over a billion people. They have natural resources out the yin-yang, and haven't even begun to tap them.

    If they were to push towards the colonization of Mars, they could very well claim it as their own, or at least try to.

    After all it is the Red Planet

    no .sig here, move along, move along people...
  • As an large organization (read as: Gov't/Multinational Corp) I would be manufacturing some really exotic materials/alloys/electronics, then shipping them back to earth. I am not sure of the exact composition of the moons surface, but I believe there is a massive amount of Nickel/Iron to be mined and refined.

    With the absence of oxygen you can really put together some inovative materials that cannot be manufactured/processed on earth. Combine that with the low G, your combinations of imported materials with indigineous becomes even more broad.

    On the other hand, the low G would enable you to construct different types of deep space ships that couldn't get off the ground on earth, with light weight materials and significantly less concentration on propellant. Going to the Moon, then to Mars is more realistic interms of staging a concerted effort to create a colony on Mars.

    Lets not kid ourselves. We will colonize other planets in the future, its just a matter of time and resolve. Establishing a Research Center on the moon is the first real step in that direction.

  • Maybe transmitting boring data about pluto to cockroaches is just the thing we need to kill them! It's one thing we haven't done yet!
  • I got all excited when I read the headline because I thought the poster was talking about Johnny Number 9 from Short Circuit! Man, what a let-down!
  • In Short Circuit, was the robot's name Johnny Number 9 or Johnny Number 5? I can't remember now...
  • "Why bother with this crazy trip? We can spend our money on better things than to finance some trip to some place we already know is there(ie. India)!"

    There are plenty of things that can only be learned by just being there. And you never know when you might figure out something completely unexpected when you try.

    The fact is for all of the theories we have about Pluto and why it is out there we don't have enough observation and data still. There are plenty of things out there that are "quirky" about Neptune and Pluto. Their orbits cross each other sycronously. Is this a coinsidence? Neptune has the only moon in the entire Solar System with a large bulk moon that is in a retrograde orbit(Triton).

    If it can be shown that objects like Triton and Pluto are commonly found in the Kuiper Belt then that would go a long way to show where a lot of the left over mass of the Solar System could be hidding.
  • I wasn't implying that we shouldn't go to pluto.

    however, getting to pluto from the moon is easier than getting there from earth. ( 1/6th the energy cost, more room for science, less requirement for propulsion)

    I am violently in favor of any and all space exploration/science/travel/colonization.

    we wont get to mars permanently, until we do it first on the moon.

  • damnit.

    [RANT]

    we need a moon base. in the words of hienlein (I think), "once you are on the moon, you are halfway to anywhere"

    I was born in 1967, by the time I was in kindergarten, we had been to the moon several times. by the time I was 10, we had driven dune buggies on the moon. now, 23 years later, we have sat around with our thumbs you know where, and we think Skylab++ is an amazing achievement, while we underfund or dont even try to fund the cool stuff which could lead to a truly spacefaring humanity.

    look at the launchers that have been cancelled or delayed just in the last 5 years:

    delta clipper (dc-x) (cancelled)
    x-33 (delayed)
    rotary rocket (died for lack of funding)
    kistler k-1 (delayed - please don't kill it)
    Beal BA-2 (killed by a concerted effort by 2 governments and enviro-weenies)
    blackhorse (rocketplane) (lack of funding)
    kellyspace (lack of funding)

    most of these programs required no more than $100M to survive, but couldn't get even that, at a time when our gov't spends that much studying the effects of cow farts on the ozone layer every year.

    are you pissed yet? you should be living on the moon by now, not in some crappy condo in cambridge.

    [/RANT]

  • slumbering ice giants

    Naw, Mi-Go, man, Mi-Go. The Fungi from Yoggoth.

  • Oh course we should go to pluto, everyone knows that's where the aliens live...
  • In a few years global warming will have wiped out all ice on the planet, if we send someone to Pluto now we might have ice just as the rest of ours melts!!

  • Pluto is a planet. It is nearly 3 times as large as the biggest asteroid, Ceres, whereas the 2nd smallest planet, Mercury is about 2 times as large as Pluto. If we need an arbitrary size limit, it is most reasonable to draw it between Pluto and Ceres, since the gap is biggest there.

    On the other hand, I think there should be a more qualitative definition, and I think the type of orbit should not be a consideration (making larger moons planets too).

    In my scheme, planets are non-star bodies never having had any fusion of any kind in their cores (excluding brown dwarfs), that are large enough to be roughly spherical.

    Using this, we would have 29 major planets in our solar system: apart from the ordinarly nine Luna, Ceres, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Iapetus, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Triton and Charon would be included, which they deserve, being worlds of their own right. (Vesta, Pallas, Hyperion, Proteus and Nereid are larger than Mimas, but irregular or "squarish".

    /Dervak

  • There is no way there can be, or ever can have been fusion in the Earths core. The temp there is some 5 500 K IIRC. The easiest type of fusion to occur (Deuterium fusion, which happens for a short while in Brown Dwarfs) requires some 300 000 K I think, while ordinary hydrogen fusion is an order of magnitude more still.

    (And yes, I know that the required temp is dependent on pressure or density too, but the lower pressure in Earths core (compared to stars or brown dwarfs) would make the required temp still higher.)

    /Dervak

  • If I had mod points today you'd be +1.

  • Is hanging in the Air and Space Museum right now. The Orion probe. Solve the exploration problem and nuke proliferation at the same time. Just toss shaped nuke charges out the back, use the push against a giant dinner plate, so to speak, for the probe. The British Interplanetary Society thought experimented out this concept a long time ago for its Project Daedalus... a fly-by probe of Barnard's Star. That's a little over a six ly trip, folks... so if it could work for a six ly trip, it should be a reasonable concept for the trip to Pluto, Kuiper belt, and the 1/2 ly or so out to the real 9th planet (probably a cool, brown dwarf) that analysis of some cometary orbits suggests is out there (Hubbell isn't good enough (yet) to image a jovian size planet a 1/2 ly out). You could certainly take a MUCH bigger payload with an Orion vehicle. I agree with previous posters that it doesn't make much sense to send a flyby such a great distance if all you're going to do is spend a few hours at Pluto (regardless of the interesting info you'd get flying through the Kuiper belt). With a powerful vehicle like an Orion ship, you could drop off a few orbiting/mapping satellites on the way out. But I highly doubt that any gov't is going to have the guts to put disassembled nukes in orbit for the purpose of pushing a giant dinner plate a 1/2 ly out. If pictures is what we're after, eventually, the planetary imaging interferometers that we'll be flying in the next decade should be able to get much better pics of Pluto and Charon than we can get now with Hubble. Also, as we move towards nanotechnology, we might be able to send very small probes with solar-powered lasers into deep space at a very high rate of speed. My own personal view is that humans, being the impatient creatures we are, are more likely to be interested in exploring the stars rather than airless places like the Moon, Mars, etc. Once we can manufacture and store antimatter in quantity - something that seems easier to acheive, in some aspects, than nuclear fusion - we can easily build relativistic starships if we so incline to do so. Its not that big of a deal, and its not that terribly expensive, when you consider the amount of money that is "thrown away" in our economy for such extravagances as cosmetics :)
  • >are you pissed yet? you should be living on the
    >moon by now, not in some crappy condo in
    >cambridge

    Actually I do live on the moon, I wish I lived in cambridge.
  • i love this triteness of the notion of "is it worth it?". can we all be serious here? as in, "is there anything worth really learning out there? mayber we shoudl all stay inside and assume the earth is the center of the universe. must be the case - i haven't got any evidence about it and there's no need to go investige some little thing in the sky that i can only see with machinery. that damn machinery is probably the work of the devil anyway."



    ostriches -Tz'Akh

  • That's what they want you to think! (Score:3)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @04:53AM (#545533) Homepage
    Sure, Pluto is the ninth and last planet (at least for this week, anyways). Sure, its cold and smaller than some moons. SOunds insignificant, right?

    Well, if you were a reclusive alien species trying to keep from being found, just which of our nine planets would you choose to hide out on? Hmmm?

  • For those who consider Pluto to be a boring and unimportant piece of the solar system....

    Based on current knowledge, it appears that Pluto represents a class of Trans-Neptunian bodies. Triton, a moon of Neptune, appears to be another large member of this class. The Voyager 2 spacecraft took some wonderful pictures of Triton (JPL Planetary Photojournal) [nasa.gov], which showed some surprising features such as smoky vents.

    It's even theorized that Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, might represent what would happen when a Triton or Pluto-like object gets close enough to the sun for the atmosphere to thaw out.

    For those who aren't interested in the purely scientific reasons to go to Pluto, consider that the budget for it is not that much in the grand scheme of things, and that the beneficiaries of this research will include the entire world and generations to come, as opposed to say, sending a bunch of money overseas to build palaces for rich dictators so they can have a more comfortable view while oppressing the masses. ;)

  • I would give money to help fund this, because of the possibilities that this brings. However, I no more support it being tax funded than I would support a tax funded church.

    Besides, there are a LOT of people out there who don't exactly have much faith in NASA right now... regardless if that is misdirected or not. With the handfull of private organizations attempting to make intra and even interstellar space travel a reality, I think we should push for NASA to let up on its restrictions.

    Imagine... Open Space, with hoardes of geeks helping on the R&D (and funding if they choose), without a Federal Microsoft limiting everyones ability to innovate... would there be a "SpaceForge" on the net then?

    I just can't wait until you can sit back at a carved wooden table, spit on the floor, tip back your pint of favorite beer (beer as in beer, not American Piss served cold in a pitcher) and look out the 'window' only to see the rings of Jupiter or Saturn right outside... mmmmmm.... cosmic beer

  • "We keep sending missions out looking for water and find nothing... "

    We find plenty of stuff, and gain knowledge of Mars history, geology (areology?). And learn about planetary geology and formation in general.

    Maybe it only interesting to you if their are intelligent aliens there. But theres are whole lot more to science than that.

  • Pluto isn't even a planet, it's jsut an asteroid, jsut look at it's orbit! not the kind of orbit you'd expect from a planet, but only form an asteroid or comet. besides, it's jsut a small ball of ice, why on earth would someone ewant to visit that? (except maybe a Ben & Jerry's flavour developer.)
  • I'm too damn stupid? at least I'm looking into the facts. And not afraid to post loke myself not an AC..
  • Gimme a starship and consider me off. I can't wait to leave this damned planet.
  • I am a complete dork. I read the first two lines. Posted. Finally read the part about Mickey's dog. Note to Self: uh...wake up, Yoda.
  • >>>
    Whoa whoa whoa sloooooooow down---

    >>
    Actually...in a way...I would like it.
    Sputnik drove the US to space.
    >>
    China on Pluto....
    hmm...
    U.S. Bussard?
    U.S. Orion?
    U.S. hyperdrive coolthing FTL neato?

    uh...ok.
  • gonar:

    BULLSEYE.

    Enough pure science. For a while.
    You sold me.

    Let's get a BIG step out of the gravity well.
    Its easier to take bigger steps after that.

    moon.
    mars.
    belt.
    jovian system.
    titan.
    Outside.

  • ...clever.

    I was tunneled into the Void by that novel.
    Silly humanimal manipulated by...

    Ben Stein:
    "Hastur?"
    "Hastur?"
    "Hastur?"

    ---bad things---

    "Thank you, Simone."
  • We have never been there.
    We have NO IDEA what is there.
    Pluto exists in nearly a quantum state.

    Observe closer. Verify your suppositions.
    Satisfy curiosity. Move on.

    OR

    Be shocked.
    Discovery.

    That's the point of the whole process of science.
    Risk. Result.

    But you always have to at least try.
  • I don't see why we shouldn't explore Pluto; not like there's a lot to look at. It's a tiny block of ice. :-)

    What about that possible tenth planet out there, the one labeled "Planet X" that they're not sure is even there, but they think something might be because they've noticed some rather odd dents in Plutos orbit that could only be caused by another planet's gravity sucking it slightly off course. Eh, it's probably nothing, but I suspect we'll know about it within this next century, if it is to exist.

  • Pluto has an atmosphere for only part (about 40 years) of its orbit. By 2020, the atmosphere will have frozen away, and the opportunity to study it will be lost for another 230 years or so.

    Also, if the takeoff doesn't take place within 6 years, they won't be able to use the gravity of Jupiter to speed up the trajectory. Hence, if there's going to be a probe to Pluto, it really should be done as soon as possible.

  • The trouble with the proposed Pluto Express is that you fly out there for 10 years then you spend a few hours whizzing by the planet and never see it again. An orbiter would be much more advantagous since you could stay there until the atmosphere freezes which would be interesting to watch. Of course its more expensive also. But why does this mission (PKE) cost 500 M$?, = 2X Mars missions. Once you launch it you just sit there for years. Also I think they should look into more creative plantet flyby manuevers to pick up speed.

  • Re:Pluto, Mars, The Moon... (Score:4)

    by Kotetsu ( 135021 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @05:24AM (#545548) Homepage
    There are a number of good reasons we should send a mission to Pluto.

    First, Pluto is currently believed to be the largest member of the Kuiper Belt objects. We know very little about these bodies, mostly because they are very small and at great distance. They have similarities to both comets and asteroids, and study of them should tell us a great deal about the formation of our Solar System.

    Pluto is unique among the planets. Studies of the other planets don't tell us much about Pluto. As such, it is a better target for research than, say, Uranus or Neptune, both of which resemble Jupiter and Saturn, planets we are studying in detail.

    Prior to 1979, it was generally believed that Pluto was larger than Mercury. Since we couldn't measure the actual size directly, the size had been derived based on assumptions that it was similar to the Moon or Mercury - basically a dark, rocky surface. In 1979 there was a series of eclipses of Pluto by Charon, and it was determined that the planet is significantly smaller than previously thought. The significance of this is that the surface of Pluto is probably ices, not rock. Other than (maybe) some of the moons of the outer planets, this means that Pluto is a better target than most objects in the Solar System for study to learn the basics about icy bodies. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to study well without sending a spacecraft.

    As far as life, it is so cold there that any life would probably not resemble anything we would ordinarily recognize as life. In any event, searching for life would require a landing, and nobody is planning anything like that.

    The moon landings had far more significance than "because it's there." In science, it's necessary to verify theories by actual observation. At some point we had to actually have rock samples, and direct, close up observations of the surface. People were sent mostly because it was politically easier to get money to send astronauts than unmanned probes. Unfortunately, the same fools who think using encryption should increase the penalties for crime are the ones who decide the budgets for NASA.
  • I think there are many more interesting things that NASA could do with the amount of money than send a fragile tricorder and hope it survives the trip to Pluto (remember, they failed TWICE last year with Mars and that's barely a hop compared to Pluto.) Also, I firmly believe that there will probably be some new type of faster, and less expensive space propulsion (can we say warp drive?) invented in the time it would take to get a probe to Pluto. Focus the money on that instead. Also, I remember back nearly 15 years ago Planet X, the tenth planet. Does anyone else remember that? And what ever happened to it? Was it determined to be part of the Kuiper Belt? Just wondering if that was fact or if I'm having an acid flashback....
  • Actually, there is water on the moon, and plenty of mineral resources to be mined (one could manufacture solid propellant w/out too much hassle), so that may not be entirely accurate (at least that theory should hold-up better than my spelling skills...)
  • or you will have to read (in the futere) something like "Chinese expedition has just reach Pluto - the most distant planet in Solar System". Will you like it? Do you remember Sputnik, first Earth satelite build by USSR?
  • While I'm sure that there are legitimate scientific reasons to go to Pluto, the money going to this mission would be better directed toward a manned Mars landing. NASA does have (and should have) limited funding, and these dollars should be invested in the much more valuable and landmark Mars program. We'll get to Pluto eventually, but lets take a better look at our part of the Solar System first.
  • There are far better reasons for space exploration than the search for ET.

    We need to get a permanant, self-sustaining colony established *off* this planet. The Earth will not support human civilization forever.

    Is it worth the money to explore Pluto to further the ends of pure science? Yes. But, considering NASA's budget contraints, what little money is available would be put to better use on getting people to mars.

    Whether it be via plague, cosmic collistion, or our own stupidity, sooner or later, Earth's biosphere *will* collapse. The only question is whether the end of the world will also mean the end of humanity.

  • You seem to be (correct me if I'm wrong)interested in establishing human habitat under the ocean?

    From the standpoint of pure science, and maybe from the standpoint of coping with an overpopulated planet, this is a good idea.

    I am more interested in making sure humanity could survive a catastrophe on Earth. I am talking LONG TERM stuff here. Sooner or later, Earth will be unable to suport life (meteor impact, nuclear war, tidal friction, alien invasion, global warming, etc). I think our best bet it to have multiple, redundant, independant replicas of human culture, civilization, and genome, in as many different locations as is possible. A full blown Mars colony would give us that.
    Or maybe I'm just paranoid :-)

  • We should go. Why? - We may find something new that will help us on Earth. We should continue to embrace technological advancements. The Solar System is our neighborhood in the universe. Why stay at home? We can stay on our planet and use it up and ourselves or we can evolve.
  • That was Ed Wood's WORST movie! There's no reason to spend untold millions on that when you can get it at Hollywood Video for $.50 on Tuesdays! Oh, wait..
  • how about complaints that no matter how many missions we send to planets (Mars) we never find anything. We keep sending missions out looking for water and find nothing...

    What do you mean we never find anything? The pictures alone are worth it. Take the Pathfinder and Viking missions. We have pictures taken on the *surface of another planet*; to me that's just the coolest thing. All we have of pluto is some fuzzy images taken from Hubble. The chance to see close up what's out there, even if it's just a dirty ball of rock, is worthwhile.

  • Well, I'm really the kind of astronomer who thinks that what can be visited by space probes is boring, but...

    Anyway, Pluto is probably a Kuiper belt object, and it's a lot of research going on about Kuiper belt objects, so I guess going to Pluto is worthwhile. And fun.

  • What do we really know about our solar system? What myths about planetary formation become science simply because we don't have enough direct evidence to confirm or refute a hypothesis? Where are the real dangers of planetary impact? What about life on other planets? Can we really know without understanding the entirety of the solar system?

    There were many crazy myths about the early American west from tales of strange animals to a mythical northwest passage. Many educated minds believed in these tales because we had no direct knowledge of this vast new landscape.

    We probably know as much about our solar system as the early America knew about its vast uncharted western territories. Who knows what we may find in an expedition to Pluto? Maybe the space station, Mars missions, Titan or Europa might yield better discoveries, but there is no way to be certain. One thing is clear, without comprehensive exploration of our solar system we can't claim to understand anything if we limit our exploration to Earth and a few of the more fashionable rocks, which share the neighborhood.

  • Re:Well (Score:3)

    by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:29AM (#545562) Journal
    Maybe there is ICE 9 on PLANET 9! The astronauts will bring Ice 9 back with them and it will be the end of humanity!
  • Yup. Come to Canada now and I swear you won't notice the difference. You'll think you're on Pluto.

  • Sure - good idea... (Score:3)

    by glebite ( 206150 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:42AM (#545568)

    It certainly beats waiting around 248 years before the planet becomes warm enough to thaw its atmosphere out again. Although we could send a probe out later, it would be nice to have data collected on this planet before the freeze, during the freeze, and hopefully after the freeze.

    Speaking about freezes, I hope this doesn't turn into a stupid, "Well, we gave you the Pluto thingy, and now you want another probe to Europa? No - we in government think that we've been more than generous." conversation.

    It's coming up to the next century, and we don't have a permament presence in space yet? A space station does not constitute a permament presence - having children in a colony away from the Earth, growing up, and having their own children would do so. I expect China would pull it off before the Americans do so - they seem to have the gumption to just go for broke.

    But, kudos for NASA for getting out to Pluto, but I feel it'll be at the expense of other missions from a government perspective. Fools.

  • more than likely there is nothing of value on pluto. however, what is there on mercury? there is more to this than just bringing something back or searching for life. by visiting pluto we can get a close look of the planet and the environment surounding it.
    space exploration is just that, exploration. we are not obligated to go anywhere outside of earth, but our undying curiousity draws us in. there is nothing left for us here, we now have to look outside and try to learn how our cosmos works. by studying other planets we will understand our own planet a great deal more. hopefully someday people will have the same discussion when the first man suggests traveling to the other side of the galaxy as apposed to just our solar system.

  • yes we should (Score:3)

    by tolan's my name ( 234431 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:25AM (#545579) Journal
    If only in the spirit of Mallory and Shakleton. Pluto is about as far as we can reasonable go, at least in the forseable future. I cant imagine that there is any great scientific point in going, but we should, the human race is fairly starved of suitable 'reasons for life' at this moment in history, so why not just embrace the natural urge to explore.

    Plus the photo's might be pretty......
  • AFAIK the body causing the perturbations of the orbit of Uranus that lead him to look have still not been located - Pluto wasn't it.

    In fact, there's no such perturbations. With the Voyager 2 flyby, we now know the masses of Uranus and Neptune far more accurately; using those values, the perturbations disappear.

    OTOH, it's possible there's a .03-stellar-mass luminous star orbiting the Sun at a mere two light years, or a brown dwarf even closer; there are lots of 12th apparent magnitude and lower objects out there that haven't had their apparent motions catalogued.
  • In terms of propellant, the Earth-Mars, Mars-Earth, and Mars-Moon trips are each shorter than the Earth-Moon trip*. And Mars can be a lot more self-sufficient for far less capital investment than a moon base can.

    So colonization of Mars will be cheaper than colonization of the Moon, and the costs of establishing both Martian and Lunar bases will be cheaper in the order of Mars-Moon than the order of Moon-Mars.

    *The reason we went to the Moon first is that, if you have to take all your fuel from Earth, the combined Earth-Moon-Earth round trip takes less than an Earth-Mars-Earth trip. But we've figured out how to make propellant on Mars.

  • Re:Well (Score:4)

    by EFGearman ( 245715 ) <EFGearman@NOSPAm.sc.rr.com> on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:31AM (#545588)
    The article did state that the probe would also
    look at Charon, Pluto's moon, as well as the
    Kuiper Belt. The belt may contain clues about
    how the solar system formed. These clues could
    be anything, my favorite would becarbon asteroids
    (there is a scientific name, but I don't remember
    it).

    Eric Gearman
    --

  • Mars, I get. The Moon, I'm cool with. Telescopes, groovy.

    But Pluto? Why?

    For the money they would spend, we could find out a LOT more about the Ocean, information that would truley have a substantial impact on the quality of our lives and our ability to make educated decisions about how we choose to interact with our own planet.

    I fail to see how gathering limited information about a distant quasi-planet even comes close to yeilding the benefits that deveoting the same resources to oceanic exploring would.

  • Re:We need to visit Pluto NOW!!! (Score:4)

    by imipak ( 254310 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @05:30AM (#545592) Journal
    On the contrary -- Pluto, although probably interesting in it's own right (what with having an enormous moon (relative to it's own size), is really just a nice bit of PR chrome. Pluto is really just a big asteroid that happened to be in roughly the right place when Clyde Tombaugh went looking for the ninth planet. (AFAIK the body causing the perturbations of the orbit of Uranus that lead him to look have still not been located - Pluto wasn't it.)

    The real point of getting out there is carrying on to the Kuiper Belt.If memory serves, the Pluto mission NASA cancelled earlier this year was called the Kuiper Express.

    Kuiper Belt objects would be really interesting because they're a huge cloud of proto-comets left over from the collapse of the gas cloud which eventually formed the solar system 5 billion years ago. They'd consist of virgin, primordial material the proto-stellar disk coalesced from. Although there are a couple of sample return missions to comets in the works ('Stardust' mission) they're not going out to the source. It would be really interesting to look for complex amino acids in such material, and get another data point on the Wickramasinghe/Hoyle panspermia theory.

    Once we've done the Kuiper Belt, there's only the Oort cloud between us and interstellar space. Pluto isn't going to look that different from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, both of which will by then have been thoroughly checked out by Galileo and Cassini.
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

  • > by the time I was in kindergarten, we had been to the moon several times. by the time I was 10, we had driven dune buggies on the moon

    Damn, when I was kindergarted we only got to Disneyland and by the time I was 10 we had moved to Mississippi and my life was basically over.

  • And what exactly would you do once you had this 'Airplane' instead of your horse and buggy? Fly around like a bird? Ridiculous. Or how about this silly telephone thing. Talking to people on the other side of the world? What could they possibly tell you that your next door neighbor couldn't? It's morons like you that hold the rest of us back.
  • The Europa project sounds a good deal more exciting and useful. I'm not suprised that the Pluto trip might be cut - compared to checking out Io, Europa, other moon, manned missions to mars, orbital space defence platforms, and a moon base it's gotta be a long way down the list of priorities. I can also think of a funny situation. We send a probe to Pluto. Earth gets hit by comet because we spent money on probe, not orbital defence platform. Probe transmits boring data on Pluto back to cockroaches on earth.

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