Small Breath of Life for Pluto Mission 6
Ghengis writes: "An update to this article posted back in March, the mission to send a probe to Pluto gets a reprieve from Congress. Timing is critical for studying Pluto's atmosphere, as it is about to ungergo a 200 year freeze when Pluto enters its long winter. There still isn't enough money to send a probe to Pluto, but the money could keep the mission alive long enough to get more money."
Re:A bit of a rush job? (Score:2)
200 year freeze. I, for one, would prefer not to wait that long.
Re:waiting around (Score:1)
I think that the endeavour to do something of this nature enlightens us and helps to create technology and increase our understanding of the 'world around us' so to speak. If they cut corners and it crashes, it might be bad for future missions, but if it goes off successfully, then it would be worth it. Besides, I would much rather have that money spent studying a planet in our solar system than creating missle that 20% of the time can shoot down ICBMs, when there are no significant threats of ICBMs. Study pluto, get out there more and develop technologies to help advance our species comprehension, I say.
Re:What is meant when... (Score:2)
I'm not saying don't go to Mars, but for practical reasons we should colonize the Moon first. If we can't support a Lunar colony for 12 months, even with regular trips to/from Earth, then how can we support a mission to Mars?
Please stay away from non-sequiturs (Score:3)
This Pluto mission is beginning to look a lot like our Halley mission: underfunded, behind the schedule set by Nature, and fated to be cancelled instead of launched. At that, the poster has a decent argument: research dollars are scarce enough that we should spend them on missions which will actually fly.
Not that I agree that this means we should bypass Pluto. On the contrary, I think we should gear up to go ASAP. Something like the DS-1 propulsion system, perhaps with improved concentrators, might do the trick; while nuclear is the natural choice for anything going that far from old Sol, I don't think we're going to see it. Heck, if these things can be done cheap enough we should launch two, or even three; redundancy never hurt anyone's chances.
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What is meant when... (Score:1)
waiting around (Score:1)