Saturn Moon Could Be Hospitable To Life 153
shmG writes to share that recent imagery from Saturn's moon Enceladus indicate that it may be hospitable to life. "NASA said on Tuesday that a flyby of planet's Enceladus moon showed small jets of water spewing from the southern hemisphere, while infrared mapping of the surface revealed temperatures warmer than previously expected. 'The huge amount of heat pouring out of the tiger stripe fractures may be enough to melt the ice underground,' said John Spencer, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. 'Results like this make Enceladus one of the most exciting places we've found in the solar system.'"
Everybody knows this (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, NASA. Anybody who's ever eaten at a bad Mexican restaurant knows enchiladas are hospitable to all forms of microscopic life.
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Sounds like the planet has the green microbial splatters.
Re:Everybody knows this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Everybody knows this (Score:5, Funny)
True, but your only reference is Earth enchiladas. Theories on space enchiladas should be left to gastronomers.
Re:Everybody knows this (Score:5, Funny)
But what if that's nacho field of expertise?
Not impressed (Score:2)
The conditions on Enceladus are believed to be short lived. It hasn't been going on for billions of years so complex life forms can not have had time to evolve.
Life could come from elsewhere on comets, meteors, etc but the habitable places are deep inside the moon so they can't be colonized that way.
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If there happen to be biological fragments floating around in space, they might land on Enceladus and take advantage of the short-term conditions.
That was my second point. The surface is at 50 degrees K and is exposed to a lot of radiation. "Biological fragments floating around in space" would not find their way into the warm environment under ground.
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"Biological fragments floating around in space" would not find their way into the warm environment under ground.
I don't think you have a grasp of the time scales we're talking about. We're talking about BILLIONS of years. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old [usgs.gov]. While I don't know the age of Enceladus, I think it's safe to assume it's contemporaneous with the Earth. This means that's even incredibly improbable events may have indeed occurred.
Think about this: I don't think anyone knows for sure about where the initial organic compounds arrived on Earth, but organic compounds (i.e. molecules containing carbon, h
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There is indeed a family of microbes driving around the solar system in a car made out of an asteroid. The father microbe is wearing a stiff peaked cap and smoking a corn-cob pipe. They are going to settle on Enceladus for a brief spell. The daughter microbe is excited about the water, but the son would have preferred cable.
Sorry if that's difficult to understand at all, but that's the currently accepted theory.
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But if one of the kids mouths off ONE MORE TIME, father microbe is turning that asteroid car right around, and they are. GOING. HOME.
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
The conditions on Enceladus are believed to be short lived. It hasn't been going on for billions of years so complex life forms can not have had time to evolve.
And... you wouldn't be impressed by simple life forms?
Okay, well, that's cool, but why you were paying any attention at all is beyond me. We're pretty sure there's no complex life anywhere else in the solar system.
Personally I'd be gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and impressed to all hell if we found even the most primitive of prokaryote.
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Even if conditions inside Enceladus could support some of the bacteria we have now on Earth they would not allow it to evolve. Most of the theories about the evolution of very primitive life require high quality energy from impacts, lightening, etc. Enceladus doesn't have these things. It also takes time. Possibly 500 million years or more and Enceladus doesn't have that as well.
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
Possibly 500 million years or more and Enceladus doesn't have that as well.
Possibly. But we've found prokaryote fossils from only 1 billion years after the earth's crust formed. So either life got busy evolving right away, or it doesn't necessarily take that long. Frankly I would avoid drawing strong conclusions either way based on the current state of abiogenesis theories.
Besides, in the larger picture of "how often to potentially habitable environments arise and what forms do they take?" I find this very exciting even under the most likely case that we find no evidence of life on this moon. We've gone from a model of the solar system where every rock that wasn't ours being right-out as far as life having a chance, to having a variety of environments that at least hypothetically could support it. Then I start thinking about our infant search for exoplanets and I get even more excited.
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Add to that the fact that there is an obvious heat (energy) source there. Black Smokers [wikipedia.org] also produce thermal energy, and chemical energy. We know they can support entire ecosystems thousands of feat under water.
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
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I just want to point out that Enceladus can't have undersea volcanic vents like ours because it is a lump of ice a few hundred kilometers across. It may well have some rock deep down but there won't be enough for it to be liquid and to have volcanos. To have volcanos you need a deep mantle of hot rock.
You can have cryovolcanos but we don't have evidence of life forming there.
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I just want to point out that Enceladus can't have undersea volcanic vents like ours because it is a lump of ice a few hundred kilometers across. It may well have some rock deep down but there won't be enough for it to be liquid and to have volcanos. To have volcanos you need a deep mantle of hot rock.
Quite true. There's a good chance however that it has hydrothermal activity, which is really what "volcanic vents" are.
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I think my disquiet with the idea of life on Enceladus involves the fact that while there might be a lot of heat on Enceladus there is very little concentrated, high quality heat. Volcanos, impacts and solar energy on Earth create pockets of highly concentrated energy which can act as incubators. These can't exist in the interior of Enceladus. Impacts may raise the temperature of the surface but the environments they create will be short lived.
Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
Where ever we have looked for life living in "impossible" environments on earth we have found it. 2km into the earth's crust, sulphuric acid lakes, reactor cores, ect, ect. I'm not claiming there is life on Enceladus, simply that it's one of the best targets to look for it. I don't understand why you are going out of your way to rationalise your desire to ignore such an interesting target.
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I live in Australia you insesitive clod!
Seriously though, if it was pure water then there would be little chance of life. But Cassini has already "tasted" organics in the ice vents [nasa.gov], implying there's more to it than just water.
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The heat on Enceladus comes from the massive gravitational effect of Saturn which is constantly twisting the planet and generating interior core heat.
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It also takes time. Possibly 500 million years or more and Enceladus doesn't have that as well.
What are you talking about? Life here on Earth has only been around for 8000 years. Of course only non-intelligent life actually believes that.
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It also takes time. Possibly 500 million years or more and Enceladus doesn't have that as well.
What are you talking about? Life here on Earth has only been around for 8000 years. Of course only non-intelligent life actually believes that.
Old meme is old.
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Amen. The possibility of extraterrestrial life is easily the most interesting thing there is. We might get more energy from nuclear engineering or more food from genetic engineering or longer life from medical sciences, but this is like the gold of the scientific world: it is intrinsically valuable. Even if nothing useful comes out of it, answering the question of whether or not there is anything on those moons would be worth it. The simplest of life living on another world would be phenomenal (even if
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the likeliness of life on another planet evolving exactly like on ours, in practically zero.
It wouldn't have to be exactly like ours to be able to be roughly describes as prokaryotic. [wikipedia.org] It's an obvious stage for any biological life to go through. But really I was just saying "prokaryote" as an example of simple life.
Despite certain (pseudo-)"scientists" (with arrogance and limited imagination) being unable to think otherwise.
Uh it's not that they're unable to think otherwise. It's that if you're going to look for life, it only makes sense to look for the kind of life that you know is possible and can identify. And the "kind" is simply self-organizing organic (meaning hydrocarbon based) molecules. Which chemistry strongly suggests requires liquid water. It's not really that specific, but based on what we know can work in broadest terms. It's pragmatism, not limited imagination.
You can say "It might not be organic, it could be like something we've never even imagined!" Which is hypothetically true, but useless on its own. So go ahead, Mr. Non-pseudo-non-quotes-scientist, actually propose something we can look for, some testable hypothesis.
Yeah.
I bet $100 that we won't even recognize the first extraterrestrial life we'll ever see.
I'm curious how you would be able to call that bet. :)
But you know you may be right. For all the good that statement does us.
Or, as xkcd said it: http://xkcd.com/638/ [xkcd.com]
You get that the point of the comic is about prematurely assuming your search is over, which is completely the opposite of what we're doing, right? So take heart. The search goes on, and we're using every tool we know of to do so, and looking for new tools as well.
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you have me thinking of ways life could exist. and if we'd "see" it right away.
chemical life uses information storage in patterns of atoms, and has to assemble parts of itself. Not too many atoms can form chains: carbon, phosphorous, silicon, and sulphur. I think we would recognize any life made of any of those.
how about electronic life? we know electricity can effect certain types of crystal growth, how about an electro-chemical beast that is something like self-modifying circuitry with switching elem
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how about electronic life? we know electricity can effect certain types of crystal growth, how about an electro-chemical beast that is something like self-modifying circuitry with switching elements and substrate that can be grown or re-absorbed based on current ebb and flow.
Well, they wouldn't be "ugly bags of mostly water."
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
It hasn't been going on for billions of years so complex life forms can not have had time to evolve.
The graphic on this wiki page [wikipedia.org] suggests that life on earth arose 1.5 billion years after the earth was formed, nearly two billion years went by before multicellular life, and then another billion years before cnidarians, which developmentally are reasonably close to us and certainly what I would consider complex, were around. I don't know much about that, and I doubt anyone knows for sure what was going on in that time, but I don't see any evidence to suggest that a ~4 billion lag time from when your planet/moon is around to when complex life forms is a -universal- constant. There's nothing to say it couldn't happen much much faster on Enceladus, we only have one example of life arising, it would be a mistake to assume that is the constant or even typical rate of life arising. The cambrian explosion is certainly evidence that the rate changes wildly. Furthermore, we haven't even -seen- this environment, the only thing we know about it is that it's possible and it isn't like earth, so if we should expect anything, its that the timeline for life arising on Enceladus would be significantly different from Earth's.
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There's nothing to say it couldn't happen much much faster on Enceladus
Overall there is less energy and less space on Enceladus so I predict that evolution will happen slower there.
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More likely that would cause evolution to happen faster there since there would be much more competition for resources. Survival is what drives evolution.
Except it doesn't work that way. The ocean is a far more hospitable environment for life than anywhere on land, and we see a much greater variety of aquatic life than terrestrial. On land, tropical rainforests are probably about the most hospitable environments for life there is -- and surprise, we see much more variety there than we do in cooler and dri
Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that current work suggests evidence of life arising withing the first few hundred million years of Earth's existence, not long after life could exist at all. (Prior to a certain point, sterilizing impacts were too frequent to let anything get far.) Probably half a billion years to no more than 1 billion years after the Earth formed we've found evidence of life. (Evidence gets to be isotopic beyond a certain point, but still.)
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The conditions on Enceladus are believed to be short lived.
Where are you getting that from? Why would its tidal force heating have been less in the past?
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The conditions on Enceladus are believed to be short lived.
Where are you getting that from? Why would its tidal force heating have been less in the past?
There have been many articles which try to explain the gap in the known energy input from tidal heating and the known energy output of the plumes. This PDF [mit.edu] suggests that we are now seeing energy released from a recent period when the orbital eccentricity was higher and the moon absorbed more heat. The upshot seems to be that current conditions are temporary and can't be used to model the entire history of the moon.
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I've seen one article which said that it can all be explained simply by the asymmetry of the heating -- that is, there's not enough heating for the entire interior of Enceladus to be liquid, but there is for a portion of it to be liquid, so long as there was a mechanism to concentrate it to one side -- which is what we see (and they postulated one method, although I forget what it was).
Obligatory 2010 Quote (Score:4, Funny)
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ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. And Enceladus. And maybe TITAN, we haven't decided on that yet. BUT THE OTHERS, YEAH, ALL YOURS.
You know, on second thought, ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS ANYWHERE BEFORE CHECKING WITH US. KTHXBYE
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Apparently, slashdot feels like telling the omnipotent mysterious monolith what to do. Bad idea...
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Apparently, slashdot feels like telling the omnipotent mysterious monolith what to do. Bad idea...
(spoilers for 3001, although its been a while and I have a bad memory so maybe not...)
Not really, the monoliths were destroyed by a computer virus in 3001 if I recall, so I'm sure slashdot could come up with enough goatse trolls, rickrolls, kdawson stories, overrated moderations etc to annoy the monoliths into leaving, if not blowing up.
I'll get things started
I, for one, welcome our monolithic, slashdot browsing, beowulf cluster running overlords.
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3001 contradicted a number of points from the earlier books (which implied faster than light communication and that all of the monoliths were extrusions of the same n-dimensional entity), but it did not indicate that all of the monoliths had been destroyed. Only the ones in this solar system were affected by the virus, the control point, 500 light years away, was controlled by sentient entities and so would not have been vulnerable to the logic bomb.
Clarke explains the complete lack of continuity betwee
Re:Obligatory 2010 Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Or, to mix two different references:
All these worlds are yours except Europa. And Enceladus. The two worlds that aren't yours are Europa and Enceladus... and Titan. The three worlds... no, amongst your worlds... amongst the worlds.... I'll come in again.
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I always thought this was one of the sillier endings in a book/movie (one that I otherwise enjoyed, mind you). Why would a proto-omniscient intelligence target attention to the one place it didn't want it? However, it certainly seems to be one of the more enduring tropes in fiction - e.g. Pandora's Box, the apple tree of Eden, etc.
Re:Obligatory 2010 Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
The warning was sent out because once Lucifer/Jupiter calmed down into semi-stability, Europa would very obviously have an atmosphere, and the first things humans (which in Clarke's universe, actually travel further than orbit) would do is land there.
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It's been a while since I've read the book as well, but IIRC, the Chinese received a warning shot across the bow before the Really Bad Stuff occurred.
No, they definitely did not (I've just started 3001, so this is fairly fresh).
*SPOILER ALERT*
As the joint US-Russian vessel Leonov was en route to rendezvous with Discovery, they got reports that China had secretly sent off their own mission to the Jupiter system, presumably to beat the US to the derelict vessel. The only problem was that it seemed to be a su
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You're saying Lucifer is the same as Jupiter??? And you haven't gotten a lightning bolt shoved up your ass yet??? GREEK MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT???
Jupiter the planet was renamed Lucifer (lightbearer) when it became a star. 2010: ODYSSEY TWO, DO YOU READ IT???
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Historically, Lucifer is Venus, the Morning Star/Evening Star/Daystar (although in modern times, "daystar" has come to mean the sun). We get the word Lucifer from the vulgate where it's a literal translation of Light-Bringer -- Lux + Ferre. Isaiah uses Venus as an analogy for the fall of the king of Babylon. However, because the imagery he used was similar to that of the apocryphal story of the fall of Satan, early Christians confused the two.
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And according to "2061: Odyssey Three," all attempts to send robotic probes failed w
well.... (Score:1)
Re:well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... Huh?
Something changed all right. Our knowledge of conditions on Enceledus went from basically zilch to what you're reading about today thanks to the Casini probe.
We weren't "sure" that it couldn't be hospitable to life because we didn't know very much about it, but for things that far away from the sun more or less the default estimation of habitability is "not likely".
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we aren't "sure" that forms of "life" don't exist that thrive in environments we wouldn't currently consider "hospitable" to them.
True, and? Do you still not see how this represents an increase in our knowledge, and therefore a change in the conditional probability of life being hosted by Enceladus in favor of it?
i was pointing out the lack of deterministic scientific information in the headline.
By feigning an inability to see variations in degree of "could"? Or what? I mean it's a headline. Of course i
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i hope you one day understand that "nothing has changed" relative to the possibility implied by "could" out of any deterministic context is completely correct.
Deterministic context, what? I'm sorry, which definition [merriam-webster.com] are you using and how is it relevant? If you're talking definition 2, the state of being determined, then this isn't a deterministic context (as the word "could" itself implies).
The conditional probability ("conditional" means based on knowledge) of Enceladus' potential habitability for life h
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the "determined state" of knowledge after reading the headline is identical to that of before reading the headline.
nothing has implicitly changed.
Nooooo... Nothing has explicitly changed, so if you read the headline literally and with a deliberate lack of context, provided by either the summary or personal knowledge, it could mean nothing has changed.
However even the simplest of person could see that saying "could be habitable" in the context of our cold and mostly lifeless solar system implicitly suggests
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the most complex of person might immediately understand that "could be habitable" is equal to "could be unhabitable"...
Yes, they would understand that, which is why my response to your first post (when it wasn't clear that you were nitpicking the wording of the headline alone) was simply "Huh?" as in "Why are you saying something so obvious?"
They would also understood that the degrees of "could be" and "could be not" are not necessarily "equal", and that emphasizing the "could" was not an accident or mistak
Nothing new (Score:2, Informative)
I've heard about this over a year ago, at a minimum.
Same goes with Jupiter's moon Europa ( http://www.solarviews.com/eng/europa.htm [solarviews.com] ). Signs are that it could have liquid water inside, as quoted from the site: "Since liquid water existed in the past, could life have formed and even exist today? The primary ingredients for life are water, heat, and organic compounds obtained from comets and meteorites. Europa has had all three. From the images and data collected by the Galileo spacecraft, scientists believe
New stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it's only showing up again because Cassini made another Enceladus flyby in late 09 and they're just releasing the pictures.
This JPL article [nasa.gov] gives a better idea of what was new this flyby.
And, you know what? (Score:2, Funny)
Besides planet Earth (Score:1)
Results like this make Enceladus one of the most exciting places we've found in the solar system.
... besides planet Earth.
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Results like this make Enceladus one of the most exciting places we've found in the solar system.
... besides planet Earth.
What you already have rarely stays exciting. This is why affairs happen.
Re:Besides planet Earth (Score:4, Funny)
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What you already have rarely stays exciting. This is why affairs happen.
Then you have no imagination ;)
Stop misusing that thatsnomoon tag! (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF. This is a moon! Use it for huge stuff that aren't what they seem, but not for actual moons!
OK, I'm done. ;)
Oh, shit! (Score:2)
Habitable? (Score:2, Interesting)
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A claim made for any place that happens to have liquid water in it.
No, it's a claim made about places with liquid water, necessary materials (CHON elements, mainly), and an energy source of putative life to exploit. Liquid water just tends to be the toughest of those requirements to meet.
Since Enceladus has occasion steam, water jet out pooring doesn't mean it has a steady warm inner ocean
First, the jets are "occasional". They've been on as long as we've looked with Cassini and evidence suggests they've operated for a while. Second, no one is claiming a liquid ocean. In fact, I'm almost certain that's been ruled out for quite a while. What's being suggested is a small
Obligatory StarTrek quote (Score:2)
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Star Trekkin' [wikipedia.org]
Come on! (Score:2)
Awesome (Score:2)
OMG (Score:3, Funny)
I for one believe we already have enough hospitals. Building them on Saturn would bring no new inherent value.
NASA is searching for life... (Score:2)
NASA is searching for life in Congress for support of a planetary science budget, so these announcements must be taken with a big dose of sodium chloride.
Back in 1976, NASA flew the twin Viking missions to Mars, each with its own orbiter and stationary lander. All were quite successful. But at what a cost: something close to a cool billion dollars back then; that would be maybe four or five billion today. And there was another cost. To get support for the mission, NASA had to drum up expectations of fi
But what KIND of life? (Score:2)
The surface shows small jets of water open to atmosphere. There are also closed regions with a higher temperature, possibly due to endothermic reactions.
Enceladus is showing signs of having been colonized by a fairly sedentary life form symbiotic with large populations of other species incapable of manipulating their own environment adequately: Enceladus appears to be breaking out in sewage treatment plants.
Great opportunity for Walmart (Score:2)
Walmart is already looking at a few proposed locations on Enceladus. The clientele might look a bit strange compared to Earth based customers. Expect to see scores of people in pressed shirts and pants, conservative jewelry, and clean shoes.
Only NASA (Score:2)
Could look a a planet that is venting water into space around "warm" spots of -100 as "hospitable" to life.
Sure its no vacuum in space, but it sure is hell ain't the forest moon of Endor either.
Let me know when you find care bears and I'll get interested.
Re:alright (Score:5, Insightful)
There are only so many spaceships that can go up at one time, and while the number is proportional to the funding that the space programs get, it's never going to allow for us to do everything we want.
If you feel very strongly about getting more and more study done, why not petition your local congressmen, ministers and elected officials to spend more on scientific research. Why not look at getting involved and offering your time as a volunteer to do some of the work that could potentially be done by non paid staff. Why not look at getting involved with your local university campus and gather support for a bipartisan effort with other universities to fund a study of something you feel passionate about?
Programmer? Why not offer to write some of the algorithms for them? Scientist? Why not put forward a proposal of what you want to study and why? Businessman? Why not actually offer some level of funding yourself towards a specific research goal? Knuckle-dragger? Why not offer to make make coffees, organize meetings for the others, be a PA to the staff and help out in the cafeteria to bring down costs?
Oh yeah, it's easier to just jump on here and throw out another internet meme.
Re:alright (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah how hard can it be, it's not rocket sc... oh wait.
Seriously, I'm all for a new Apollo program but we're talking about an area in which even the leading experts sometimes get it devastatingly wrong with catastrophic results. It's going to take more than a volunteer effort.
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remember development costs only happen once and you get economies of scale when you make and launch a quantity of near identical spacecraft
No. Economies of scale really only kick in to any significant value when you make more than 10 units. And only really kick in when you make more than 100.
All these space probes are hand built. Manufacture costs for two are still about twice the cost of one.
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No. Economies of scale really only kick in to any significant value when you make more than 10 units. And only really kick in when you make more than 100.
The magic number is two units. That's when economies of scale start. Development costs don't double when you make two.
All these space probes are hand built. Manufacture costs for two are still about twice the cost of one.
That's not true. Hand built doesn't imply absence of economies of scale. In addition to one-time development costs as mentioned above, there's also the cost of assembling the tools and other durable resources you need. For example, I'm helping my brother build his basement. He bought thousands of dollars of tools in addition to the raw materials. If we were building a second basement somewhe
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Have you ever built anything substantial? Multi-million, multi-year dozen engineer project? I have.
You do save a bit on making a few instead of one, but trust me, significant economies of scale don't kick in until you produce more than 10 units. Before that it's only minor savings.
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Have you ever built anything substantial? Multi-million, multi-year dozen engineer project?
Yes. No, but I did work at an X-Ray film manufacturing plant for a couple of summers and I did volunteer for several years at an aerospace non-profit.
You do save a bit on making a few instead of one, but trust me, significant economies of scale don't kick in until you produce more than 10 units. Before that it's only minor savings.
The thing to keep in mind here is that current spacecraft have very significant development and other one-time costs. For example, the Mars Exploration Rovers cost around 745 million to develop and build two (not counting operations cost which was $75 million through the first 90 days of operations on Mars). The additional cost of the second rover was $250 mil
Re:Why not fund it yourself? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"If life really was discovered, it could galvanize space exploration and benefit science enormously."
There is extraterrestrial intelligent life in the oceans (whales, octopods, etc.) and non-Western intelligence on land (elephants, humans in other non-Western countries with different world-views) and the US government seems happy to either ignore, exploit, or kill. So, why should finding out there is life or intelligence elsewhere in the solar system or universe make much of a difference?
That said, I think
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As well, we study life obsessively. Biology is a gigantic field. Life on Earth is (somewhat) easily accessible to us. If there was life that we had trouble accessing for the purpose of studying it, then there woul
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I am not disagreeing that information about space or life in other places would be interesting. These days I tend to think that bacteria came from outside the solar system myself, given how hardy bacteria is, and how statistically it would just be more likely it came from elsewhere with one small Earth and one big universe. I'm disagreeing with how compelling that would be as a call to action in current US society. As in, "Oh, gee, cute seamonsters on Europa. Now, what kind of cosmetics should we be produci
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I don't agree, for some specific reasons. Cheaper energy sources on Earth would lower the energy costs of space launches. Better materials would make many space ventures easier, like if we had nanotech diamanoid for rocket jet coatings (and we would develop better materials in support of resiliency and sustainability on Earth). Better recycling and 3D printing would make space habitats more feasible. Improved robotic mining technology on Earth would pave the way for mining the Moon and the asteroids. All th
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Studying Saturn is a waste of money at this time even if there is life on Saturn's moon. We should focus on stuff which influences life one earth.
Yes, lets stop the space program and focus on real issues at home. Wait! Now there's about 100 thousand unemployed people laid off who directly or indirectly worked for the space program! That's much better than wasting time looking at Saturn,
Thread hijacking, yeah! (Score:2, Informative)
NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20090624.html [nasa.gov] :-)
picture: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia06191.html [nasa.gov]
Video: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/flash/Enceladus/enceladus.html [nasa.gov] <-- no reading
It'd be awesome to live on a saturn, especially if you have a view of Saturn (how large would it be on the sky?) ... would be pretty dark though, especially if the hot spot is on the south pole.
Btw. it was the Cassini spacecraft that made the flyby.
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That depends. Is the Moon under the age of 18?
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Dane Cook? That You?
Nah, we'd be at smug alert level 5 if it was.