As some Washington pol said, "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we're talking about real money!" Gail Leatherwood ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary McMurtry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 9:58 PM Subject: Re: Possible solution to zero-G bone loss problem (and osteoporosis!)
> > Bruce, et al., > > If this vibrating treatment holds up, then it will be the greatest > leap forward in manned space flight since the invention of the warp > drive...;-> > > BTW, the Europa Focus Group meeting in Flagstaff in early Sept. was > interesting. Yours truly attended, and made his presence known. > Basically, there was a push made by myself and others to add a > lander/rover/corer to the Europa Orbiter Program presently scheduled > for a 2008 launch. The logic goes like this. The main goal of the > orbiter is to ascertain "for certain" (1) the presence or absence of > an ocean (or lakes), (2) crust thicknesses, (3) mantle/seafloor > depths. Secondary goals are to map the surface ala Galileo but with > complete coverage and at even higher resolution. The latter should > better define lander targets. Some of us (me, especially) objected > to a purely orbiter mission given (a) the almost certain existence of > an ocean, (b) the nearly-(too mild?) certain evidence for past liquid > water, and (c) given either a or b, the interesting proposition that > life may have existed there in the past if not also present, and that > evidence for it may therefore be trapped in relatively young ice/salt > near the surface (just below the few decimeters that are blasted by > Jupiter's ionospheric radiation). Other arguments against the > orbiter-only mission are: (1) we already have quite a few fairly > high-res. targets for a lander based upon Galileo (we fussed over > several at the meeting), (2) adding more targets and more high-res. > remote sensing will not get us any closer to the more compelling > questions about the ocean, its composition and prospects for life > there than we basically are at now, and (3) an orbiter mission > failure (Heaven forbid) would kick the lander mission so far into the > future that anyone capable of reading this can forget being around to > enjoy the outcomes. > > If it goes, the rumor is the Europa Orbiter will cost about 1 Billion > dollars (I now place my little finger in the corner of my mouth ala > Dr. Evil). An orbiter-lander mission would cost about 50% more, per > Torrence Johnson. Seems to me 1.5 billion will get us a lot closer > to the answers we seek. These are big numbers, but I think most of > you will agree that the science and technology stakes are high, also. > > I could comment on lander options as well, but thought I'd get this > off my chest first. > > Gary > > > >You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ > > == > You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ > == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
