Perception remains reality. Space exploration is ultimately funded by a
curious public. Capital is mobile, sensitive and scarce.
These three points converge at the suggestion, "Find something alive in the
seas of Europa, the public will be enraptured and we'll have the capital to
do a lot of stuff."
Conversely, expenditures on what the public perceives as intellectual
esoterica, regardless of scientific merit, risk activating capital's
mobility and sensitivity in unfortunate ways wherein its scarcity becomes
patent.
So, in the interest of progressive momentum, I'd have to side strongly with
Gary on this one. We need an enamored public, not a puzzled and skeptical
one.
Regards,
Jack
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Moomaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday 21 November 2001 04:59
To: Europa Icepick
Subject: Re: Moomaw's take on Europa and Pluto
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary McMurtry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 1:59 AM
Subject: Re: Moomaw's take on Europa and Pluto
>
> Bruce, et al.,
>
> Please, somebody, please, explain to this ignorant old
geochemist why
> we should give a hoot about Pluto's atmosphere versus
getting a
> probe, even that JPL Cadillac Orbiter to Europa? Once I
attended a
> seminar at JPL where I was absolutely dumb-founded that
more was
> being made of studying the physics of Saturn's ring
interactions
> (scheduled) than sending probes to Europa (not scheduled).
As I
> stated to the attendees that day, What single scientific
question
> remains that is more important than the origin of life and
its
> corollary that life may exist/has existed on other worlds
in our
> Solar System? Planetary studies are great stuff, and the
list of
> things left to study are practically endless. But,
everything can't
> be funded and we have to make priorities. More
importantly, we have
> hang together on what we collectively see as those
priorities, or we
> will see it all slip away. I think the tragic 9/11 events
and recent
> OMB rumors hint as to the outcomes for our divided house.
Maybe we
> should have an intellectual "slug fest" somewhere, with
judges
> calling the points like a wrestling match, and have them
declare a
> winner that takes the outcomes to the government/funders.
I know it
> sounds silly, but just how do the decisions ultimately get
made these
> days?
Well -- while I enthusiastically agree with your overall
line of reasoning
about the central importance of astrobiology (as Robert
Clements will
indignantly testify)-- the thing is that:
(1) Pluto's atmosphere is virtually unique among Solar
System studies in
that it's a limited-time offer -- if we miss it, we won't
get another look
at the damn thing for 250 years, whereas a delay of a few
years in launching
a Europa mission is just that: a delay of a few years. (The
only remotely
comparable example is the fact that we have to wait 42 years
between the
times that Uranus is side-on to the Sun.)
(2) Pluto has a very unusual atmosphere. It seems to be
unique among Solar
System phenomena in that it's currently being dramatically
swept away
hydrodynamically by the solar wind, a process which was
extremely important
among all the inner planets during the first few hundred
million years after
the Sun switched on, and which has direct astrobiological
relevance,
especially to Mars. There is still a knockdown fight among
scientists as to
how important this process (as opposed to others, like
erosion by early
giant impacts or conversion into carbonates) has been over
the eons in
destroying early Mars' thick atmosphere, which in turn would
affect the
extent to which Mars has been habitable over its long
history. While such
solar-wind stripping still seems to be going on very slowly
on Mars,
studying the phenomenon at Pluto could tell us a lot about
the
still-uncertain details of how it operated at other times in
Martian
history.
(3) If it DOES freeze out, the resultant thin frost layer
will make it much
harder to observe and composition-map Pluto's surface
features, which are
also very strange. The place has greater total variation in
albedo over its
surface area than any other world in the Solar System
(including Earth)
except Iapetus, and we have no idea why -- except that it
seems to be
connected with the formation of dark organics in some spots,
but not others,
on Pluto's surface. And of course the current enshrouding
of more and more
of Pluto's surface in permanent darkness as one of its poles
tips away from
the Sun will also harm that study.
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