So it appears that there might be 2 camps forming... John's vision of melting thru thick ice and getting puplic support for Europa missions. And Bruce's suggestions of more technical projects that might lead to ideas that NASA could possibly be used on an actual Europa probe. Both ideas are valuable to getting us to Europa.
Do any of the suggestions from Bruce sound like something a part of this group could handle? Is there any reason that we couldn't have 2 hands-on projects going at once?
Julie Edwards
--On Tuesday, October 29, 2002 3:54 AM -0700 Europa Mailing List Digest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So: is there anything we CAN do to assist with the Cryobot development effort? Maybe. There are several needed technological tests that -- as far as I know -- have not yet been adequately done, and which we can do (as separate projects). JPL still needs to know just how far VLF radio signals can pass through water ice, especially if it's contaminated with the various other substances (salts, sulfuric acid, rock grit -- any of them maybe in quite large amounts) proposed for Europa.We might be able to do some work inside a lab on the multiple-water jet system allowing a Cryobot to veer gradually to one side -- I'll review what that recent IEEE paper has to say on this. (And, indeed, I'm mailing the whole article to Bradbury so he can convert the damn thing into some kind of a file that we all can read, which is extremely important -- it's by far the most thorough summarization of the substantial Cryobot design and test work already done.)That's fine, but it still doesn't alter the underlying mission, which is not to duplicate technology, or beat NASA at its own game, but to make an ice submersible. It's the romance thing, all over again. Without romance, there will be no space exploration. You can't get romance in a lab.There's also the need to test the Cryobot's obstacle-detection equipment, which will involve either low-frequency radar or sonar, which must detect rocks and dense sediment pockets hundreds of meters below the Cryobot to give it enough time to very gradually veer out of the way. As yet, I don't think any firm decision has been reached on the best sensor technique and frequency.I don't believe we have the capacities to offer anything substantial in that regard. We don't have high-power radio transmitting and receiving devices, and we don't have the ability to alter the signal. We don't have a handy sheet of ice to place between the two. This model will probably be blind. That's alright. We don't expect to recover it. That's one reason why we're shooting for a big block of old ice: lack of sediment, grit, and rocks.Finally, there's another possibility, which might be the best of all for us. As Gary McMurty has pointed out, there is considerable apprehension about the problems a Europa Cryobot may have melting its way through Europa's ice if it's extremely salty (and some theories suggest that much of Europa's ic e layer may be as much as 20-30% salt by weight!) Frank Carsey, in fact, has personally told me that they're confident that a simple melting-head Cryobot can penetrate Mars' ice, despite the large amount of dust in it, because the meltwater produced whould be enough to wash the dust to the side. But he says they're far less certain about the ability of a simple melting Cryobot -- even with hot-water jets -- to wash its way successfully through very briny Europan ice without a dense block of salt building up very quickly in front of the Cryobot, and perhaps stopping it after only a couple of meters of downward motion. A mechanical drill head may have to be added to its tip to chew through the salt buildup -- but the tests on this have yet to be run. (I think there was an abstract on this at the third "Europa Focus group" meeting. Again, I'll look for it.) This is the sort of test that a small independent group very well might be able to run.I don't think we have the capacity to create a model with a rotary head. Too many working parts, too many opportunities for error. Besides, the salt on Europa is still theoretical. On top of that, a rotary head, if used, is presumeably to cancel the effects of salt buildup -- the main motive power is still... hot water. That, we can do.Any of these things are the sort of thing that an independent amateur group really MIGHT be able to do genuinely useful independent studies on -- far more productively to Cryobot development than any attempt to build our own complete Cryobot and just duplicate what's already long since been done by the government itself.The government itself told us we would have colonies on Mars by the year 2000. Besides: we are not a chapter of NASA. Any research we could do would be tossed aside, in favor of that done by a 6 figures a year team of NASA techs. The best we can hope to do is stir up publicity, and generate substantial public interest. That's the cause celebre of the project, not research redundancy. - -- John Harlow Byrne
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