
The Europa mission is real and could very well happen - anigbrowl
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2014/03/heres-why-the-europa-mission-is-real-and-could-very-well-happen/#21279101=0
======
bfe
I talked with a NASA engineer in 1998 who was working on the planned Europa
probe, and hoping it would be funded enough to include a lander and not just a
Europa orbiter. Sad to see how little progress we've made since then, and how
arbitrarily the cause advances.

Even more, it's continuously sad to see how arbitrarily NASA's space missions,
and overarching goals and strategies, in both robotic exploration and human
spaceflight, fluctuate almost randomly with the whims of incoming and outgoing
congresspeople and presidents. Space exploration missions by their nature have
a longer timeline than the terms and attention spans of elected officials.
NASA has no real chief executive but a board of directors with 536 people on
it, all of whom have dozens of more important priorities, none of whom has
expertise in its operations, and almost all of whom don't have the
qualifications to be a substitute science teacher in middle school.

Our space program would be light-years ahead (maybe even literally) if it were
just given its annual funding in a single block grant with a simple mandate to
further the exploration and settlement of space, period, full stop, overseen
by a real board of unelected technocratic experts, and with any specific
direction from Congress forbidden.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _with any specific direction from Congress forbidden_

The only way for a present Congress to bind a future Congress like so would be
by way of a Constitutional amendment. That seems like overkill.

An alternative is giving NASA independence in the model of the Federal
Reserve, FDA, or NIH. This is more workable. The problem is the public doesn't
value space travel _per se_. There are sound economic reasons for maintaining
an independent central bank. Voters understand the benefits of better
medicine. But space travel is less accepted in itself. It is pitched as an
article of national prestige, or as a way of encouraging other technological
development.

At its core, NASA suffers from an asset-liability mismatch. Its liabilities,
missions, carry decade-long terms. Its asset, Congressional funding, comes in
election cycles. A myopic NASA, considering only projects realisable in the
current election cycle, would be disastrous. Moving to locking in, each year,
NASA funding for the next N years seems like a good first step. It avoids the
messiness of NASA's year-to-year budget variance. It also side-steps the
politics of granting NASA independence.

~~~
bfe
> "An alternative is giving NASA independence in the model of the Federal
> Reserve, FDA, or NIH."

This would almost certainly be the best way forward.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The politics would be arduous. If NASA can choose which projects it pursues it
can also choose where to base operations. NASA has facilities in states and
Congressional districts which make no sense beyond politics. Those who stand
to lose from a de-politicisation of NASA would bring a hard fight. That is the
political reality.

~~~
bfe
Yes. It would take a president and/or members of Congress who cared enough
about having an effective space program instead of using NASA as a pork
delivery truck, to make the change.

It would also be resisted at least as much by members of Congress who
represent NASA's contractors, besides just its facilities (like Dana
Rohrabacher, the congressman from Boeing). On the other hand, it would also
naturally be supported by members of Congress representing at least some NASA
centers and contractors who would clearly gain from the move.

A reform like this will also be boosted though by SpaceX as it keeps
accomplishing more and more on a comparatively low budget, making forward-
looking technologies readily available of its own volition (Grasshopper,
Falcon Heavy, methane rocket engines that can use Mars in situ manufactured
fuel, etc.), and creating more and more embarrassment for the traditional
space program and its contractors (like the Senate Launch System (SLS)), and
forcing everyone to ask, why can't NASA do that? Hopefully they will
eventually shame Congress and the President into reforming NASA into a
professionally-managed organization, i.e. reforming away their own control
over it and making it more like a Federal Reserve for space exploration.

------
pshin45
I feel compelled to plug the 2013 sci-fi film "Europa Report"[1], a great
movie that no one watched.

Space.com called it "awesome" and "stunningly realistic"[2].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report)

[2] [http://www.space.com/21247-europa-report-scifi-film-
trailer....](http://www.space.com/21247-europa-report-scifi-film-trailer.html)

~~~
qbrass
It was an advertisement for manned spaceflight that ironically showed why it's
a bad idea.

~~~
darsham
Advertisement ? It's borderline a space horror movie, no irony here...

The mockups of mission branding and press conferences were rather well made
though, so I can imagine why you'd get that impression.

------
Sharlin
This would most probably end up being a New Frontiers class mission with a
cost cap of a billion dollars or so. This is much less than the proposed
4.7-billion-dollar Jupiter Europa Orbiter [1], and also less than the already
very much slimmed-down "Europa Clipper" concept [2] with a price tag of $1.5
billion or so. For reference, the Mars Science Laboratory mission cost about
$2.4 billion.

With a sub-billion dollar budget, the achievable science objectives would be
severely limited. It would probably still be worth it -- these days we have to
take what we're given.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Jupiter_System_Mission](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Jupiter_System_Mission)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
To say nothing of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, whose price tag was $16
billion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter)

------
stcredzero
Since Europan life is separated from the sky by a kilometer thick shell of
ice, could there be an entire global civilization down there we're unaware of?
(Since they're aquatic, maybe low frequency acoustics have taken the place of
radio for them, so we would not have detected them.)

~~~
Udo
Well, if there's life in that ocean, they're probably not tool builders
(otherwise we'd have detected something). But microbes and maybe multicellular
life isn't out of the question. It's also interesting to think about if we
should count, say, a global population of whale-equivalents as a civilization
or not.

~~~
yk
I would not rule out that they have a way to build tools, assuming for a
moment they exist. So earth technology is closely related to fire as a energy
source. ( During the early development for smelting.) But this role could be
filled by black smokers, or volcanic activity. But further development would
of course be completely different, so I think it is entirely conceivable that
we did not detect anything.

~~~
Udo
True, it's a matter of definitions. Octopuses also use tools, but do they
qualify as an intelligent civilization? Probably not (yet). We assume, because
we have little reference of what an intelligent human-equivalent entity might
be like, that they'd probably build very complex tools over time as we have.

This judgement of what constitutes an advanced life form sadly carries a
cultural component. If we encountered our own species at the very beginning of
its intellectual journey, would we have labeled them a civilization? Would we
have described them as having human-equivalent intelligence? It's tricky. But
then we move hundreds of thousands of years ahead and suddenly there are
monumental buildings and clever machines, suddenly you can meet individuals
with astonishing capabilities, and now it's very easy to categorize them.

So if our hypothetical space Euroctopus species is in its early intellectual
development, we might not be able to correctly attribute their intelligence.
There's always the possibility of that development being stagnant too, and
again we'd have a difficult time recognizing that. Therefore, the only real
chances at discerning an intelligent civilization would be by either directly
observing its behavior or by looking at the capabilities of their tools.

~~~
bennyg
The funny thing is, we can only categorize intelligence to the peak and
adjacent possibilities of where we're at now. Go back over 100,000 years or
more and it would be very hard to categorize us as extremely intelligent
beings.

~~~
yk
Not sure if this is what you meant, but assume you are showing a picture of a
programmer to someone from the past. One hundred years ago, the person would
probably recognize a computer as some kind of type writer, and from his
background then assume that the person is a typist. 200 years ago, there were
no jobs which could be described as 'sitting in front of a box,' so the person
would have no frame of reference to understand the picture. ( And it seems
likely to conclude the same into the future.)

~~~
pavlov
Medieval monks copying manuscripts had jobs that were essentially "sitting in
front of a box all day":

[http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAge...](http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAges-4.jpg)

------
iwwr
Looks like NASA may be dragged into it kicking and screaming. It may be time
to change some people at the top. There's no point having this kind of a
mission if leadership doesn't believe in it.

~~~
thearn4
I know personally that Europa is actually pretty high on Charlie Bolden's (and
other NASA HQ folk's) as well as academia's radar, but has thus far lost out
to other programmatic/political necessities.

NASA has a very hard time devoting resources to planetary science and
exploration programs when key legislators continue to earmark NASA'S budget
for (what are essentially) jobs programs in their own districts. SLS has
shaped up to be a perfect example of that.

~~~
XorNot
Well, the other problem is Europa is not an easy mission by any stretch. It's
airless - so wave goodbye to parachute landings, which means we need to carry
all the propulsion we need to decelerate into orbit with us.

No magnetic field either, so tethers for orbital adjustment are out to. And
it's flying out to one of the more radiation hard environments in the solar
system, where we have very little data on what exactly it'll experience.

And it's going to be a long long way a way. 1 hour signal round-trip time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Think of all the new technologies and solutions that will have to be developed
for it, and then will find their way to commercial sector. NASA at it's best!

------
arethuza
ESA also has a planned probe going to Jupiter's moons - hopefully launching in
2022, JUICE - JUpiter ICy moons Explorer:

[http://sci.esa.int/juice/](http://sci.esa.int/juice/)

------
doctorwho
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE

------
dandelany
Awesome, though it will obviously take a lot more than $15m or even $100m -
Cassini-Huygens cost $3.6 billion. Personally I'd like to see NASA's project
merge with the ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer project - add some instruments
or another probe to their launch instead of launching a completely separate
craft. Although I guess this increases the risk - if the launch fails, both
missions fail...

~~~
rsynnott
JUICE came about due to the effective cancellation of Laplace
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace)),
a joint ESA/NASA mission. Laplace died because the ESA didn't think that
NASA's budget allowed it. The ESA mightn't be hugely keen on risking that
scenario again.

------
skywhopper
Mars has been very well explored. Titan just recently got a drop-in probe.
Except for maybe Venus (which presents logistical challenges that would likely
make a lander mission impossible) Europa is by far the most interesting place
in our solar system that hasn't been extensively explored.

What are we talking about here, expense wise? $5 billion over 15-20 years?
Totally worth it.

~~~
adventured
Probably more like $15 to $20 billion over that span (accounting for
inflation, cost bloat, unexpected b.s. etc).

Still worth it. I'm hoping our technology for traveling the solar system, and
the robotic systems to explore it, will get cheaper and cheaper on a cost per
unit of result basis (meaning the nominal cost will rise as expected, but the
value we receive from our technology will rise much faster).

------
crusso
I know we're all science geeks and enjoy the possibility of a Europa mission -
but doesn't it bother anyone that we have a system whereby some congressman
with a pet project can ram through tens of millions of dollars in the budget
that will likely balloon to billions of dollars?

Yay, the broken clock shows the right time for this minute.

------
antjanus
Funny. No money for a moon or another Mars mission but NASA is basically given
a command for a mission to Europa because one congress person said so.

Quite strange.

I'm still excited. I think anyone who has read the Odyssey series by Clarke
would be ecstatic too! :)

~~~
dredmorbius
We've been to the Moon and Mars. Europa's yet unvisited, and as a science
mission, there's considerable potential.

------
alexandros
"I want to make sure you and I are here to see those first tube worms and
lobsters on Europa."

If he wasn't joking, he is in for a disappointment and I am depressed with the
quality of people who are deciding these budgets. But if its that or more
weapons expenses, take the money and run NASA!

~~~
Zikes
Likely he didn't specifically mean tube worms and lobsters (excepting the case
of convergent evolution) but if he had said something like "life" or "aliens"
then the sort of imagery that comes to most people's minds are the classic
Roswell Greys.

------
mturmon
The relevant mission concept, still in flux as more observations of the plumes
coming from the surface are taken
([http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-
xml/AW_...](http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-
xml/AW_02_17_2014_p37-663090.xml&p=1)), is Europa Clipper:

[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-
clipper/](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/)

------
nutanc
NASA should collaborate with the ISRO scientists as they too have good
experience with space exploration and can suggest cost optimizations etc.

------
1ris
I was very scared when i saw that headline. Thank god this is not about
military missions in Europe.

------
jokoon
I find it amazing to see how cheap that price tag is for something so
technology worthy.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Um, that's not the price tag. That's the amount of money they're going to
spend now to keep working on it.

~~~
deathanatos
$15 million (or for that matter, $100 million) is still a very small fraction
of the federal budget, and in my opinion, a much more well spent $15 million
than a lot of the other $15 millions in there.

------
Raphael
Awesome, as long as we don't breach the Prime Directive.

------
wiredfool
So we're not going to leave Europa alone.

Wonder if this is going to end well.

~~~
civilian
Clarke is dead.

