
Europe's space program heads to Jupiter - Tomis02
http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15924892,00.html
======
Tomis02
I'm really excited about this, and proud to be European. There's neither an
obvious economic benefit from this mission, nor some military advantage. It's
just pure science. Go ESA!

~~~
luriel
As a (somewhat proud) European who loves pure science and space, I'm sorry to
say I think your points are too accurate, put another way: is a waste of
government's money when most EU governments are drowning in debt and really
can't afford it.

Europe would be much better served by encouraging the kind of entrepreneurial
space industry represented by SpaceX than handing more money to the European
aerospace/military pork cartel of EADS and friends.

~~~
yaix
"drowning in debt"? Nothing changed from ten years ago, except for Greece. And
everybody knew that, when they entered the Euro, they were not ready and that
some major crisis would happen down the road. Now they have to transform their
society into a firstworld country, that's hard, but long-term very beneficial.
All going well, so far.

But I agree that the EU space program should follow the US example of
privatizing standard stuff. But in Europe we have the problem that nations are
still stupidly putting their national interests over the common European
interest. EADS is one result of that sort of behavior. Imagin the European
version of SpaceX was for example French: all other large countries,
especially the UK and Germany, would want production facilities too. A
innovative small company would die soon, crushed by political pressure.

------
gauravk92
Historians will look back at this time as a fundamental shift away from
America as the leader of scientific exploration. It's a shame Europe is
leading the search at the microscopic (LHC) and macroscopic scales (this), and
we're considering reducing funding for NASA when their budget is already puny.
Not to make this political, it just sucks.

~~~
planetguy
It's not a zero-sum game, and I think you need to get some perspective. It's
great that the ESA is sending a probe to Jupiter's moons, and I'm totally
excited about it. On the other hand, NASA currently has:

1\. One spacecraft at Saturn (Cassini)

2\. One spacecraft en route to Jupiter (Juno)

3\. One spacecraft at Mercury (MESSENGER)

4\. One spacecraft at Vesta (Dawn)

5\. One spacecraft on its way to freaking Pluto (New Horizons)

6\. Three missions [I think] still in operation at Mars (Odyssey, Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter and Opportunity) with a fourth on its way.

7\. A few other comet/asteroid missions I've lost track of, plus

8\. A bunch of other stuff, with the big highlights being Hubble and Kepler.

NASA's "already puny" budget is three times that of the ESA and easily exceeds
the rest of the world put together, so one really can't complain _too_ much.

That's not to pooh-pooh the ESA, by any means, they're doing some good stuff.
But they have a long, long way to go before they catch up with NASA.

This will be the first non-American mission to the outer solar system,
incidentally. NASA so far have sent eight. (Two Pioneers, two Voyagers,
Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, Juno.) All but Galileo are still in operation.

~~~
gauravk92
Most definitely true, but do you believe we are currently at the forefront of
scientific exploration as we have been for the past few decades? I believe a
shift has occurred, we are still the 800 pound gorilla but in 50 years, that
may be a different picture. That's what I care about, the fact that our lead
is waning and we're not doing much about.

If we were truly still leading the way, the supercollider we had plans for
that was 3 times as powerful as the LHC would've been funded, in the 70-80's.
I can't argue that point effectively though because I have read that project
was plagued with issues and most likely wouldn't have been an effective use of
funds, but we could've focused on fixing those issues or finding a scaled back
project instead of letting it die, and leaving it to the EU.

~~~
angersock
You aren't giving enough credit to engineering. Science is all well and good,
as is basic research, but honestly engineering is what carries the day.

People who fetishsize -~=!SCIENCE!=~- and ignore the sheer quality of
engineering that the US produces are frankly fools.

I don't mind losing big projects like the supercolliders or even the goofy
NASA stuff if it means that we can let the funds end up in the hands of lean,
strong, and awesome engineering teams.

Besides, your supercollider builds no homes, makes few jobs, and really is
just a chance for a lot of particle physicists to stroke off on things that
aren't really useful to most of mankind. Sorry, but your "science" is super
fringe.

~~~
sandfox
Can't tell if trolling... Or genuinely ignorant. The super-colliders are
incredible feats of physical and software engineering, and you guys are
building them too! The positive spin-offs are far greater than the stuff that
makes it in the headlines of the news.

------
yaix
2022? 2030? :-(

While I'm really glad they do it and go there, I am not sure if this is the
right way. If anything was to go wrong, then the complete mission is lost. And
that would be terrible considering the timeframe of 20 years.

ESA should follow the SpaceX approach of sending several "mass produced"
spacecrafts, or at least follow the Mars mission modell and send two. That was
also done in the 70s with Voyager and others.

------
cwe
... in a decade. Hopefully.

~~~
ramidarigaz
These things take time.

------
planetguy
Oddly enough, the caption _"NASA had plans to send a spacecraft to Jupiter but
later dropped them"_ accompanies a picture of Juno, the not-cancelled NASA
spacecraft currently on its way to Jupiter.

The "cancelled" mission is actually the EJSM, which last I heard isn't quite
cancelled, nor was it ever firmly planned.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace>)

