
House tells NASA to start planning two Europa missions - Tomte
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/house-budget-provides-260-million-for-two-life-tracking-europa-missions/
======
Ankaios
Note that the text that came out of the subcommittee
([http://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bills-114hr-
sc...](http://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bills-114hr-sc-ap-
fy2017-cjs-subcommitteedraft.pdf)) mandates that NASA use the Space Launch
System (SLS) to launch the missions.

SLS is a stunningly overpriced rocket that Congress is forcing NASA to build
to keep former shuttle contractors and NASA centers employed. Congress is
sending ~ $1.8 billion every year to states including Alabama, Florida, Utah,
and Louisiana to develop it. There are very few payloads manifested for it.
Launching the Europa missions on it would be a tremendous waste of money—the
benefits would not warrant the cost.

It would be worth exploring the lobbying performed by SLS contractors
including Boeing and Orbital ATK, as well as that of people close to the main
NASA centers involved with SLS, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama
and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

~~~
dogma1138
This is how things get approved since states want funding and jobs. That said
the SLS has a lift capability twice the size of a Falcon heavy which hasn't
been launched yet, so no I'm not sure that it's a waste since if we want to
get to Europa quickly it's probably the best rocket we got atm.

SLS is also our best current candidate for serious human space flight past
LEO, SLS brings up back to Energia and Saturn V launch capacity and while it
is the usual cross state designed by a committee project it's good to have it
since we do need it.

~~~
Eridrus
There isn't exactly a rush to go to Europa, why not wait until cheaper
rocketry is developed?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I guess because its projects like the Europa mission that _make_ rocketry
cheaper.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't see how we're going to make launching cheaper by doing 2 launches on a
well understood but expensive platform.

------
avz
While water is not uncommon in space, liquid water is a very rare. This is due
to the fact that liquids in general can only exist in a relatively narrow
range of temperatures and pressures (see phase diagram [1]).

Europa is one of the few places in the Solar system where we expect to find
liquid water. One of the others is Mars, but most water there is solid - only
small amounts of it occur in liquid form and only briefly. By contrast, Europa
has a freaking underground ocean! Moreover, by some estimates it is larger in
volume than all oceans on Earth combined [2].

Should we go check it out? Hell yeah!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram)
[2]
[http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html)

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Imagine selling bottled Europan water. Fiji, move over. That would help fund
the mission, and no more battles with environmentalists over Nestle taking too
much out of the aquifer etc. of course, that's assuming the Europans won't
object.

~~~
wazoox
At a probable price point around 20 million bucks a liter, I'm not sure that
there'd be many customers.

~~~
mcbits
I wonder what a water acquisition mission would cost. Under $10 billion? That
would require 500 customers at $20 mil each. That's 500 out of several million
people who could afford it. Or even more if people pool their resources and
spring for a teaspoon of water each. It almost seems like it could be
feasible.

~~~
mangeletti
That's only 498kg. Considering the Falcon Heavy's payload to Mars is 13,000kg
(not sure what the return payload is), that would truly be a reasonable amount
of water to bring back. And speaking of Fiji water, they could bring it back
in Fiji bottles. Since those bottles have a special ability to make people pay
$5 for $.001 of tap water, imagine what they could do with Europan water.

Joking aside, something like this actually _could_ be used to fund space
missions. I suspect that some people with hundreds of millions would be
willing to pay top dollar for something as exclusive as an item from Europa.

------
comicjk
Something that commenters here don't seem aware of is that Saturn's moon
Enceladus has liquid water which is similar to Europa's and much cheaper to
study. Enceladus sprays its water into space via ice volcanoes - all we have
to do is fly by and we get samples of the sea itself
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_Life_Finder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_Life_Finder)).
On Europa by contrast we have to land on a heavy moon with no atmosphere and
then deal with a huge coat of ice, just to try to get a sample. It's an
interesting mission but a bad allocation of resources.

~~~
sandworm101
I think NASA might hesitate to aim a precious probe at space geyser. The
speeds are insane. But, if we could find a rock that has already traveled near
enough to Enceladus ... and is coming our way. Then perhaps we can get that
sample without actually going to Enceladus. We already have Mars rocks raining
down on us. If we caught them while still in space we might have already found
samples of Mars water.

~~~
ridgeguy
NASA did just that. They flew Cassini through the geyser plumes at Enceladus
to sample the presumed ocean beneath the ice on that world. At least twice.
Once at an altitude of 30 miles.[1][2]

[1]
[http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_15...](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1510.html)

[2]
[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4759](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4759)

~~~
sandworm101
But did it come back? That sort of thing would require a much larger craft
and/or one moving at a much faster relative velocity (free return). A rock
that once passed through those geysers might be passing earth right now.

------
blisterpeanuts
Europa sounds like a valid and important target for a lander. Just imagine if
evidence of life is detected; it would drastically change our perception of
our role in the universe. Suddenly we're not the only game in town.
Religionists would have to adapt, conspiracists would spin their theories, and
money for new expeditions would magically appear.

The question in my mind is, why is this initiative coming from the Congress
rather than from the President or from NASA itself? What's happened to our
national sense of adventure and exploration?

I remember the space fever of the 1960s and 1970s, and how it faded in the
late 70s into a dull pride that we'd built a space bus, albeit a very
expensive and compromised design that could take a team to low orbit and not
much farther.

I guess we should celebrate the fact that someone with the power to fund new
missions into deep space is making it happen, for whatever reason. But I'd
like it better if Nasa were getting the kind of funding it really needs and
the bold leadership it deserves to accelerate these sorts of spectacular
missions that will advance our technologies and inspire more young people to
go into the sciences.

~~~
ekianjo
Life outside Earth is not a binary question. Its a matter of probabilities,
and with the vastness of the cosmos it would actually be very surprising if
life did not exist anywhere else at all. But inside the solar system, its a
different matter altogether. If we find life on Europa then it increases the
chance that life is in many more places than we thought.

~~~
smcnally
To your point, Kepler's recent announcement suggests the probability of tens
of billions of Earth-like planets "just" in the Milky Way.

[http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160...](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510)

------
erikb
As a European who has travelled to the US and back already I have to say that
you don't need NASA to come here. Visa or a good passport plus a ticket for
Deutsche Lufthansa is enough!

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Why did they name it Europa anyway? Seems like it will cause all sorts of
confusion amidst hilarious typos. "Scientists speculate about Europe's ability
to support intelligent life." Perhaps we should rename it "Vulcan" or
"Krypton" or some recognizably alien name to reduce the chances for
misunderstanding.

~~~
baddox
The Galilean moons are all named after Zeus' lovers. They were named shortly
after their discovery in the early 1600s by Simon Marius, a German astronomer
who apparently discovered the moons independently of Galileo at roughly the
same time as Galileo.

~~~
narag
Then Europe, the continent, was defined _later_ by this guy:

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

~~~
mnl
Huh? It's a geographical term for the mass of land that has been in use since
the classical antiquity:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#Etymology)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Similarly, "Asia" has been used since antiquity as a term for the Near East,
but for almost all of that time it certainly did not refer to what we now call
"the continent of Asia". Are you more likely to think of Asia as containing
Syria or China?

------
dragonbonheur
John Culberson receives money from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Orbital
ATK and Northrop Grumman.

Whenever a US politician makes a statement, I look Why they made that
statement - and the why is often that they get paid in campaign contributions
to say precisely what their donors want them to say. Whether it's about
foreign policy or anything else, it's easy to go on opensecrets.org and see
who their donors are and thus why they made a statement.

Nothing is done in America's interests - it's done to stuff pockets full of
cash and contracts.
[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=201...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00009738&type=I&newmem=N)

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> Whenever a US politician makes a statement, I look Why they made that
> statement - and the why is often that they get paid in campaign
> contributions to say precisely what their donors want them to say.

I think this is a gross simplification - companies find politicians that are
sympathetic to their positions to begin with, and then help finance those
campaigns. I don't know about John Culberson specifically, but I'm quite sure
that if you spoke to him or to numerous other politicians receiving the
contributions you are complaining about - they would staunchly defend the
positions they have adapted as being independent of donations. It's really not
black and white.

~~~
petemill
But isn't that the same thing? Left just to the votes of the people and equal
opportunity campaign investments, those candidates and those policies wouldn't
get the power. You are describing that, instead, candidates are essentially
put in power by companies, who are therefore still in effect buying policy.
Then, the representatives are no longer representing the people but the money.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> But isn't that the same thing?

Sure, it is the same thing in practice - but it's not what OP is suggesting:

>> Who would want to admit they are guilty of being essentially corrupt?Of
cooooourse they would find excuses. But it's incredibly naïve to say US
politicians aren't influenced by money. They are all bought.

> Then, the representatives are no longer representing the people but the
> money.

The representatives are probably accurately representing the balance of power
in US society, which is weighted towards economic/financial interests.

~~~
dragonbonheur
> The representatives are probably accurately representing the balance of
> power in US society, which is weighted towards economic/financial interests.

Obviously you are assuming that I'm pulling my statements out of thin air (or
some other place where the sun don't shine :D ).

Here's a paper from Princeton University that essentially says that public
opinion as almost ZERO effect on US policy:

[https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

~~~
forgotpwtomain
If they have almost no effect than they have almost no power - isn't that
tautological?

Also it should be noted the paper contrasts public opinion to 'organized
interest groups':

> Our third and fourth theoretical traditions posit that public policy
> generally reflects the outcome of struggle among organized interest groups
> and business firms.

But in a number of cases organized interest groups are representative of a
significant sector of public opinion (the NRA being one such example, or the
ACLU is another).

------
hliyan

       Galileo... had a resolution of only about 10 meters per pixel.
       The spacecraft stored those images on a tape recorder with a 
       capacity of 114 megabytes, but a flawed rewind mode hampered 
       even that modest device
    

With the technology we have now, I'm surprised why we're not sending out a lot
more tiny (therefore cheaper to launch) flyby probes across the solar system.
Apart from the RTG and antenna, a probe today could probably be the size of a
TV set.

~~~
mschuster91
> Apart from the RTG

You stated the problem: radionuclides used to supply said RTGs (Pu238) are in
shortage
([http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1132236...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113223613))
because with the fall of the Soviet Union there is no (big) demand for new
nuclear weapons, and Pu238 was a "waste by-product" of producing nuke cores.

~~~
vibrolax
In late 2015 the US has demonstrated new production of PU 238 for RTG use at
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory High Flux Isotope Reactor. This was
undertaken in 2013 with NASA funding.

[https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-achieves-milestone-
plutonium-...](https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-achieves-milestone-
plutonium-238-sample)

~~~
mschuster91
Cool. I hope this gets out of lab stage soon.

~~~
iso-8859-1
It will not leave the lab stage, it will continue to be produced at Oak Ridge.
See [https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-achieves-milestone-
plutonium-...](https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-achieves-milestone-
plutonium-238-sample)

------
brudgers
Worth pointing out that Representative Culberson (R-TX) represents Houston,
TX, home of the Johnson Space Flight Center. There's a two dollar dollop of
pork to go along with the nobility of science here.

~~~
adventured
Why is that worth pointing out?

Culberson represents the 7th district. NASA in Houston is on the other side of
the city. Further, the Europa team is out of Pasadena, California - Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.

You're over-reaching and then some.

~~~
brudgers
My apologies for not replying sooner. I went to bed.

I hoped it might provide at least one person context for what might seem
abnormal -- Congress mandating and funding a mission NASA was not actively
pursuing via the political process. It's unfortunate but perhaps not
unexpected that at least one person did not find value there, the internet
being what it is.

------
jakelarkin
Should Europa really be a top priority? The surface temperature is -160C and
it receives 5400 mSv of radiation. Enough to kill a most life in a few hours.
We barely have the technology to operate a robotics in that environment for
short while. Even if there's some buggers under the ice, I think money would
be better invested on developing space capabilities in more hospitable
environments, such as bases on the Moon or Mar with ability to synthesize
materials, food and fuel.

~~~
adventured
It sounds like an excellent opportunity to leap our robot technology forward
and attempt something challenging.

Besides that, NASA has (almost) no choice. It's not coming at the expense of
other projects, this is running on a budget that exists solely to go to
Europa. It's being pushed forward as a pet project by John Culberson, chairman
of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget. He's
ensuring they get the extra funding necessary to make it happen.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/attempt-no-landing-
th...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/attempt-no-landing-there-yeah-
right-were-going-to-europa/)

------
jlubawy
I'm all for giving NASA more money for something that I assume is more
difficult given the distance, hopefully it's spent well.

------
sandworm101
Am I the only one thinking that the fastest way to "find life" will be remote
sensing? Imho, rather than throw billions at craft to sample dirt we should
put that money into telescopes to detect evidence of life. I'm tired of probes
staring at red rocks without ever finding anything interesting. I'd rather see
a dozen space telescopes measuring the spectra of every body possible. I don't
want microbes. I want to find dagobath.

------
gkanai
"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA

ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE".

