Missions could see NASA spacecraft heading to Uranus and Neptune(physics-astronomy.com)
physics-astronomy.com
Missions could see NASA spacecraft heading to Uranus and Neptune
http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2017/06/nasa-wants-to-probe-uranus-in-search-of.html
57 comments
I worked for a large bank that had decided to name the meeting rooms in their Paris office after planets.
If I was doing a meeting with Paris colleagues I always tried to book the Uranus room so I could start the meeting with HILARIOUS comments like:
"Are you talking from Uranus?"
"How many people are in Uranus today?"
If I was doing a meeting with Paris colleagues I always tried to book the Uranus room so I could start the meeting with HILARIOUS comments like:
"Are you talking from Uranus?"
"How many people are in Uranus today?"
Just curious, was the word pronounced the same way as today when they picked the planet's name? Or was it picked by non-English speaking people?
It sounds bad only in English and partly because of the foreign spelling. In Bulgarian it the name spells and reads “Uran”.
> In Bulgarian it the name spells and reads “Uran”
Uranus was discovered by British-Hanoverian William Herschel [1] and named after the Greek god of the sky, Οὐρανός [2], which anglifies to Ouranos.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus_(mythology)
Uranus was discovered by British-Hanoverian William Herschel [1] and named after the Greek god of the sky, Οὐρανός [2], which anglifies to Ouranos.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus_(mythology)
The comical pronunciation is only comical when Our-/Ur- as a prefix resembles a relevant word in your language. The second part of the joke comes from the greek spelling/pronunciation which is also not used by all countries/languages referring to the same planet.
Great video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ppbbYXMxE
It's still spelled "Uh-RAH-nus". Nothing has changed.
The unexpected EDI quip when doing so in Mass Effect 2 was worth a chuckle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-CDNLYZ0zA#t=15s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-CDNLYZ0zA#t=15s
Isn't it kind of impossible to know what there might be to learn there until you actually look?
I wait and hope for someone with more planetary knowledge than I have to explain the lack of interest in Venus as a habitable planet and thus the center of NASA's attention ahead of Neptune, Uranus, and of course, Mars.
Based on what I've read, which includes a paper from a NASA (or was it JPL?) engineer, Venus' surface is not very hospitabl, but at a certain altitude it looks like an oasis in the Solar System:
Venus (at ~50-55 km altitude) / Mars (surface): (all stats from Wikipedia, and yes not always complete or comparable)
* Gravity: 0.9G / 0.38G
* Pressure: ~1 atm / 0.00628 atm (prevents liquid water)
* Temperature: 27-75 deg C / -63 deg C (mean)
* Shortest distance from Earth (for logistics): 40M km / 55M km
* Sunlight (energy): More than Earth / 43% of Earth
Also, oxygen and nitrogen are lighter than the CO2-heavy atmosphere, so a balloon of O2 and N2 would float conveniently at 50 km. The CO2 in the atmosphere also could be a valuable resource.
Based on what I've read, which includes a paper from a NASA (or was it JPL?) engineer, Venus' surface is not very hospitabl, but at a certain altitude it looks like an oasis in the Solar System:
Venus (at ~50-55 km altitude) / Mars (surface): (all stats from Wikipedia, and yes not always complete or comparable)
* Gravity: 0.9G / 0.38G
* Pressure: ~1 atm / 0.00628 atm (prevents liquid water)
* Temperature: 27-75 deg C / -63 deg C (mean)
* Shortest distance from Earth (for logistics): 40M km / 55M km
* Sunlight (energy): More than Earth / 43% of Earth
Also, oxygen and nitrogen are lighter than the CO2-heavy atmosphere, so a balloon of O2 and N2 would float conveniently at 50 km. The CO2 in the atmosphere also could be a valuable resource.
I'm not an expert, but the wikipedia page alone doesn't paint that bright a picture.
> Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid.
We know very little about it. Also, I'm sure you'll need to coat any probes/spacecraft to protect against the sulfuric acid.
> The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.
So basically same chance of water (maybe worse) as Mars.
> Venus (at ~50-55 km altitude)
So we'd have to have floating habitats even if we knew this zone was actually habitable (it's still a sulfurous environment). This also means much higher energy costs along with other logistical challenges.
> Shortest distance from Earth (for logistics): 40M km / 55M km
Yeah, but you're fighting solar winds so the question is how much less are the energy costs. Also, from a logistics perspective, communication might be important & the unfriendly atmosphere may pose additional challenges/costs.
> Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid.
We know very little about it. Also, I'm sure you'll need to coat any probes/spacecraft to protect against the sulfuric acid.
> The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.
So basically same chance of water (maybe worse) as Mars.
> Venus (at ~50-55 km altitude)
So we'd have to have floating habitats even if we knew this zone was actually habitable (it's still a sulfurous environment). This also means much higher energy costs along with other logistical challenges.
> Shortest distance from Earth (for logistics): 40M km / 55M km
Yeah, but you're fighting solar winds so the question is how much less are the energy costs. Also, from a logistics perspective, communication might be important & the unfriendly atmosphere may pose additional challenges/costs.
However, an interesting aspect of floating habitats in the Venusian stratosphere is that a terrestrial breathable gas mix (80% N2 / 18% O2 / 2% trace others) is a lifting gas that's about as effective as Helium here on Earth. (Venus's atmosphere is > 90% carbon dioxide, which has a significantly higher molecular weight than air.) And it's protected from solar UV and radiation to a considerable extent by the layers of atmosphere above it. So your entire balloon -- or, more likely, dirigible airship -- can be inhabited volume, rather than just a cramped gondola slung underneath.
Photovoltaic power might sound problematic at first in view of the long Venusian night (a single day lasts up to 116 Earth days), but at altitude there are strong jet streams and winds circulate around the equator roughly every hundred hours. So you're not stuck running on battery power for months on end, but you may need some maneuvering capability.
This is not to minimize the problems associated with activity in the Venusian atmosphere -- but it's not quite the impossible hell-hole it's been portrayed as.
Photovoltaic power might sound problematic at first in view of the long Venusian night (a single day lasts up to 116 Earth days), but at altitude there are strong jet streams and winds circulate around the equator roughly every hundred hours. So you're not stuck running on battery power for months on end, but you may need some maneuvering capability.
This is not to minimize the problems associated with activity in the Venusian atmosphere -- but it's not quite the impossible hell-hole it's been portrayed as.
You'd be floating in a haze of CO2 and sulphuric acid garnished with hydrogen sulphide, battered by raging convective winds which would make it very hard indeed to stay at a fixed altitude - which means the outer temperature would fluctuate by 10C to 50C or so without massively powerful altitude control.
You can't just drift there as if you're in a hot air balloon eating sandwiches and enjoying the view.
Venus might not be completely impossible, but it's still one of the less hospitable destinations in the solar system.
Also, smelly because of the H2S.
You can't just drift there as if you're in a hot air balloon eating sandwiches and enjoying the view.
Venus might not be completely impossible, but it's still one of the less hospitable destinations in the solar system.
Also, smelly because of the H2S.
On the other hand, Mars requires you to live in a radiation-shielded pressure vessel.
I think the real killer is that it's hard to build and maintain infrastructure when floating on balloons - much easier to run a spaceport on Mars, or to get to all the useful surface resource deposits. On Venus you'd have to build literal castles in the air, using only only what you can pull out of the atmosphere or ship in from orbit.
Not to mention Mars is at the bottom of a much shallower gravity well.
I think the real killer is that it's hard to build and maintain infrastructure when floating on balloons - much easier to run a spaceport on Mars, or to get to all the useful surface resource deposits. On Venus you'd have to build literal castles in the air, using only only what you can pull out of the atmosphere or ship in from orbit.
Not to mention Mars is at the bottom of a much shallower gravity well.
Solar wind is a negligible factor in the trajectories of large-payload rockets - it's more of a radiation hazard that any interplanetary crewed mission has to deal with.
It's not the solar wind I'm worried about re: uranus.
The wind I'm concerned with portends very large payload rockets immanent arrival trajectories.
It's definitely stinkier than any hazard any interplanetary crewed mission has had to deal with, hitherto.
I hope this is connected, but how much oxygen would it take to sustain these craft? A cursory look seems to suggest that the ISS generates oxygen from water electrolysis, which generates about 20lbs of oxygen a day.
The big difference is you can fire off a rocket and get water to the ISS in comparatively shorter time and less fuel, which makes it feel much more challenging to get in the sky of Venus.
I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about here, but I'm thinking the continued challenges of floating -vs- hard ground will be very high. Plus we don't really have any direct experience with that, right?
The big difference is you can fire off a rocket and get water to the ISS in comparatively shorter time and less fuel, which makes it feel much more challenging to get in the sky of Venus.
I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about here, but I'm thinking the continued challenges of floating -vs- hard ground will be very high. Plus we don't really have any direct experience with that, right?
Water is on the order of 50 parts per million in that part of Venus's atmosphere which is pretty dry compared to Earth but still straightforward to extract from the air. In Venus's atmosphere you basically have all the Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Sulfur, and Argon you need and pretty good access to Helium, Neon, Chlorine, and Florine. It's everything else that's the problem, like Silicon or metals.
I can't speak to Neptune or Uranus, since they are so far out that even Jupiter and Saturn begin to feel more compelling due to Europa and Enceladus.
But in the debate about Mars vs Venus, for me two things stand out:
- We can kick off a Mars terraforming project with our current level of technology. I've heard it said that within a few hundred years we can get it so that all you need outside is thermal protection and an oxygen mask. Reversing the situation on Venus will basically take Star Trek level tech.
- You can leave your habitat on Mars, get some rocks, and pile those rocks up to make more habitat. On Venus, you will have to basically "drill" down to the surface to recover any materials, and I don't think you can easily build dirigibles out of rocks and atmosphere as easily as you can build a hut.
But in the debate about Mars vs Venus, for me two things stand out:
- We can kick off a Mars terraforming project with our current level of technology. I've heard it said that within a few hundred years we can get it so that all you need outside is thermal protection and an oxygen mask. Reversing the situation on Venus will basically take Star Trek level tech.
- You can leave your habitat on Mars, get some rocks, and pile those rocks up to make more habitat. On Venus, you will have to basically "drill" down to the surface to recover any materials, and I don't think you can easily build dirigibles out of rocks and atmosphere as easily as you can build a hut.
There are advantages to each and solid ground can be pretty useful. But Selenian Boondocks did an excellent series on how use Venus's resources a while back which I really have to share.
http://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/page/2/
http://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/page/2/
There is practically no advantage to living on Venus other than that you get gravity. The only local resources available are the atmosphere, and you need to create a floating habitat that is also an interplanetary spacecraft port. Frankly, that's actually pretty far outside our realm of technology at present.
Mars has many more advantages in comparison. For one you can build on the surface of the planet. There are many resources on Mars that can be exploited almost immediately and many others that can be exploited over a longer term: the atmosphere can be used to help produce rocket propellant, water can be used to aid in that as well. Things like iron/steel, glass, plastics, concrete, etc. can all be produced on Mars with a minimal industrial base within the first decade of colonization, with increasing quality and throughput over time. These things are important because they significantly advantage Martian colonies in terms of their ability to be partially self-sufficient and partially self-reliant in regards to expansion.
On Venus practically every ounce of material in the colony needs to be shipped from Earth, it's scarcely better than an orbital station. On Mars you can rely on local supplies for water, for propellant for the return trip, for fuel and oxidizer for ground machinery (mining vehicles) and emergency backup power. You can grow crops using Martian sunlight, Martian CO2, Martian water, Martian Nitrogen, and Martian soil. You can use solar energy for power and sunlight to grow crops as on Earth, the lower light levels are slightly misleading, Mars doesn't have routine cloud cover and has a thinner atmosphere so the average amount of watt-hours per area per day on Mars are very similar to what they are on Earth. You can use regolith for radiation shielding and in construction (building roads, for example). You can manufacture concrete, steel, glass, and plastics using local materials so that you can begin building things like habitats, industrial facilities, etc. using substantially locally produced materials while relying on Earth-produced components for only a subset of the mass of the things that get built, and an ever decreasing subset at that.
A Mars colony would be one that should grow in size and capabilities by leaps and bounds year over year as local industry and agriculture ramps up, as exploitation of local resources increases and improves, as techniques for making use of those local resources scale up and become increasingly sophisticated.
Venus just doesn't rate in comparison. Nobody has a design for how you'd build a floating habitat on Venus that would be reliable enough to trust for decades. One that could also serve as a spaceport for spaceships.
We have the technology to tackle Mars colonization now, it only requires following through on doing it. And Mars has the resources to make colonization a feasible concern that increases its ability to support a population, increases its level of technological sophistication, increases its industrial and agricultural base substantially every year, year after year, indefinitely. That's why Mars is such an attractive target. You can plant a civilization there in a way that you can't, with our level of technology, on the Moon or Venus.
Mars has many more advantages in comparison. For one you can build on the surface of the planet. There are many resources on Mars that can be exploited almost immediately and many others that can be exploited over a longer term: the atmosphere can be used to help produce rocket propellant, water can be used to aid in that as well. Things like iron/steel, glass, plastics, concrete, etc. can all be produced on Mars with a minimal industrial base within the first decade of colonization, with increasing quality and throughput over time. These things are important because they significantly advantage Martian colonies in terms of their ability to be partially self-sufficient and partially self-reliant in regards to expansion.
On Venus practically every ounce of material in the colony needs to be shipped from Earth, it's scarcely better than an orbital station. On Mars you can rely on local supplies for water, for propellant for the return trip, for fuel and oxidizer for ground machinery (mining vehicles) and emergency backup power. You can grow crops using Martian sunlight, Martian CO2, Martian water, Martian Nitrogen, and Martian soil. You can use solar energy for power and sunlight to grow crops as on Earth, the lower light levels are slightly misleading, Mars doesn't have routine cloud cover and has a thinner atmosphere so the average amount of watt-hours per area per day on Mars are very similar to what they are on Earth. You can use regolith for radiation shielding and in construction (building roads, for example). You can manufacture concrete, steel, glass, and plastics using local materials so that you can begin building things like habitats, industrial facilities, etc. using substantially locally produced materials while relying on Earth-produced components for only a subset of the mass of the things that get built, and an ever decreasing subset at that.
A Mars colony would be one that should grow in size and capabilities by leaps and bounds year over year as local industry and agriculture ramps up, as exploitation of local resources increases and improves, as techniques for making use of those local resources scale up and become increasingly sophisticated.
Venus just doesn't rate in comparison. Nobody has a design for how you'd build a floating habitat on Venus that would be reliable enough to trust for decades. One that could also serve as a spaceport for spaceships.
We have the technology to tackle Mars colonization now, it only requires following through on doing it. And Mars has the resources to make colonization a feasible concern that increases its ability to support a population, increases its level of technological sophistication, increases its industrial and agricultural base substantially every year, year after year, indefinitely. That's why Mars is such an attractive target. You can plant a civilization there in a way that you can't, with our level of technology, on the Moon or Venus.
> There is practically no advantage to living on Venus other than that you get gravity.
Ambient pressure is a huge advantage: Liquid water doesn't boil away,
Ambient pressure is a huge advantage: Liquid water doesn't boil away,
That just means you can build your pressure vessels much lighter. But you can't not have your habitat built out of pressure vessels, people can't breathe pure CO2.
>> and you need to create a floating habitat that is also an interplanetary spacecraft port. Frankly, that's actually pretty far outside our realm of technology at present.
You just pretty much described the ISS, but I get your point. That's in orbit around Earth. :P
You just pretty much described the ISS, but I get your point. That's in orbit around Earth. :P
The ISS isn't floating, it's in freefall. We've been doing rendezvous in freefall for half a century. Launching out of a deep gravity well at 0.9g means a rocket operating with a tremendous amount of thrust and a launch pad (or area) for the rocket to take off from. Making a precision landing through atmosphere from interplanetary cruise onto a floating platform is also very difficult. SpaceX has managed to achieve something similar but much less challenging and with much lower stakes and it requires a vessel that uses thousands of tonnes of concrete and steel.
Outward Bound: Colonizing Venus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-old7YI4I
Caution: don't click unless you have nothing else to do today.
Caution: don't click unless you have nothing else to do today.
Coincidentally this week Fermat's Library highlighted a paper about the Voyager mission, the only spacecraft (Voyager 2) to visit Uranus and Neptune.
Super interesting paper. Turns out Voyager was the first spacecraft that could be reprogrammed "mid flight". In fact, if it wasn't for that we would have not gotten back images of Uranus or Neptune!
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/voyager-mission-telecommunicati...
Super interesting paper. Turns out Voyager was the first spacecraft that could be reprogrammed "mid flight". In fact, if it wasn't for that we would have not gotten back images of Uranus or Neptune!
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/voyager-mission-telecommunicati...
I can't in good faith upvote a story on a website that has more junk advertisement then content per character and has stories like "VOYAGER 2 MAY HAVE BEEN HACKED AS IT ENTERED DEEP SPACE" featured next to this.
The title of this linked article is "NASA Wants To Probe Uranus In Search Of Gas
"
"
I'm glad, we really need to better understand how the Ice Giants[1] in our solar system work.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_giant
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_giant
Title gore.
Cancel SLS. Cancel Orion.
Mass produce satellites and space station modules instead.
Mass produce satellites and space station modules instead.
These programs for NASA are just as much a job creation program as it is a mission.
I think with Trump the easiest sell would be more American manufacturing than a Uranus mission.
I think with Trump the easiest sell would be more American manufacturing than a Uranus mission.
Constellation/SLS was important when there wasn't a commercial launch market because the programs maintained technical and manufacturing know-how.
Now that there are several competitive and reliable commercial launch providers who maintain that know-how, we need to stop subsidizing bloated defense contractors and instead spend that money on buying launches and making satellites.
Now that there are several competitive and reliable commercial launch providers who maintain that know-how, we need to stop subsidizing bloated defense contractors and instead spend that money on buying launches and making satellites.
Why would the US give up all of their launch capabilities to private companies? From a strategic point of view it’s not a good approach. I’m sure someone in Washington is making a similar case.
I agree there should be a balence but NASA shouldn’t have to solely rely on the likes of Space X. Bloated defense contractors are a symptom of the problem, look at the scope creep of the F35.
Is it the government contractors or unclear/ever changing requirements?
I agree there should be a balence but NASA shouldn’t have to solely rely on the likes of Space X. Bloated defense contractors are a symptom of the problem, look at the scope creep of the F35.
Is it the government contractors or unclear/ever changing requirements?
I don't know that NASA has ever built a heavy launch system in-house without contractor help.
What's missing is a few more start-ups like SpaceX to totally crowd out the likes of Boeing from the contractor feeding trough.
What's missing is a few more start-ups like SpaceX to totally crowd out the likes of Boeing from the contractor feeding trough.
No they don’t build in house. Like I said it’s as much of a job creation program as it is a space one.
Why did the US give up all their airplane manufacturing capabilities to private companies?
You are confused on what I am saying. They shouldn’t just rely on booking flights with some private company.
They will never build in house and never have. Just like the military some large contractor will build the plane or spaceship according to their specs.
Boeing doesn’t create a figther jet and then sell it to someone. If space goes private it would be like this.
They will never build in house and never have. Just like the military some large contractor will build the plane or spaceship according to their specs.
Boeing doesn’t create a figther jet and then sell it to someone. If space goes private it would be like this.
I really do wish NASA had a focus. The 60s showed the power of NASA given a clear goal and direction, but now a days they feel like they're operating a mile wide and an inch deep.
Probes are great, but I think many overestimate the amount of information they can genuinely provide. Even on Mars where we have had multiple rovers on the surface, there are still ongoing debates about things such as whether the streaks on the planet's surface are water, which NASA made a large announcement of, or indeed just sand which is where the latest interpretation stands. And that's for a very peaceful and close planet (in comparison to Uranus or Neptune) that we ostensibly have a great understanding of.
I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards - a base on the moon, a base on mars, expanding the ISS, or anything - preferably with a human element as that's what attracts people to space, and thus gets the money to make these missions become reality. But these probes are not really advancing society.
And here I would make an exception for things like the Kepler missions. Those were a directed mission with a specific, valuable, and new purpose that could (and did) provide information that substantially advanced society. Let's go shoot some probes off around Uranus and Neptune and grab some pics and atmospheric readings is better than nothing but it feels like spending funding for the sake of spending funding.
Probes are great, but I think many overestimate the amount of information they can genuinely provide. Even on Mars where we have had multiple rovers on the surface, there are still ongoing debates about things such as whether the streaks on the planet's surface are water, which NASA made a large announcement of, or indeed just sand which is where the latest interpretation stands. And that's for a very peaceful and close planet (in comparison to Uranus or Neptune) that we ostensibly have a great understanding of.
I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards - a base on the moon, a base on mars, expanding the ISS, or anything - preferably with a human element as that's what attracts people to space, and thus gets the money to make these missions become reality. But these probes are not really advancing society.
And here I would make an exception for things like the Kepler missions. Those were a directed mission with a specific, valuable, and new purpose that could (and did) provide information that substantially advanced society. Let's go shoot some probes off around Uranus and Neptune and grab some pics and atmospheric readings is better than nothing but it feels like spending funding for the sake of spending funding.
Not a down voter, but: This isn't accurate. Planetary science (as in the OP) tends to be more diverse and exploratory than Earth or Astrophysics, but it still has a strategy. It's not just stamp collecting. See: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/focus-areas
I'm not sure what your link is supposed to show?
Well, you wondered,
"I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards..."
and that link shows the basic four orienting science questions (right panel in blue text) - how did life begin, how did the solar system evolve, how did the planets originate, etc.
Those are the top-level questions that the National Academies panel doing the Decadal Survey arrived at and that motivates the portfolio of planetary missions that are planned. I would have linked to the Decadal Survey (overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Surv...), but the report itself is a very long pdf - and this gets into the strategy in detail.
For instance, the next Mars mission (Mars 2020) is set up to address the "life" question, and the "how did the planet [Mars] evolve" question, etc.
"I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards..."
and that link shows the basic four orienting science questions (right panel in blue text) - how did life begin, how did the solar system evolve, how did the planets originate, etc.
Those are the top-level questions that the National Academies panel doing the Decadal Survey arrived at and that motivates the portfolio of planetary missions that are planned. I would have linked to the Decadal Survey (overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Surv...), but the report itself is a very long pdf - and this gets into the strategy in detail.
For instance, the next Mars mission (Mars 2020) is set up to address the "life" question, and the "how did the planet [Mars] evolve" question, etc.
And as an aside, one of the most important experiments for next Mars mission will be MOXIE. It's a proof of concept in generating oxygen from atmospheric CO2. It won't be ground breaking or exploring unknown territory, but it will advance society by proving yet another critical step in the process of getting people on Mars. And I think these things, if people understood the implications, are how we start advancing civilization and simultaneously also getting more people interested in science and technology because if people actually understood how close we are to things like actually colonizing other planets, it's incredibly exciting - and I could think of nothing more fulfilling than playing a role in this critical evolution of our species.
Do you know what the Uranus probe's goals are? They're laid out here [1]. It's to measure wind speed and atmospheric densities/temperatures. And that is typical. This is what I was getting at when I said that these probes do not achieve near what many people seem to think they can. We have a limited budget and I think this budget should be directed towards things that can advance us in the most meaningful ways possible. Measuring the wind speed and density on Uranus does not really fit the bill there.
Think about SpaceX. What they've done should have been impossible. A private company operating on a shoestring budget revolutionized space in 15 years? That doesn't mean Musk is a genius, it means that our current space system is simply incompetent. There are certainly many reasons for this, including congress using NASA as a jobs program, but I think a lack of direction is also a major reason. 'Discovering how life began and evolved on Earth' as a mission statement is like a philsopher stating his goal is to 'discover the meaning of existence.' It's a goal that's so impossible and so broad that anything can be justified in its name.
'Easier' goals are in many ways much harder since you need to remain focused. And when NASA has focus they, at least in the past, have shown themselves capable of amazing things. Going from having never even put a man in orbit, to putting a man on the moon in a decade? Think about that, if you even can. In today's times that should seem completely unbelievable. And we should be capable of exponentially more now a days. And that is where we should set our sights. The point I'm getting at is that if you aim low, that's always where you're going to hit. Aim high and you might miss, but at least you're pointed in the right direction.
---
As one brief aside, those mission statements immediately made me think of Oumuamua [2] -- that cylindrical weird interstellar object (it's exact nature is, and will likely remain unknown - the name translates to 'first scout', as the imagination might imagine) currently looping around the sun on its pass through and on its way out of our solar system. Being able to get ships and ideally humans onto that thing would be groundbreaking and actually go a long ways towards pushing those mission statements, abstract though they may be, forward. But our space program and technology is so backwards and dated that we're instead left watching jaws agape as arguably the single most relevant tracked celestial object lackadaisically (...as lackadaisical as 30km/s can be) laps us on its way on out of our solar system. It's again absurd that the primary interest in trying to perform an intercept with this object has come from the private industry. But hey, at least we'll know the wind speed in Uranus...
[1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua
Think about SpaceX. What they've done should have been impossible. A private company operating on a shoestring budget revolutionized space in 15 years? That doesn't mean Musk is a genius, it means that our current space system is simply incompetent. There are certainly many reasons for this, including congress using NASA as a jobs program, but I think a lack of direction is also a major reason. 'Discovering how life began and evolved on Earth' as a mission statement is like a philsopher stating his goal is to 'discover the meaning of existence.' It's a goal that's so impossible and so broad that anything can be justified in its name.
'Easier' goals are in many ways much harder since you need to remain focused. And when NASA has focus they, at least in the past, have shown themselves capable of amazing things. Going from having never even put a man in orbit, to putting a man on the moon in a decade? Think about that, if you even can. In today's times that should seem completely unbelievable. And we should be capable of exponentially more now a days. And that is where we should set our sights. The point I'm getting at is that if you aim low, that's always where you're going to hit. Aim high and you might miss, but at least you're pointed in the right direction.
---
As one brief aside, those mission statements immediately made me think of Oumuamua [2] -- that cylindrical weird interstellar object (it's exact nature is, and will likely remain unknown - the name translates to 'first scout', as the imagination might imagine) currently looping around the sun on its pass through and on its way out of our solar system. Being able to get ships and ideally humans onto that thing would be groundbreaking and actually go a long ways towards pushing those mission statements, abstract though they may be, forward. But our space program and technology is so backwards and dated that we're instead left watching jaws agape as arguably the single most relevant tracked celestial object lackadaisically (...as lackadaisical as 30km/s can be) laps us on its way on out of our solar system. It's again absurd that the primary interest in trying to perform an intercept with this object has come from the private industry. But hey, at least we'll know the wind speed in Uranus...
[1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua
The instrument you link (I actually do know one of the co-authors on the paper you reference) isn't a full-up mission focused on the wind speed issue. It's one instrument that would be part of a larger flagship mission (i.e., many instruments on one spacecraft). When you put all the instruments together on a spacecraft, maybe you learn more about the history of Uranus. Isn't "send an orbiter to Uranus" a goal?
You mention the ambiguity of the animating goals. Part of this is just linguistic: of course you want to push down these top-level goals to more granular, 0/1 goals ("was there an ancient lake at this site on Mars?" Answer: yes). That's what the NAS report does. Now that we know how abundant water was on ancient Mars, we'd like to return samples to see if there was life. That's the next couple of missions.
You raise a worthwhile point, I think, about immediately-graspable 0/1 goals, like "man on moon". I see your point - but I'm really only here to talk about the unmanned program because my limited expertise covers part of that area.
You like SpaceX. So do I - two good friends left my lab to work there. But their achievement ("revolutionized space") is not unique. The little Mars pathfinder had about that much history. There are plenty of other examples over the same time period, like exoplanet discovery (as you noted), cosmology, and a host of Earth science stuff.
You mention the ambiguity of the animating goals. Part of this is just linguistic: of course you want to push down these top-level goals to more granular, 0/1 goals ("was there an ancient lake at this site on Mars?" Answer: yes). That's what the NAS report does. Now that we know how abundant water was on ancient Mars, we'd like to return samples to see if there was life. That's the next couple of missions.
You raise a worthwhile point, I think, about immediately-graspable 0/1 goals, like "man on moon". I see your point - but I'm really only here to talk about the unmanned program because my limited expertise covers part of that area.
You like SpaceX. So do I - two good friends left my lab to work there. But their achievement ("revolutionized space") is not unique. The little Mars pathfinder had about that much history. There are plenty of other examples over the same time period, like exoplanet discovery (as you noted), cosmology, and a host of Earth science stuff.
You definitely make some good points. I think my issue here is not so much just the goal orientation, but rather goals that will directly advance other interests simultaneously. Again getting back to the point that funding since funding is limited, it seems like it would make the most sense to think of the big picture with that funding rather than thinking in the short term of what would be neat to do with their current funding?
So to make this more clear, one reason I think what SpaceX has already achieved and especially what they plan to achieve is so revolutionary is because of how it would impact other programs. Like you mention one of NASA's big goals is a sample return mission. And this is going to be highly complex and highly expensive. The OSIRIS-REx mission mission is a billion dollar, 7 year mission to get 0.1-2kg of debris from an asteroid that comes within 0.0002AU of Earth with a 6 year period. That's really not reasonable. These missions would be trivialized with technologies such as the BFR. Such technology would also enable vastly greater scope and scale of these sort of missions. A Uranus orbiter will provide some science that might have some value, but it's not really advancing anything. The chance of revolutionary discovery is practically 0, and it will be unlikely to have a meaningful effect on future missions or projects.
Basically it feels quite odd that we're using technology that is comparable in both price and capability to what we were using the 70s. It's quite peculiar, and I think this has been the major hold up in us achieving much more in space. Imagine for a minute that it's 1969. We've just seen live footage of men walking and driving rovers on the moon. And I tell you that in 50 years NASA's vision for a flagship mission will be sending a probe to Uranus. And no man would ever leave low earth orbit again after 1972. Wouldn't you say something has gone very wrong? And this wrongness continues to persist, and I think it is because of this 'Well I have $x. What should I spend it all on?' as opposed to aiming for directed evolution and progress.
So to make this more clear, one reason I think what SpaceX has already achieved and especially what they plan to achieve is so revolutionary is because of how it would impact other programs. Like you mention one of NASA's big goals is a sample return mission. And this is going to be highly complex and highly expensive. The OSIRIS-REx mission mission is a billion dollar, 7 year mission to get 0.1-2kg of debris from an asteroid that comes within 0.0002AU of Earth with a 6 year period. That's really not reasonable. These missions would be trivialized with technologies such as the BFR. Such technology would also enable vastly greater scope and scale of these sort of missions. A Uranus orbiter will provide some science that might have some value, but it's not really advancing anything. The chance of revolutionary discovery is practically 0, and it will be unlikely to have a meaningful effect on future missions or projects.
Basically it feels quite odd that we're using technology that is comparable in both price and capability to what we were using the 70s. It's quite peculiar, and I think this has been the major hold up in us achieving much more in space. Imagine for a minute that it's 1969. We've just seen live footage of men walking and driving rovers on the moon. And I tell you that in 50 years NASA's vision for a flagship mission will be sending a probe to Uranus. And no man would ever leave low earth orbit again after 1972. Wouldn't you say something has gone very wrong? And this wrongness continues to persist, and I think it is because of this 'Well I have $x. What should I spend it all on?' as opposed to aiming for directed evolution and progress.
All jokes aside, these missions are still pretty far off and article doesn't really go into depth of what this research can help accomplish for future generations. Thoughts?