Re: Cassini-Huygens Mission status report

From: Christopher M. Jones (marmiteNOTSPAM_at_dualboot.net)
Date: 06/01/04 

Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 18:17:32 -0500

Mike Flugennock wrote:
> OM <om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research_facility.org> wrote in message news:<sqmob0dul1cnedf54sp1njdbcc7laff86h@4ax.com>...
>
>>On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 08:03:45 +0100, Jonathan Silverlight
>><jsilverlight@spam.merseia.fsnet.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>>...Again, leave it to the Old World to prove it no longer has the
>>balls or the brains to be adventureous anymore. The cancellation of
>>that particular mission totally annihilated any amount of respect I
>>have for ESA and it's purseholders...
>
>
> D'ah, man, c'mon. "Old World", like "Old Europe". Man, that's weak.
> "Old Europe" has been taking a bunch of chances on some seriously
> capable interplanetary probes while ISS has been going around in
> circles and giving a big science fair. Hell, I never thought I'd see
> the day when I was more excited about robotic missions than manned. I
> mean, I'll _always_ be excited about manned spaceflight, but they've
> got to get up and _go_somewhere_, already.

Apples and oranges. ESA is part of ISS too. If you
want to compare manned to manned or robotic to robotic,
be my guest. But the fact that the ESA has managed
precisely two successful interplanetary missions in its
entire lifetime (Giotto and Mars Express) and has only
recently started upping the pace, whereas NASA has
managed five successfull missions for Mars alone within
only the last decade (including three successful rover
missions) does not speak highly of the ESA's
capabilities or its member countries' dedications to
space exploration. Especially considering that the
ESA member countries have a combined GDP roughly on
par with that of the US.

And "chances", not many that I've seen. A few, perhaps,
but not enough with a reasonable amount of support to
merit much credit.

>>Idiots...
>
>
> Hey, c'mon. What do you want? They're putting a lander on Titan RSN.
> The Mars Express Orbiter's not only returning pictures that make me
> drool all over my keyboard, but they got Beagle2 where it had to be,
> piss-poor planning, etc. by the Beagle folks notwithstanding (don't
> bust ESA's nuts for _that_).

I don't, but you KNOW that the ESA would have grabbed
some of the credit if Beagle-2 would have succeeded,
even though it was not their mission.

> Still, a Mercury lander. ***, that would've been nice. Talk about
> your "magnificent desolation". No ambient sunlight problem _there_,
> I'd bet.
>
> So, any theoretical bets on whether or not a Mercury lander would
> survive any longer than a Venera? Seems that'd be a place where
> forcible conversion of the spacecraft into semi-molten slag would
> become a _really_ serious issue.

You gotta consider the thermal dynamics. Venus is a
really hard problem because there's just so much heat
to deal with, 60 bars of superheated atmosphere is a
heck of a lot of heat energy to reckon with, and it
touches your spacecraft *everywhere*. And then
there's the wind and whatnot keeping the air that same
temperature no matter what kind of cooling you bring
along. But Mercury you just have to deal with the Sun
(same problem as with an orbiter, solvable) and contact
with the ground, which can be handled pretty easily
with a couple insulated legs, if that, since regolith
isn't that great a heat conductor. The trick is making
everything small enough and light enough to bring the
spacecraft in on the budgets.

All that aside, you can always just put it in the shade
or semi-shade, since Mercury has a slow rotation rate.
But that might make seeing things a bit difficult. If
you brought along an RTG and a spot-light then you'd be
set though.

Just for fun I'll toss out this: what about a Mercury
rover? Now that I'd really like to see.

Quantcast