I'm really exited about Dragonfly, as Titan is a world not too different from ours: it gas lakes and rivers (made out of hydrocarbons, like methane), dunes and mountains
lucaslazarus 2 days ago [-]
All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
hn_submit 2 days ago [-]
I can't imagine aliens being so stupid to claim part of our Solar System. To me this would become a giant bullseye.
Muhammad523 1 days ago [-]
Aliens who are from the solar system have the right to claim their planet for themselves, just as we did
manquer 2 days ago [-]
Europa could have some Europeans in it ; or extra solar aliens who can only survive in its climate so don’t care about rest of the system
King-Aaron 2 days ago [-]
What if hypothetically they had claimed it before us.
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
Then they’d better be prepared to defend it.
King-Aaron 2 days ago [-]
I'd presume a species capable of interstellar travel would find that fairly trivial
Europa clipper launched 2 years ago arrives in 2030. DAVINCI, a Venusian probe, is slated net 2033
GolfPopper 2 days ago [-]
BepiColombo, another joint ESA-JAXA mission, will enter orbit around Mercury next month after a longer-than-expected journey. It will be the third spacecraft to visit Mercury.
There might be others, those are just what I found in a quick search.
hparadiz 2 days ago [-]
Sample return from Venus is practically impossible with our current tech.
hn_submit 2 days ago [-]
I suggest Terraforming Venus with microbes or extremophiles.
And to hell with the "planetary protection" treaty. We need "lebensraum"! Our females want to breed!
kridsdale1 2 days ago [-]
Venus needs men!
1 days ago [-]
TGower 2 days ago [-]
JAXA does great work, they also publish the highest resolution open access global surface elevation model. Really impressive for a country with about 1/10th the GDP of the US.
I wonder how this mission compares in scale to the JAXA Hayabusa comet interceptor done twenty years ago.
numpad0 1 days ago [-]
4 ton launch mass, so 8x mass increase against Og Hayabusa probe(510kg). About 5.4x Satrlink V2 mini sats.
The OG Hayabusa was tiny as it was on the M-V 3-stage all-solid launcher with just 1.85t to LEO of max payload. This one was on H3-24L with up to 16t to LEO(91% of an F9 ASDS) so it's bigger accordingly.
tommykins 1 days ago [-]
My annual thing I can genuinely comment on in relation to hackernews. This is fucking so cool, I simply cannot tell you how rare it is we get primary material to do anything with.
johnea 2 days ago [-]
This is good space science.
Unlike iPhone selfies around the moon, or golf on mars.
Manned space missions are very rarely justified in the modern era.
An unmanned probe doing science for 20 years, or a one shot influenza photo op.
The cost is about the same...
fooker 1 days ago [-]
It is important to get people excited about science, and inspire the next generation of scientists rather than choose the cheapest path to ‘good science’.
Without public support, you’ll soon find yourself without any funding. This pretty much explains NASA’s dire funding situation over the last thirty or so years.
You can only get so many people excited about weather balloons and space rock chemistry.
dyauspitr 2 days ago [-]
> Manned space missions are very rarely justified in the modern era.
Unless you want to be interplanetary
autuni 1 days ago [-]
I'm not an expert, but in my mind if you actually want to make the human species interplanetary, flying small groups of people to the planet won't do anything for it. Send robots to build a base first, and yes that will take a long time. Otherwise you'll just be a species that visited other planets. (which would already be cool though obviously)
manquer 2 days ago [-]
Depends on your definition of you .
If it means life , then We don’t need humans to make life interplanetary at all; that is least efficient way to go about it ; we should instead design/choose lifeforms that are most likely to survive the target environment not depend on brittle/expensive life support technology to spread life through the system.
If the you is intelligence , then spreading AI could be a better approach rather than humans who are unlikely to be able evolve to survive in a hostile environment naturally anytime soon.
Humans in our current form in space is always going to expensive tourism no matter how much science fiction likes to pretend otherwise .
adrian_b 1 days ago [-]
It would be very expensive, but not impossible, to make big enough spaceships in which to have suitable life conditions for humans in our current form, including gravity at the terrestrial level and radiation shielding.
Living inside huge spaceships, orbiting around some planets, where everything needed for a permanent stay should be provided, is a far more plausible way for humans to expand in the Solar System, than living on the surface of any planet or satellite of the Solar System.
The experiments with mice on the ISS have indicated that, at least for them, the gravity level at which no health problems appear is around two thirds of the Earth level, and at least one third of the Earth level is needed to avoid very serious health problems. Humans might support a somewhat lower gravity level than mice, but it is not likely that the difference is great.
Except perhaps when floating in the atmosphere of Venus, there is no place in the Solar System where the gravity is suitable for long term living. On the other hand, in a rotating spaceship the gravity level can be adjusted to whatever value is desired. One could build a rotating part also in an underground base, but unlike in a spaceship that would consume energy continuously.
manquer 16 hours ago [-]
> very expensive
That is exactly my point, Human life supporting environments are great for tourism or experimental research missions where return on investment is not a critical factor.
Sending humans is not economically scalable option and cannot be ever cheaper than small carbon (or silicon based) based bots/organisms are the ones who can actually spread some version of life in the solar system and beyond.
---
This is same dynamics in fighter plane or submarines at smaller scale. We will get an interregnum period where the drones would be pitched that multiply/augment the ability of the pilot as in some proposed 6th generation designs.
This only serves mostly to get to the current crop of pilots and leadership to sign-up on a new program, 7th generation will be purely only drones. The full switch will happen when some rival Air Force will develop/skip to drone only 7th gen and the U.S. would have to catch up if not lead it. Submarines are also in the similar trajectory.
johnea 22 hours ago [-]
Given that we're not living in Johnny Quest, let's get over the fictional thinking and focus on real life.
If you want to "live on mars", just bury a cargo container in the Nevada desert and move in.
You'll have the advantages of significantly reduced cosmic radiation, and the grocery store is much closer...
Venus and Europa could use some attention. Anything underway?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ice-war-on-europa-warforever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BepiColombo
For Europa, Europa Clipper Mission (already on the way): https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/mission-time...
... and JUICE (already on the way): https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice
There might be others, those are just what I found in a quick search.
And to hell with the "planetary protection" treaty. We need "lebensraum"! Our females want to breed!
(Minor spoilers for The Expanse, word Protomolecule means something there.)
The OG Hayabusa was tiny as it was on the M-V 3-stage all-solid launcher with just 1.85t to LEO of max payload. This one was on H3-24L with up to 16t to LEO(91% of an F9 ASDS) so it's bigger accordingly.
Unlike iPhone selfies around the moon, or golf on mars.
Manned space missions are very rarely justified in the modern era.
An unmanned probe doing science for 20 years, or a one shot influenza photo op.
The cost is about the same...
Without public support, you’ll soon find yourself without any funding. This pretty much explains NASA’s dire funding situation over the last thirty or so years.
You can only get so many people excited about weather balloons and space rock chemistry.
Unless you want to be interplanetary
If it means life , then We don’t need humans to make life interplanetary at all; that is least efficient way to go about it ; we should instead design/choose lifeforms that are most likely to survive the target environment not depend on brittle/expensive life support technology to spread life through the system.
If the you is intelligence , then spreading AI could be a better approach rather than humans who are unlikely to be able evolve to survive in a hostile environment naturally anytime soon.
Humans in our current form in space is always going to expensive tourism no matter how much science fiction likes to pretend otherwise .
Living inside huge spaceships, orbiting around some planets, where everything needed for a permanent stay should be provided, is a far more plausible way for humans to expand in the Solar System, than living on the surface of any planet or satellite of the Solar System.
The experiments with mice on the ISS have indicated that, at least for them, the gravity level at which no health problems appear is around two thirds of the Earth level, and at least one third of the Earth level is needed to avoid very serious health problems. Humans might support a somewhat lower gravity level than mice, but it is not likely that the difference is great.
Except perhaps when floating in the atmosphere of Venus, there is no place in the Solar System where the gravity is suitable for long term living. On the other hand, in a rotating spaceship the gravity level can be adjusted to whatever value is desired. One could build a rotating part also in an underground base, but unlike in a spaceship that would consume energy continuously.
That is exactly my point, Human life supporting environments are great for tourism or experimental research missions where return on investment is not a critical factor.
Sending humans is not economically scalable option and cannot be ever cheaper than small carbon (or silicon based) based bots/organisms are the ones who can actually spread some version of life in the solar system and beyond.
---
This is same dynamics in fighter plane or submarines at smaller scale. We will get an interregnum period where the drones would be pitched that multiply/augment the ability of the pilot as in some proposed 6th generation designs.
This only serves mostly to get to the current crop of pilots and leadership to sign-up on a new program, 7th generation will be purely only drones. The full switch will happen when some rival Air Force will develop/skip to drone only 7th gen and the U.S. would have to catch up if not lead it. Submarines are also in the similar trajectory.
If you want to "live on mars", just bury a cargo container in the Nevada desert and move in.
You'll have the advantages of significantly reduced cosmic radiation, and the grocery store is much closer...