RE: Which space mission would you choose?
March 24, 2017 at 1:32 pm
(This post was last modified: March 24, 2017 at 1:41 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(March 24, 2017 at 12:54 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Manned mission to mars. Send the WLB after he is impeached for treason.
Not at $100000 per pound. Better to use the weight for valuable instruments, and leave WLB directly under the booster nozzle.
(March 24, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Alex K Wrote: I had to choose Manned mission to Mars, but submarine on Europa is a very strong second, if not #1.
A manned mission to mars can probably fund 50 autonomous under-ice submersible vehicles for Europa.
I guess you will have to put a radioactive thermal source of the submersible strong enough to let the submersible use its weight to melt through the ice, while spooling out a cable behind it up to the surface for communication with an orbiter. You have to make sure about finding ice patches that is stable enough so once the hole freezes over, The ice won't tectonically fractual and shear the cable.
Probably should send a few surface probes first that can use sonar to figure out how thick is the ice, how deep is the liquid layer, what happens at the interface between ice and water, and between water and underlying, presumably lithic, geology.
