The one space mission you'd most like to see in your lifetime

[wumpus]

On 1/29/2020 at 2:06 AM, tater said:

Well, the launch loop concept is certainly interesting, but the chances of it being built seem... slim.

Spinlaunch seems to be at least somewhat funded, so might even loose a payload in a suborbital test (I don't think they plan on giving the final "launch" enough delta-v to go suborbital, so presumably the rocket will be doing most of the work even then). 

I don't think there's even enough in this project for someone like Northrup Grumman (was Orbital-ATK, was Orbital) to buy them and others at bankruptcy prices and put something together (NG might be doing something with Stratolaunch...).  There's way too many small launchers for not very much money, and I'd expect that this is the real competition for Rocket Labs (zombie competitors without all the debt needed to fund the R&D to get there).

[Just Jim]

I don't want to see so much a particular mission as I do an event... Whether it's Europa, Enceladus... even Titan... I hope I live long enough for us to find something alive... somewhere.
I don't care what mission, or if it's some weird Titan bacteria, or a crazy alien Enceli-fish (how cool would that be???)... I hope I'm around to see it

[StrandedonEarth]

You know what? I’d be happy just to see some sort of ‘lith-moving equipment doing some lunascaping...

[kerbiloid]

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by kerbiloid

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

You know what? I’d be happy just to see some sort of ‘lith-moving equipment doing some lunascaping...

I can't wait for that ski lift up Tycho's central peak and the walking trail around that boulder.

[NSEP]

I'd love to see humans land back on the moon, in 4k.

[The Blazer]

We've already been on the Moon, it  won't be much different than what you saw on the 60-70's, only higher technology and resolution. A Mars mission is something I truly want to see, cause, with NASA budget dropping each year, a mission to the Outer planets is very unlikely to happen.

[Flying dutchman]

Titan dragonfly mission

[K^2]

4 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

Titan dragonfly mission

Was just about to say. Not only is it one of the coolest unmanned missions planned, but I expect we'll find a lot of interesting things. Fingers crossed for a methane-dwelling extremophile chemotroph, but even baring that, the chemistry of the methane lakes must be something quite unique.

[Bill Phil]

On 2/6/2020 at 10:24 AM, The Blazer said:

We've already been on the Moon, it  won't be much different than what you saw on the 60-70's, only higher technology and resolution. A Mars mission is something I truly want to see, cause, with NASA budget dropping each year, a mission to the Outer planets is very unlikely to happen.

12 people, only 1 of which was an actual scientist.

We’ve barely been to the Moon at all.

[Flying dutchman]

5 hours ago, K^2 said:

Was just about to say. Not only is it one of the coolest unmanned missions planned, but I expect we'll find a lot of interesting things. Fingers crossed for a methane-dwelling extremophile chemotroph, but even baring that, the chemistry of the methane lakes must be something quite unique.

I wonder how feasible methane based life is. Because tbh i have no Idea.

[Cheif Operations Director]

Hmm this is difficult, but I would want to see a push to study the possible life carrying moons in the outer solar system. I also think some more interstellar probes that are designed to operate for hundreds of years could be something useful while we develop better propulsion technology. But that is a dream and not going to happen for realistic reasons... But ehh that is the subject of the thread after all. 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Flying dutchman said:

I wonder how feasible methane based life is. Because tbh i have no Idea.

Not exactly about the methane-based life, but facing similar problems.
https://humanrightsareanimalrights.com/2018/07/24/how-to-be-vegan-in-the-arctic/
The key picture from there, making to cry/smile:

Probably the methane-based life is as feasible as banana eaters in tundra. Feasible with imported banana.

1. Chemical reaction rate is proportional to temperature.
So, the cryogenic life would be veeery slooow.
This means they hardly an react on the weather changes (depending mostly on gravitation and insolation), are poor hunters and gatherers, and probably should be filtrators or eat motionless junk.

2. The water is an anomal substance which is denser when liquid than when solid. So, the water ice gets up and makes a protective cover on top of a pool, and the bottom of the pool stays liquid, unchanged, and stable all year long.
The methane ice is denser than the liquid methane, so the methane pool gets frozen from bottom.

So, a cryogenic life is same bad as both hunters and plants, and can exist only in local stable oases on the bottom of an eternally liquid pool, so they can be only chemosynthetic, but their chemosynthesis is rather slow due to the cryogenic temperatures. Some scattered colored spots in ice, incomparable even to bacteria.

It's bad to be a methane life.

Edited February 8, 2020 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

On 2/8/2020 at 10:31 AM, kerbiloid said:

Not exactly about the methane-based life, but facing similar problems.
https://humanrightsareanimalrights.com/2018/07/24/how-to-be-vegan-in-the-arctic/
The key picture from there, making to cry/smile:

Probably the methane-based life is as feasible as banana eaters in tundra. Feasible with imported banana.

1. Chemical reaction rate is proportional to temperature.
So, the cryogenic life would be veeery slooow.
This means they hardly an react on the weather changes (depending mostly on gravitation and insolation), are poor hunters and gatherers, and probably should be filtrators or eat motionless junk.

2. The water is an anomal substance which is denser when liquid than when solid. So, the water ice gets up and makes a protective cover on top of a pool, and the bottom of the pool stays liquid, unchanged, and stable all year long.
The methane ice is denser than the liquid methane, so the methane pool gets frozen from bottom.

So, a cryogenic life is same bad as both hunters and plants, and can exist only in local stable oases on the bottom of an eternally liquid pool, so they can be only chemosynthetic, but their chemosynthesis is rather slow due to the cryogenic temperatures. Some scattered colored spots in ice, incomparable even to bacteria.

It's bad to be a methane life.

LOL, yes its easy to transport fruit 10K km in this age. I know I eat better than the kings before the industrial age
Traditionally Inuits was the most carnivorous of human cultures as it was an lack of plants up there. They learned tricks like stomachs and interlard of seals and fish to get enough vitamin c and d. 
Many early polar explorers like Amundsen spent years among the Inuits. Eating the dogs was an abort mode however, it was not supposed to be an way to increase your range. 

Methane based life will be slow as you say. Note that life around volcanic vents on say Europa has similar issues but here its simply that the energy they get each year is tiny compared to earth. You might get life, you are unlikely to get something as advanced as an fish because the tiny biosphere. 

Edit: this obviously double down on low temperature life, you might get sponges in 10^12 years.
Intelligence, no it don't work, human intelligence squids and classical mermaids don't work either as water don't have enough oxygen, an smart seal with arms and look like an cute mermaid would work however. 
Yes you could make an more efficient brain but some land animals or even flyers would run with it and win. hard.

Edited February 10, 2020 by magnemoe

[K^2]

18 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

I wonder how feasible methane based life is. Because tbh i have no Idea.

Hard to say for sure. All of the life we have is based on water as solvent at about 300K. That puts hydrogen bonds as the right kind of strength to be strong enough not to fall apart right away due to thermal excitation, but weak enough that they can be pulled apart with the right enzymes. So they are used in making much of our metabolism work, including DNA replication and expression. In cryogenic liquid methane, hydrogen bonds are entirely too strong. So nothing based on DNA, for example, can possibly survive that. On the other hand, some Van der Waals forces are about the right strength. So it seems like it's at least hypothetically possible to have life in liquid methane, but it'd have to be something very different from what we're used to. And as others have indicated, all metabolic processes are going to be slower. There's no getting around that. So odds of us ever finding complex life living in methane seas are very remote. Simple bacteria-like organisms, though? Maybe? Without making one in the lab or finding them in the wild, we won't know for sure. But that's part of what makes Titan mission so interesting.

[magnemoe]

On 1/31/2020 at 2:41 AM, Just Jim said:

I don't want to see so much a particular mission as I do an event... Whether it's Europa, Enceladus... even Titan... I hope I live long enough for us to find something alive... somewhere.
I don't care what mission, or if it's some weird Titan bacteria, or a crazy alien Enceli-fish (how cool would that be???)... I hope I'm around to see it

I don't want it to be panspermia as in mutated life on earth, if we find that on mars then its an major discovery but it don't have much content. 
As for being around, well return of the first maned mission to alpha centauri sounds like an plan for the reason that not dying is an good plan
 

[Mr. Peabody]

On 1/22/2020 at 4:46 AM, Klapaucius said:

What is THE one mission above all else you would like to see NASA (or some other space agency) accomplish in your lifetime?

The deployment of the JWST.

[p1t1o]

On 1/22/2020 at 9:46 AM, Klapaucius said:

What is THE one mission above all else you would like to see NASA (or some other space agency) accomplish in your lifetime? 

For the love of all that is holy, someone please put a goddarn camera on the next probe to descend into a gas giant.

We can get sixteen bazillion gigapixels or whatever we are on nowadays, into a device the size and mass of a penny, theres no excuse.

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

For the love of all that is holy, someone please put a goddarn camera on the next probe to descend into a gas giant.

We can get sixteen bazillion gigapixels or whatever we are on nowadays, into a device the size and mass of a penny, theres no excuse.

Putting a camera on is the easy part. The hard part is transmitting the images out during the short time it can transmit. That's on top of the other scientific data being collected.

[K^2]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

For the love of all that is holy, someone please put a goddarn camera on the next probe to descend into a gas giant.

We can get sixteen bazillion gigapixels or whatever we are on nowadays, into a device the size and mass of a penny, theres no excuse.

I think I've seen MTTF for a cellphone camera on LEO to be on the order of a few weeks? Maybe months? Making cameras that can survive interplanetary is actually hard. Not sci-fi hard, obviously, just that I don't think comparing them to miniature cameras we can make for use on Earth is fair. But that's a tangent. If they can put a camera on the orbiter to take pretty pictures, they can put one on the probe to take pictures in atmosphere if there's a reason for it.

What I'm more curious about is whether there's any reason to think it will be something interesting to see. My expectation is uniform gray, possibly with some tint, getting darker as you descend deeper into the clouds, for which a one pixel detector with no significant optics will do just as well as a camera. But I'm by no means an expert on atmospheres of gas giants, so if you know/think otherwise, I'd be interested to hear why.

[p1t1o]

31 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Putting a camera on is the easy part. The hard part is transmitting the images out during the short time it can transmit. That's on top of the other scientific data being collected.

Yes, but data *is* transmitted, plentiful data. Otherwise we wouldnt send the probe at all. Its 2020, we have the tech to not be bandwidth-limited if we dont want to be. Cost is another matter of course, but thats not part of the question

 

28 minutes ago, K^2 said:

What I'm more curious about is whether there's any reason to think it will be something interesting to see. My expectation is uniform gray, possibly with some tint, getting darker as you descend deeper into the clouds, for which a one pixel detector with no significant optics will do just as well as a camera. But I'm by no means an expert on atmospheres of gas giants, so if you know/think otherwise, I'd be interested to hear why.

Well for one thing, theres only really one way to find out what it looks like to the human eye - whether its boring or interesting and thats to send a visible-light camera. Would settle for IR or night-vision if necessary to get an image.

I wouldnt have suggested it if I hadnt heard (have a vague memory of reading somewhere) that there ought to be layers in Jupiter where visibility extends for great distances, with enough sunlight to see by (at least with sensitive optics).

We do know for certain that the atmospheres are not homogenous and complexly layered, so it is not unlikely that there is some interesting stuff to see, and constant opaque haze all throughout seems less likely.

And I gotta imagine that there would be at least some data in this type of image. Cloud formations, wind currents, that kind of thing.

But mainly its out of curiosity, I wanna see some of this stuff.

At the very least,  have the camera take a picture of the probe itself, in the ambient light. That'd be pretty heck-darned cool just on its own.

 

**********

edit:

Oh hey, checkit - XKCD to the rescue:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/139/

Edited February 12, 2020 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, p1t1o said:

put a goddarn camera on the next probe to descend into a gas giant.

Spoiler

P.S.
I want a Red Spot dropship to see what's beneath.

Edited February 12, 2020 by kerbiloid

[K^2]

15 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I wouldnt have suggested it if I hadnt heard (have a vague memory of reading somewhere) that there ought to be layers in Jupiter where visibility extends for great distances, with enough sunlight to see by (at least with sensitive optics).

Oh hey, checkit - XKCD to the rescue:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/139/

Huh, yeah. That could be quite interesting. You got my vote.

[Wjolcz]

Juno got its camera as a part of its PR, which originally wasn't a part of the mission. I don't see why an atmospheric probe wouldn't get one too especially since the one on Juno was very successful at surviving longer than it was predicted.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Wjolcz

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

I don't remember exactly who said this but I agree with whoever said that any space mission- as long as it has a visible destination of some kind- must have a camera, regardless of the scientific usefulness of it. After all,  it's not like opportunities to get these cool shots are exactly common. Certainly great for making people interested in what you are doing- images have a much better "wow" factor than some numbers and a graph.

So yeah, I want cool Jupiter cloud pictures! It's so weird to think about gas giants, and it's hard to process that there isn't really a surface- seeing the endless clouds from that kind of perspective would be awesome and trippy as heck. Really gets across that this is an entire world of endless clouds, for quite a while down, and below that even weirder- but still 3-dimensional. Lots of layers.

Bandwidth whatever! I don't care if a bigger antenna's more expensive, PICTURES

Edited February 14, 2020 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername