Jupiter flagship selected |
Jupiter flagship selected |
Feb 18 2009, 03:47 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 706 Joined: 3-December 04 From: Boulder, Colorado, USA Member No.: 117 |
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Mar 9 2009, 07:47 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 646 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Forest of Dean Member No.: 617 |
Well now, and I took it to mean I'd missed some well-known reason liquid sampling's harder than solids. ("Is there some exotic surface-tension or electrostatic effect I haven't heard about which makes sample "walk" up a "ladder"? I pondered. I was about to hit start googling... I suspect we're all in violent agreement here, actually. ( Group hug? [1] )
My last comment on this is that although Titan isn't capital-aitch Hard, it's something we've only done once, compared to, what, almost a dozen attempted Mars landings. As is clear from Mike's awesome heptane experiment, the surface properties are not well understood right now - certainly nothing like as well as Mars, and we saw with Phoenix that there are unknown unknowns there, too. The distance to Titan means there'll always be a substantial lead-time between receiving data from one mission, doing our best to grok it, and designing, building and flying the next. NASA's decision to fly Europa first whilst continuing work on Titan strikes me as a clever (and presumably difficult) cutting of the Gordian knot. [1] wildly O/T sidenote: an American friend left my employer recently; after seeing him give two successive people massive bear hugs as he left, I couldn't resist taking a step backwards and extend my hand for a polite shake... "Jolly good luck, old chap!" :> -------------------- --
Viva software libre! |
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