Nuking Europa, Nukes and other 'futuristic' ideas for exploring Europa Options

[SergeyVLazarev]

I don't know if by "some quake" you mean YOUR idea or any seismological study. Seismological studies are a good idea.

my idea is to use a compact and lightweight power sources for it. :-)

Spectral analysis of a thermonuclear explosion would not tell us which organic compounds existed before they had been incinerated. Someone could type a basic chemistry text into the thread at this point, or you could consult one offline.

we dont speak about "organic compounds" now. We dont know even pH of european "water" - what about a sulfur acid? or some shit solved in water?
Before organic chemistry and "search of life" on radiation sterilized surface, we always need some simply analyses.
Is not a great idea to search life in sulfur acid.
first one we must get inside, and anylize that "water'. One way to it - termonukes.

This isn't IMHO. My opinion is humble, but these things are fact. The list works a lot better when the posters look up the basics and present each other with the thoughts that come to mind AFTER that.

We hav'nt any facts about Europa critical parametres.
about that "water'. Only Galileo zond fly past Europa many years ago, and some NASA 3d-pictures on NASA site, that lead to thinks "they never fly nowhere, just shot all in hollywood"

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

SergeyVLazarev,

I like very much your enthusiasm about using simple rugged probes and do things in an bold efficient way. But the idea of using nukes seems simply innacceptable for me, for many reason, that I shall not explain in details here, see the Greenpeace forum. Anyway, as others here explained, a high velocity impactor (or a series of several at different distance of only one seismometre) yelds largely enough power to test the inner structure of Europa, as it was tested on the Moon. A simple piece of metal (heated by a chemical reaction, so that it will self-sterilize before hitting) can be released by the main probe and do the job.
More, an atom bomb will produce a large cloud of steam and snow, a temporary atmosphere, as it was experienced with Deep Impact, which is likely to blurr all the observations.

Anyway the largest fireballs obtained to date with nukes are still much smaller than Europa crust.


Your remarks as what it is useless to search for life until we know the chemical composition of the water is relevant. But what is relevant too is that the first Europa lander is already many years ahead, so what to speak of a SECOND Europa lander! Likely most of us will not see it in our lifetime. So I think it is wiser to send something able to do chemical analysis AND life search (the best guess for the latest purpose are a microscope and some mass spectrometre). If the chemical analysis prove this water unsuitable for life, at least we know it. (But we do not know exactly what is "suitable for life", so a chemical analysis alone is not enough and will left dougts and hopes. What to conclude, for instance, if we find the PH of lemmon juice?

The only thing which could delay us is that we need to know WHERE to land, and aim precisely. With my opinion there are just many places to land (everywhere where there is reddish ice) but I doubt there will be a rover for the first landing (why not?) so that we must know PRECISELY where to land. This could be done at time of the 6 preleminary close encounters with Europa, before actually landing.


I guess, after your name, that you may be Russian (welcome!) so I risk some question: what could be a Russian participation to such a mission? (My idea is that probes will have to be more and more international, for various technical, political and philosophical reasons, and just consider childish the idea of a probe being the flagship of ONE country). Russian hardware has a reputation of being simple and rugged (at least what was not spoiled by blunders in the "soviet" era).


Important note added afterward (a bit after Tuesday December 6, 04:07 PM)
This thread was initially in a thread about Europa orbiter. This thread was moved to "nuking Europa" afterward. But I would have never involved in such a thread knowing this new title!

This post has been edited by Richard Trigaux: Dec 6 2005, 04:33 PM

[helvick]

.. Only Galileo zond fly past Europa many years ago, and some NASA 3d-pictures on NASA site, that lead to thinks "they never fly nowhere, just shot all in hollywood"

OK sergey, we've tried to humor you but you're not getting with the programme. The idea is dramatic and fun to consider for a couple of minutes but any half way serious thinking shows that it is silly and your final comment is heading into woowoo territory.

None of your numbers add up, you don't seem to want to think about the technicalities and in the end seem to have no idea what scientific data you are trying to get.

I'll continue the discussion if you want to make some serious suggestions but if wild assed conjecture is all you want, sorry that's not my bag.

BTW for the record. The Tsar Bomba was restricted to 50MT from ~100MT by replacing the uranium fast fission third stage in the design with lead in order to reduce fallout, it was not because of fear of a hydrogen fusion reaction.

A mission with seismometers would be a damn fine idea but you don't need to blow away half the side of the moon to get the data, just leave them in situ and listen. At most you might want to schedule a small impact (a cruise stage should do) if mission duration was a constraint. Otherwise natural impacts and other events will provide more than enough "quake" samples.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

This post was duplicated/replaced in its proper context Europa Orbiter, Speculation, updates and discussion If you want to reply please follow this link, do not reply here.


Here
Russia Plans "Long-Lived" Venus Probe
was dicussed the idea of using unconventionnal electronics to sustain the high temperatures (460°C) at the surface of Venus.

There was mainly three methods proposed:
-unconventionnal semiconductors
-micro-sized vacuum tubes implemented witht he techniques of integrated circuits
-micro-sized electrostatic relays

I note that the two latest proposals are also suited to resist to high radioactivity levels, so that they will be a good solution for a Europa orbiter (and even a Io orbiter) by increasing reliability and removing the weigh of shielding.

Developing such techniques will need only a series of small scale test, and then after a relatively short period of large scale development, in a total duration which is not uncompatible with the launching of the mission.

[SergeyVLazarev]

I like very much your enthusiasm about using simple rugged probes and do things in an bold efficient way. But the idea of using nukes seems simply innacceptable for me, for many reason, that I shall not explain in details here, see the Greenpeace forum. Anyway, as others here explained, a high velocity impactor (or a series of several at different distance of only one seismometre) yelds largely enough power to test the inner structure of Europa, as it was tested on the Moon. A simple piece of metal (heated by a chemical reaction, so that it will self-sterilize before hitting) can be released by the main probe and do the job.
More, an atom bomb will produce a large cloud of steam and snow, a temporary atmosphere, as it was experienced with Deep Impact, which is likely to blurr all the observations. 

I think, that way of progress inavodably bring to space nukes, military forces.
I m thinking also that one exclusive way for humanity to explore solar system - IS PERMANENT MILITARY OPPOSITION of main states.
Only military use of space can bring to space gigadollars of money.
One way to colonize Selen - 2 opposing military bases with recruits.

Without military we lose space.

Anyway the largest fireballs obtained to date with nukes are still much smaller than Europa crust.

we ll put it sequenatally.

Your remarks as what it is useless to search for life until we know the chemical composition of the water is relevant. But what is relevant too is that the first Europa lander is already many years ahead, so what to speak of a SECOND Europa lander!

its just my IMHO. Im not NASA chairman even im not working in that area.
But I know that space require great energy and great money.

What to conclude, for instance, if we find the PH of lemmon juice? 

in that case we must to build acid-resilant hardware. :-) and I think that no life in acid.

I guess, after your name, that you may be Russian (welcome!) so I risk some question: what could be a Russian participation to such a mission? (My idea is that probes will have to be more and more international, for various technical, political and philosophical reasons, and just consider childish the idea of a probe being the flagship of ONE country). Russian hardware has a reputation of being simple and rugged (at least what was not spoiled by blunders in the "soviet" era).

I'm russian by culture and language, but live in Ukraine, and havnt deal with Russia space program, so is not question for me.

From soviet space program I have only some wreckedges of hardware: some littlle solar panels from Soyuz, model of Selen landing module from selen program of 70-years and some acsesouiries like magnesia fuse boxes and photos from Salute space staion with soviet cosmonauts signatures.

I widely greet all international space programs, but I'm think that Russia now must concetrating on Clipper, new Soyuz-rocket, Angara, and sattellites.
dispersing of eforts on 2 or 3 branches - is not good idea.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I think, that way of progress inavodably bring to space nukes, military forces.
I m thinking also that one exclusive way for humanity to explore solar system - IS PERMANENT MILITARY OPPOSITION of main states.
Only military use of space can bring to space gigadollars of money.
One way to colonize Selen - 2 opposing military bases with recruits.

EEEERRRRR

Sorry Sergey, I think a bit like helvick now. On this forum there are a lot of discutions which are rather philosophical than technical, and inavoidingly disagreements are expressed. But this, I think, goes too far.


I am not an incorrigible optimist, but I think that we CAN eradicate war and that we MUST put all our efforts to achieve this. Space exploration is part of this game. And anyway, now that there is no more USSR, which opposition are you speaking about? USA-Europe? We are not building Europe for that.

Or, if there must be war is space, I will rather send all the war-mongers together in one big station so that they will make their sport there and stop killing innocent people here on Earth.

Good bye, Sergey.

[ugordan]

In last termonukes hydrogene of water began burning, that gave addition yield, and yield of 100-mt class soviet bomb was reduced to half value, to prevent losing of control and BADA-BOOM of ocean water.
So, it very easy to gain to highest yields - we can just burn hydrogene of Europe ice, to achive ten or thousand Gt yields. gigatonns.

As someone once said: "Your idea is so very incorrect, it's not even wrong!" You obviously need to do a little historic research as well as read some introductions to fusion physics. The idea of a hydrogen bomb igniting the hydrogen in the water itself is purely a myth. Period.
The 50 Mt Soviet "Tsar Bomba" was reduced in yield only to prevent a catastrophic increase in total world fission fallout since the beginning of nuclear testing era. It alone would have increased the fallout by some 25 %. That's the reason the fusion stage uranium jackets were replaced by lead, cutting the yield in half, perhaps even to a third of nominal, yet proving the design. The bomb by all means was not detonated in water, it (along with the majority of the other soviet bombs) was detonated several kilometers above the ground over the Novaya Zemlya peninsula.

I won't even go into discussion on how you're gonna take a 30 ton heavy 100 Mt bomb to Europa. That's certainly beyond any capability in the near future.

EDIT: Ahhh... I see helvick already pointed out the reason they reduced the yield on Tsar... Sorry to repeat the reason, must pay more attention to other peoples' posts in the future...

[SergeyVLazarev]

BTW for the record. The Tsar Bomba was restricted to 50MT from ~100MT by replacing the uranium fast fission third stage in the design with lead in order to reduce fallout, it was not because of fear of a hydrogen fusion reaction.

it was 2 practical causes to reduce yield:
1. Seismic - cause explosion on surface or near could damage poligon
2. Weight of airborne bomb to fit it in bomb bay.
And 1 teoretical - to prevent possible and foreseen thermonuclear burning of water.

OK sergey, we've tried to humor you but you're not getting with the programme. The idea is dramatic and fun to consider for a couple of minutes but any half way serious thinking shows that it is silly and your final comment is heading into woowoo territory.

If you dont like this idea - just dont disscuss it.
If you so great man, dont get low to such silly things.

[ugordan]

it was 2 practical causes to reduce yield:
1. Seismic - cause explosion on surface or near could damage poligon
2. Weight of airborne bomb to fit it in bomb bay.
And 1 teoretical - to prevent possible and foreseen thermonuclear burning of water.

1. The polygon WAS there to be bombed the hell out of in the first place. I fail to see the reason for testing the most powerful bomb EVER and at the same time trying not to hurt the polygon too much.
2. The bomb weighed 27 metric tons regardless of whether it was a full yield, 100 Mt version or a scaled down 50 Mt version. The scaled down version merely had all its uranium in the 2nd and 3rd stage fusion jacket replaced by a jacket of lead which weighed the same, but was for all other purposes inert.

What part of the fact that the bomb was detonated at a 4 kilometers altitude, over land do you not get? Even if it detonated in the middle of the ocean, nothing extraordinary would happen. That is, apart from the fact several million tons of water and ocean bottom would be blown sky-high.

[SergeyVLazarev]

The 50 Mt Soviet "Tsar Bomba" was reduced in yield only to prevent a catastrophic increase in total world fission fallout since the beginning of nuclear testing era. It alone would have increased the fallout by some 25 %. That's the reason the fusion stage uranium jackets were replaced by lead, cutting the yield in half, perhaps even to a third of nominal, yet proving the design. The bomb by all means was not detonated in water, it (along with the majority of the other soviet bombs) was detonated several kilometers above the ground over the Novaya Zemlya peninsula.

1. estimated yield was 50 and 100 Mgt.
2. real yield was 57-62 Mgt.
3. bomb was detonated on 4000 m altitude.
4. all veterans says that radioactivity wasnt cause of reducing yield.
5. Sakharov's myth about reducing yield for lowering carbon-14 fallout - it a really myth. Untill 1962 Sakharov dont take in mind this.

[ljk4-1]

While I would prefer not to see the human race spread its baser elements into the wider Cosmos, I think Mr. Lazarev is simply trying to be a pragmatist, but without the PC filter so common in the West these days.

Kind of refreshing, actually.

And lest we totally whitewash the past history of the Space Age, it was mainly founded and built upon military rockets originally designed to deliver bombs to wipe out the "enemy". V-2s, anyone?

Had we tried to get the Space Age going simply on the noble causes of science, I bet we'd only have a few utilitarian satellites by now and maybe some deep space probes to the nearer worlds, if we were lucky. Apollo would never have left the science fiction pages without the Cold War. And that computer you are using to read this right now - guess what spurred its development decades ago?

As he said, if you don't like his ideas, then ignore what he wrote. It wasn't a personal attack on anyone here anyway. There is enough of a lack of international diplomacy on the political front without doing it here as well.

[SergeyVLazarev]

1. The polygon WAS there to be bombed the hell out of in the first place. I fail to see the reason for testing the most powerful bomb EVER and at the same time trying not to hurt the polygon too much.

its your right. but its was real case, it is not western myth based on Sakharov lies about "prevent pollutions" and "save lifes". Sakharov with Chrushchov never think about this, like their american enemies.

2. The bomb weighed 27 metric tons regardless of whether it was a full yield, 100 Mt version or a scaled down 50 Mt version. The scaled down version merely had all its uranium in the 2nd and 3rd stage fusion jacket replaced by a jacket of lead which weighed the same, but was for all other purposes inert.

initially superbomb must weight 40 tons.
but wasnt bomber for such weight. bomb was lighten.
Had been made mockup of bomb - 20 tons, but real bomb weight approximately 24-26 tons. Informations from pilots of Tu-95V. 27 tonn - its only capability of 3 bomb locks Дер5-6, each of them takes 9 tons.

[ugordan]

1. estimated yield was 50 and 100 Mgt.
2. real yield was 57-62 Mgt.
3. bomb was detonated on 4000 m altitude.
4. all veterans says that radioactivity wasnt cause of reducing yield.
5. Sakharov's myth about reducing yield for lowering carbon-14 fallout - it a really myth. Untill 1962 Sakharov dont take in mind this.

1. That's what I said.

2. That figure was estimated by the U.S. and their analysis of the fallout cloud. They overestimated the yield and naturally, the Soviets weren't exactly going to jump up and say: "Hey, you overestimated the power of the largest bomb in the world! It wasn't really THAT powerful!". Especially since Kruschev wanted to have THE most powerful bomb.
The real figure, 50 megatons was released only in 1991, after breakup of the Soviet Union. In any case, I don't see your point on nit-picking of the actual yield. This discussion was about punching through Europa's ice and several megatons more or less don't make any difference.

3. That's what I said.

4. What would "veterans" have to know about the real cause? Perhaps it was concern for the flight crew? They were very nearly killed as is. Perhaps it was concern that the bomb would break windows in half the Europe. Or, perhaps 50 megatons of fission products released at once were horrifying enough that in the end common sense prevailed. The result, by the way, was the cleanest bomb ever detonated, with 97% of the yield due to fusion reactions.

5. Nobody's talking about C-14. I'm talking about several tons of highly radioactive fission product "soup".

In any case, this has gone way off topic. Either Doug will move this to a more appropriate topic (though I see no point in doing that) or this will be my last word on this.

[JRehling]

Incidentally, in the case we would ever want to seismically thump Europa to give a lander already on the surface something to detect, the obvious way to do this would be to have the lander and impactor arrive on similar trajectories, with the lander well in advance.

A macro-strategy I have mentioned would be to have a lander in place when an impactor thumps a nearby location, creating a seismic event of known size. At the same time, an Icepick free-return sample return craft in solar orbit flies over, collecting (atomized) samples that are blasted up. The set of three craft would give us a lander, some local seismic data in decent detail, imagery from the impactor as it closed in, sample returns (heavily shocked) and any data the flyby craft could gather. Certainly, an expensive trio of craft, but an intensive set of investigations had all at once.

It occurred to me that an alternative (see above: "obvious way") would be to have the impactor follow a radically different trajectory than the flyby craft and have it go *the other way* around Jupiter (clockwise, as seen from north) while the flyby craft would go clockwise. This would add to the kinetic energy of the impact event considerably (perhaps 13 km/s), which would mean that less mass could achieve the same sized impact. However, if the goal were to have an Icepick flyby, this design would present considerable engineering constraints on the surface location. If the only goal were to have a seismic lander and an impactor, then the restrictions would be less.

If it were possible to fly a free-return flyby craft also going clockwise around Jupiter, then the constraints are lifted greatly.

That is a feasible mission for hitting Europa and studying its surface. The value of the impact, incidentally, is in delivering a known thump to the areas very near the lander. Presumably, knowing the crustal thickness/structure at a chosen location is a worthy goal -- having a general knowledge of the thickness of the crust, with less detail, is probably far less desirable. As Bob Pappalardo et al have shown, the thickness has to be fairly uniform, by and large.

[ljk4-1]

Nuke Europa? You aren't thinking grand enough.

Drop Europa on Mars, then send a mission to analyze the debris while making a new world for humanity to live on without space suits and pressure domes.

http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/larryn...ars_000710.html

How to move Europa? A series of impacts to knock it into a gravitational swingby of Jupiter to accelerate it to Mars faster. If Europa breaks up from the impact, just attach rockets onto the pieces and direct them to Mars.

Why not just grab some already smaller NEO comets, you say? Ah, what fun is that?

Of course if we decide instead to use Europa for material to make the Dyson Shell, we can study the interior then, which will no doubt be in better shape than just smashing it into Mars.

http://www.alcyone.com/max/writing/essays/...son-shells.html

http://www.merzo.net/500000kmpp.htm