[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

James Oberg Chimes in:
Let Us Drink from the Fountains of Enceladus

The idea is as follows: send a stardust-like mission to capture particules from the Enceladus plume.

I think it is the cheapest way to have infos on what is going on into Enceladus, if it has a biochemistry and how far it evolved.

I allow myself to better the idea: the probe could have three targets.


1) when passing near Saturn, catches ring particules
2) Using Titan as a gravitationnal aid, captures smog particules (fortunately they reach very high)
3) passes into Enceladus plume, captures eventual evidences of biochemistry in Enceladus.

And back to Earth! It even don't need to actually satellise around Saturn, if it is well aimed. The only difficulty is a precise navigation, to aim into a 10x10kms window into the plumes, and a bit of fuel.

The only serious problem is not to bring back some alien bacteria on Earth! Eventually the aerogel containing the Enceladus particules would be coated in something after use, so that there would be no possible contamination, in any way.

Even if the mission fails, a low pass over the Tiger Stripes would allow to obtain precise images of the vents (or more likely zones where the ice is sublimating, like in a comet), provided we have a special shutter compensating for motion blur. Such images would be anyway a necessary preliminary step before sending a lander on Enceladus, and even before designing it (depending on the geometry of the vents, which may be complicated or hazardoous).

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Richard, nothing -- and I mean, absolutely nothing -- in the private sector world *ever* gets done without *any* positive cash flow. No one is ever going to put up a few hundred million dollars for a planetary probe just because they want to see what's out there. Not without some way of generating some income out of it.

Even if Falcon worked (which it has not, as of yet) and even if the Falcon developmental costs (suffering from little, seemingly unimportant expenses, like needing to launch six or seven of them before they get the bugs out, or building an oxygen liquifaction plant so they can actually launch the things without having to wrap them in blankets that flap back onto the thrust chambers and damage them) don't push the eventual costs of a Falcon launcher up into the same range as the currently available launchers, there are still a lot of significant costs you're overlooking. For example, the DSN isn't cheap. How are you going to command your private Enceladus probe, or get data back from it, unless you pay the $10,000 or more an hour that using the DSN costs? Gonna build a new DSN? If so, how are you going to make it cheaper than the current DSN (seeing as how, AIUI, the current DSN is already a private enterprise)?

There are *maybe* three people in the world who have enough money to do something like this, and even they can only do this once or twice, at most, without bankrupting themselves. Corporations simply will not undertake such missions, since there is no chance of ever generating any income from them to match the outflow, or even to pay for a tenth of the costs. Corporations simply do not spend out millions of dollars for no return.

It's a nice dream, Richard. But that's all it is -- a dream.

-the other Doug

(moved out of the SETI thread)

Yes, a dream... like the first amateur manned rocket to space. Yes, affordable to only three persons... and all this kind of arguments. But a dream worthy of mentionnin git, don't you think so? We cannot expect such amateur missions to really challenge the great space agencies on their own ground. At least not on the short run. But some amateurs showed that they have too abilities, and they could do some unexpected little things. Wait and see.

[ljk4-1]

(moved out of the SETI thread)

Yes, a dream... like the first amateur manned rocket to space. Yes, affordable to only three persons... and all this kind of arguments. But a dream worthy of mentionnin git, don't you think so? We cannot expect such amateur missions to really challenge the great space agencies on their own ground. At least not on the short run. But some amateurs showed that they have too abilities, and they could do some unexpected little things. Wait and see.

It is a nice sentiment - and easy to say - but where and what are all the stages
to make it a reality? It's one thing to have a few overly rich people with lots of
time and money on their hands make a couple of suborbital flights and then charge
absurd amounts of money for only a minority of the public to hop a quick ride, but
where does one go from there to make this accessible to the rest of the populace?
And is there going to be an actual destination besides a quick view of a curved Earth?

As Doug said, companies tend not to support such endeavors out of the goodness
of their hearts for the benefit of humanity.

To aim this at deep space probes, unless and until the day comes that these robot
explorers can build, launch, and run themselves, they will not be cheap projects and
no one is going to give all that money just to explore strange new worlds so a bunch
of scientists will have something to put in their papers to Science. I also do not think
a couple of bake sales will cut it.

As Henry David Thoreau once said: "If you have built castles in the air, your work
need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
- Walden, 1854

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_T..._18:_Conclusion