c.f.,
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/europa_colonies_010606-1.html
idea of humans on Mars. I would have thought the Artemis Society would
know better than to float such ideas in public. I'm quite convinced there
will never be any good reason to send anything more than scientific probes
to Europa.
My preferred space industrialization and settlement schedule:
Near-term
* Moon and NEAs
* Maybe Phobos/Deimos
Mid-term
* Phobos/Deimos
* Main Belt asteroids
* Mars for recreation
Far-term
* Why should I care?
I just can't see Europa reasonably being on any list. Jupiter is bad news
for a variety of reasons, and Europa itself is a bigger gravity well than
our Moon. Yikes!
Ron Menich
>
> c.f.,
> http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/europa_colonies_010606-1.html
>
> Humans on Europa is an idea that is orders of magnitude dumber than the
> idea of humans on Mars. I would have thought the Artemis Society would
> know better than to float such ideas in public. I'm quite convinced there
> will never be any good reason to send anything more than scientific probes
> to Europa.
If you notice, all the quotes in the article were from Peter Kokh, who
has published and been the primary author of articles for the "Moon
Miner's Manifesto" for the last 13 or 14 years. "Moon Miner's Manifesto"
is published monthly by the Lunar Reclamation Society. Artemis Society
members and some National Space Society chapter members receive it, as
well as other subscribers, so there's a bit of overlap, but I think
Peter mostly speaks for himself. He's got lots of great ideas; this one
is probably not one of his better ones. The 3000-person lunar
"rille-based" settlement plan he and some others published in 1990 is a
good one though. Mostly he tries to provoke some deeper thinking among
his readers, and we appreciate him for that. But I don't think he was
speaking for the Moon Society or the Artemis project in this interview;
most likely the space.com interviewer got mixed up a bit...
But they say there's no such thing as bad publicity; I thought the
article was kind of fun!
Arthur
>>>Humans on Europa is an idea that is orders of magnitude dumber than the
idea of humans on Mars. I would have thought the Artemis Society would
know better than to float such ideas in public. I'm quite convinced there
will never be any good reason to send anything more than scientific probes
to Europa.>>>
surface's of the Jovian moons are coverd by a layer of water and ice, more
than 100Km deep. Even if we were able to send people to Europa (an unlikely
event, given the distance of Jupiter from Earth and its intense radiation
belts) there would absolutely nothing useful for them to mine or use. The
surfaces of the Jovian moons are ice deserts.
The Artemis society should concentrate solely on the moon. The moon and
asteroids are the only bodies in the solar system (apart from earth) that
are of real value to mankind, for the next 100 years at least.
> There is nothing ON Europa that could possibly be of any value to us.
particular body... other than that, it's hard to predict what will or
will not be useful 50 or more years down the road. As by far the largest
object other than the Sun in our solar system, Jupiter may have a lot of
uses for a long-range space program that we can't think of right now.
But I certainly agree a manned mission or even settlement on Europa is
not a very reasonable activity for any time in the near term!
Arthur Smith (apsmith@...
So, instead of launching probes to Luna and NEOs where we need them,
today's news is that NASA is ready to go to Pluto (c.f.,
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0106/07pluto/) and Mercury (c.f.,
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0106/08messenger/).
will certainly be interesting, they do nothing to help us become a
spacefaring society.
Sad. Very sad indeed. I bet the scientists are happy.
Ron Menich
hollroa@...
Please respond to whacky
ssi_list
...
There is nothing ON Europa that could possibly be of any value to us. The
surface's of the Jovian moons are coverd by a layer of water and ice, more
than 100Km deep. Even if we were able to send people to Europa (an unlikely
event, given the distance of Jupiter from Earth and its intense radiation
belts) there would absolutely nothing useful for them to mine or use. The
surfaces of the Jovian moons are ice deserts.
The Artemis society should concentrate solely on the moon. The moon and
asteroids are the only bodies in the solar system (apart from earth) that
are of real value to mankind, for the next 100 years at least.