Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 366

A sad day at work

As some of you may know from my previous posts, I work at a Planetary science research lab here in Arizona. This is just a summer job as I will be going back to boring old Kansas on Saturday. Anyways, I have been mainly working on Galileo images of Jupiter's violently volcanic moon Io and help to plan observations for Galileo's next encounter with Io that took place Sunday night. Well, this work was for nought. The camera spazed out 13 mintues before Galileo's closest approach to Io and thus failed to take any images. It would have imaged several active volcanoes and tall mountains. Images were planned of a lava flow that formed in 1999 with a resolution good enough to resolve a table. But, sadly, no images were taken.

This wasn't entirely unexpected. The camera has been having problems for a year now. Five and a half years in a high radiation environment has eventually taken its toll on Galileo's instruments. It still sad though that it wasn't able to work and take pictures. The other instruments did work during the flyby so not everything was lost, just visible images. We should be able to determine what volcanoes were active, where in those volcanoes activity occurs, and whether or not Io has a magnetic field like most of the other planets and Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

I just wanted to get this off my chest. Thanks.

Jason

Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

Geez, Jason...way to make the rest of our jobs look meaningless!

That is sad. But, at the same time, it's remarkable that we can even aim a space object at a distant moon. Here's hoping for better luck next time.

I really wish the US would start shifting $$ away from military spending and put it towards more space exploration (among other things, of course...)

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Registered: May 2000
Location: St. Paul, MN
Posts: 1429

NO WAY! You get to work with those babies?!?! awesome..

sorry to hear about it. Hopefully the evil governemtn of the USA will increase NASA's budget 10 fold, and descrease the militarys 10 fold..

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-miradu

Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 366

quote:

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Originally posted by miradu2000
NO WAY! You get to work with those babies?!?! awesome..

sorry to hear about it. Hopefully the evil governemtn of the USA will increase NASA's budget 10 fold, and descrease the militarys 10 fold..

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Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

quote:

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So while Europa is an interesting world, its not 1.2 billion dollars interesting.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Out of my skull, back in five minutes
Posts: 1435

Originally posted by volcanopele
If you give NASA TOO much money, they will just waste on some stupid project like the International Space Station. You need to gradually increase the budget and make it gets allocated to the office of space science, and not to the ISS.

While I don't think the current form of the ISS is all that great, I do think it's a good idea, which unfortunately was undermined by problems with one of the cooperating countries when it disintegrated (Russia). I've been following the project for a number of years, and having a long-term location for space based experiments is more efficient than having occasional flights.
In addition, the station could be used as a jumping off point for future trips to other objects in our system, such as the moon or Mars; parts could be brought up on the shuttle for a ship to go to Mars, assembled there, and not need to escape the Erth's pull, which would save fuel.

(The scientific veracity of the preceding has not been verified.)

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Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 239

While I am about the most pacifist person you will find, I don't agree with decreasing the military budget either. I have traveled outside the USA, and there are plenty of people who would like to take a chunk out of our country, and I am just as happy to have armored divisions and fighter/bombers between them and me.

I echo the comments on the ISS, thinking it is a good idea. I am still boggled that we haven't been to the moon in the last 20 or so years. It makes sense to have a platform in orbit to construct larger vessels. The space shuttle can't make it to Mars by itself.

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Last edited by Soul Raven on 08-08-2001 at 08:59 PM

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 604

Cutting the military budget would in the end undermine NASA and other space-science efforts. Military expeditures and research have tremendous "spill-over" benefits for space science. Frankly, there wouldn't be any rocket science (no pun intended) if it wasn't for the military applications.

Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

quote:

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While I am about the most pacifist person you will find, I don't agree with decreasing the militray budget either.

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We're all naked if you turn us inside out.
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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 366

I do agree that the concept of a space station permenently in space (or at least 15 years) is a good thing. As others have pointed out, it gives a great platform to conduct scientific experiments as well as for other mission like manned missions to the Moon and Mars. The problem has been the hope of international cooperation. It doesn't work when you deal with a country that is fast becoming or has become part of the third world. Russia's space program is failing rapidly now that they have lost the Mir. But I guess when Nigeria is starting to build a space program, any country with the will to do it can have a space program. but the point is we had hoped that Russia would share in the cost of building it. Theuy are runnning way behind on their schedule and the US is having to sholder the extra costs. This year alone it was 4 billion dollars. This is 4 billion dollars that could have been spent elsewhere. The off again, on again mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Another mission to Jupiter, this time with a better high-gain antenna. A long-duration lander for Venus. A rover for Mars with better capabilites than the two token rovers planning to be launched in 2003. As you can see, there are plenty of projects that could have been funded with that money but no, ISS is behind schedule and it needs the money.

So while a space station is a great concept, it could have been done better for less money.

Jason

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Posts: 415

my dad always said that it'd be a great day when schools(nasa too) can have all the money they need and the military has to hold bake-sales to buy thier missles.

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Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Enumclaw, Wa
Posts: 268

LOL yeah that would be pretty funny. We may all be saying this stuff about the military has too much money. But you should be thankful, as Soul Raven said there are quite a few groups out there that would hurt us the first chance they get.

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