Nobody in the far future will ever know we had Galileo in orbit around Jupiter. They should leave it as an artificial moon for other generations to find. How dumb to crash it into Jupiter.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/200...e_2002_12.html
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Nobody in the far future will ever know we had Galileo in orbit around Jupiter. They should leave it as an artificial moon for other generations to find. How dumb to crash it into Jupiter.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/200...e_2002_12.html
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1. NASA is anything but "stupid". They may have made some mistakes in the past, but the errors are far outweighed by massive amounts of scientific data from successful missions like the Voyagers and Galileo.
2. No orbit is perfect, it will eventually crash into something.
3. NASA wants to avoid crashing it into a moon and disrupting its environmental system (ecological or not). Jupiter is a much better resting place.
4. Why do we need a physical monument in orbit. I know Galileo was there, you do too. The data is documented, thats enough.
If you were trying to get a rise out of me with that subject line, congratulations.
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My objection to them crashing Gal. into Jup. is that; the assumption so far is that there is no life on Jup. yet there is no confirmation of that. The plutonium power supply on the craft could pollute Jup. for millions of years and possibly kill off whatever survived the Shoemaker-Levey 9 impact. If they are going to crash it into something, make it the Sun.
Order of Kilopi
Do you know now the fate of the 3 ships of Columbus? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]On 2002-01-15 16:48, John Kierein wrote:
Nobody in the far future will ever know we had Galileo in orbit around Jupiter
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Little Known Fact: Columbus actually had five ships but two sailed over the edge and were edited out of the history. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]On 2002-01-15 17:29, Argos wrote:
Do you know now the fate of the 3 ships of Columbus? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]
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John, normally I find your posts to be contentious but polite, but that thread title is over the top. It won't easily sway people to your point of view.
Anyway, there is no way to put Galileo in a stable orbit; gravitational perturbations from the moons would send it either into Jupiter or fling it out of the system in short order.
There is nothing to worry about even if Jupiter is inhabited; it'll burn up very high in the atmosphere, and Jupiter is big. Even if there is somethign for it to hit, the odds are incredibly small.
The last task of the Magellan Venus orbiter was to drop into the atmosphere. It transmitted data back as it fell, giving astronomers back here valuable data on atmospheric density. Even in death it helped our understanding of Venus. Perhaps Galileo will do the same thing. I doubt it, since only the low-gain antenna can be used, but it's possible.
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And, while there is no naturally-occurring plutonium on Jupiter at all, isn't the place terribly radioactive anyway? The plutonium won't do any harm...
Silas
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Perhaps NASA (and the rest of us) will have learned something new from Galileo's fiery death.
Galileo was a great success and lasted much longer than expected. It almost was lost but the brilliance of the folks at JPL and NASA kept it going. Now, let us let Galileo rest in peace. In tiny pieces?
BA - You stated it succinctly. I simply had to put in my feeble two cents' worth.
ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]
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All the same, I can see John's point of view...it's kind of romantic to think about the machines which represent some of mankind's greatest triumphs remaining as monuments to those achievements. Like the Voyagers, of course, and the probe sitting on the surface of Eros. But of course that is physically impossible for Galileo.
--Don, not the PhD, the other one.
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Yeah, The Santa Maria hit the back end of the Pinta and the Pinta exploded. Ralph Nader did a whole thing on the Pinta being unsafe. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]On 2002-01-15 17:29, Argos wrote:
Do you know now the fate of the 3 ships of Columbus? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]On 2002-01-15 16:48, John Kierein wrote:
Nobody in the far future will ever know we had Galileo in orbit around Jupiter
Order of Kilopi
Nader said nothing about Pintas. His book "Unsafe at any depth" was about Corsairs. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
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But would the Pinta be unsafe if it was in orbit around Jupiter? Did Nader look into that?
Me, I think it would be more likely to blow-up being in the Iovian system.
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What! They're ditching Galileo?:surprised
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Speaking of NASA being stupid (which I don't claim personally), I heard a tale from an engineer...
The tale goes like this:
NASA wanted a pen that could write in Zero-G. So they invested millions of dollars to develop one. Meanwhile, Russians just used a pencil.
My question: A) Is this true? B) If so, why would NASA spend millions on a pen to use in Zero G? There HAS to be a reason.
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Yeah, they also spent millions just to develop trainers that look cool cos they don't have no laces but let Nike make all the profits, so I've heard anyways.
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Tweak your skepticism knob up a notch or two.Originally Posted by Lonewulf
Snopes: NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen"...
It's been discussed in this forum.
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I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I knew it was false! I knew it!
HAH! And they called me crazy! They called me mad! HAHAHAHAHAH!
*cough* Moving on...
Order of Kilopi
1. There was no way to crash Galileo into Sun, or even get it away from Jupiter.
2. It was certain to crash into either Jupiter or into one of its moons eventually.
3. Half-life of Pu-238 is 78 years, not "millions".
4. The amount of Pu-238 onboars Galileo is vanishingly small compared to the size of Earth, let alone Jupiter. Natural radioactive substances on Jupiter outmass (and out-radiate) it by the factor of BILLIONS.
5. A comet the size of Shoemaker-Levi 9 hits Jupiter on the average every 1,000 years or so. If Jupiter HAD life, AND it could be affected by comet impacts... Jupiter would have no more life by now!
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In many respects, it is harder to get a probe close to the Sun than to get to Pluto IIRC.
It is also actually easier to thump a craft out of Earth Moon than to circularize it enough for it to be a true geo-stationary platform.
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Pencils have been forbidden in every clean room I've ever worked in. Nobody wants conductive particles floating around after launch.
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Wood is also a big fire hazard in a pure oxygen environment.
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Conductive particles? Conductive for heat or electricity?
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Hi, pencils are made of graphite, which is a very good electrical conductor, so having a bit of that stuff floating around inside your spacecraft means having a short-circuit waiting to happen
mauro
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graphite is a good electrical conductor?
...cooooool.
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And almost as bad as dandruff. I had forgotten to use Head & Shoulders one day--and made up for that with Selsun Blue. I had even used a whole lot of hair cream...you know, to really keep the clean room spotless?
I spilled some and slipped...and...thats how I knocked over that Lockheed-Martin weather satellite...
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Giant molecular structure (short scroll to graphite.)
This also explains why graphite can be a lubricant.
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Yeah, you can buy a tube of fine powdered graphite to use as lubricant in stubborn locks. It works like WD-40 but lasts for months.
Order of Kilopi
Aren't buckyballs (C-60) an even better lubricant?
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I consider "cheap" a significant part of being "better," but NASA doesn't often have the luxury of being frugal.
Order of Kilopi
Returning to the topic of the alleged "stupidity" of the government organization known as NASA, I do have to admit that I find it kinda odd that they've had a few failures on the simple problems of translating from English system to Metric.
It seems a waste of millions of dollars (if not more!) based on a few mistaken calculations... x.x
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