UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ...

If you want to justify your Pluto mission as planetary defense,

I don't. That's one justifcation, not *the* justification.

No, it's a rationalization. Calling a junket to Pluto planetary
defense is like bombing Kosovo and calling it national defense.
Meanwhile, the real threats are ignored.

then you should submit it to a panel of planetary defense
specialists and
let them peer-review it,

No, I'd let them review the planetary defense *aspects* of the mission,
while other peer review panels (space science, etc) review the rest. The
*combined* score from the panels would determine the priority.

Naturally. The possibility of global extinction must be balanced
against the chance to publish a few obscure scientific papers. :-)

Phil Fraering pgf@AUTO wrote in message ...

Looking at Pluto is an easy way of looking at a comet's _core_, without
having to dig through hundreds of meters of baked-over crust on the surface.

Going to Pluto is anything but easy. The Deep Impact mission is going
to blast into a comet to study the interior, and it costs half as much
as the Pluto-Kuiper mission.

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Hop David wrote:

A large number of small probes manufactured on an assembly line would
have a small unit cost. Small enough probes could be bundled two or
three (maybe more) per launch, reducing launch costs. These could show
us where ice and other resources are on the moon and NEOs.


You would soon run into the limits of the DSN.

Paul

DSN?

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Hop David wrote:



Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Hop David wrote:

A large number of small probes manufactured on an assembly line would
have a small unit cost. Small enough probes could be bundled two or
three (maybe more) per launch, reducing launch costs. These could show
us where ice and other resources are on the moon and NEOs.


You would soon run into the limits of the DSN.

Paul

DSN?


DSN = Deep Space Network
--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Remove invalid nonsense for email.

In article , Hop David wrote:

A large number of small probes manufactured on an assembly line would
have a small unit cost. Small enough probes could be bundled two or
three (maybe more) per launch, reducing launch costs. These could show
us where ice and other resources are on the moon and NEOs.

You would soon run into the limits of the DSN.

DSN?

Deep Space Network. http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/

Sooner or later, the more probes you put out - and, especially, the more
small probes, because they tend to have weaker signals - you're going to
run out of facilities to get information back.
--
-Andrew Gray