Juno yes, Moonrise no

[See http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04y.html for background.]

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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...823702,00.html

Destination Jupiter
Lockheed to build probe for 2010 NASA exploratory mission
By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News
June 2, 2005
[EXCERPTS]

Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County will build a spacecraft slated to
embark on a detailed study of Jupiter as part of a NASA mission worth
up to $700 million.

Scientists are looking to the so-called Juno mission - announced by
NASA on Wednesday - to learn how Earth and other planets were formed
billions of years ago.

"We don't have a really good understanding right now of how planets in
our solar system are made," said Scott Bolton, a scientist at the
nonprofit Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Jupiter holds
the key to telling us the story of the early solar system."

Bolton will oversee the mission, serving as its principal investigator.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will provide
mission-project management. Lockheed Martin Space Systems will build
the probe at its Waterton Canyon facilities.

"We are absolutely delighted to be involved in a mission to Jupiter,"
said Lockheed spokesman Buddy Nelson. He said it was too early to know
how many, if any, new jobs would be created. It also wasn't immediately
known how much of a financial slice Lockheed would get as part of the
project.

The Juno mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers program. It was chosen
for funding over another project, dubbed Moonrise, that proposed to
drop robotic landers into a crater at the south pole of the moon,
returning samples to Earth.

[snip]

"This was a very tough decision given the exciting and innovative
nature of the two missions," Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a
statement.

According to NASA, the Juno mission will conduct a first-time, in-depth
study of Jupiter. Under the planned mission, a spacecraft will be
placed in a polar orbit around the giant planet to investigate the
existence of an ice-rock core.

[snip]

According to NASA, the new mission must be ready for launch no later
than June 30, 2010. Once launched, the spacecraft is expected to take
about five years to reach Jupiter.

In article . com,
"Allen Thomson" wrote:

The Juno mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers program. It was chosen
for funding over another project, dubbed Moonrise, that proposed to
drop robotic landers into a crater at the south pole of the moon,
returning samples to Earth.

[snip]

"This was a very tough decision given the exciting and innovative
nature of the two missions," Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a
statement.

Given their both exciting and innovative, why the heck didn't they
choose the one that adheres to NASA's new mission? The only worthwhile
thing Bush has done since he took office was to remove the Moon taboo at
NASA -- or so I had thought. But now we're funding another Jupiter
mission, right in the middle of the VSE schedule?

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On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 15:51:36 -0500, Joe Strout wrote:


The Juno mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers program.
"This was a very tough decision given the exciting and innovative
nature of the two missions," Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a
statement.

Given their both exciting and innovative, why the heck didn't they
choose the one that adheres to NASA's new mission?

Might be throwing a bone to the outer planets advocates since JIMO has
been delayed more or less indefinately.

Brian

Joe Strout wrote:


Given their both exciting and innovative, why the heck didn't they
choose the one that adheres to NASA's new mission? The only worthwhile
thing Bush has done since he took office was to remove the Moon taboo at
NASA -- or so I had thought. But now we're funding another Jupiter
mission, right in the middle of the VSE schedule?



Think it through- if you can return samples from the Moon with unmanned
robots, why do you have to send people there?
They don't want that concept to pop into anyone's head.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:

Think it through- if you can return samples from the Moon with unmanned
robots, why do you have to send people there?

To establish a base, of course. Why would anyone think that a lunar
base is about returning samples? Nobody returns samples of vacuum from
ISS... OK, maybe that's a bad example, but still.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:10:58 -0500, in a place far, far away, Brian
Thorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

The Juno mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers program.
"This was a very tough decision given the exciting and innovative
nature of the two missions," Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a
statement.

Given their both exciting and innovative, why the heck didn't they
choose the one that adheres to NASA's new mission?

Might be throwing a bone to the outer planets advocates since JIMO has
been delayed more or less indefinately.

At least until the technology has been developed to the point at which
it makes sense.

On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 18:51:59 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Given their both exciting and innovative, why the heck didn't they
choose the one that adheres to NASA's new mission? The only worthwhile
thing Bush has done since he took office was to remove the Moon taboo at
NASA -- or so I had thought. But now we're funding another Jupiter
mission, right in the middle of the VSE schedule?

Think it through- if you can return samples from the Moon with unmanned
robots, why do you have to send people there?

Maybe because the goal isn't to return samples from the moon, which we
did thirty-five years ago?

Pat Flannery wrote:
I never have figured out what exactly the proposed lunar base is
supposed to do- the astronauts gather up rocks and examine them I
suppose. That's going to get old after a month or so.

Indeed.

There's some sort of self-coherent case to be made for Mars
exploration, even after you ignore all of Zubrin's frontier BS.
Finding evidence of prior life (or especially current life) there would
be quite significant, and I think that the amount of exploration needed
for that might well be into the "cheaper to do with people" range.

But the moon? I hesitate to say "who cares," but I'm thinking it.

It doesn't make much sense for spaceship assembly, as it's located at
the bottom of a (admittedly shallow) gravity well, so that building
ships at an L point would save fuel. Even if the lunar base finds water
and can smelt lunar soil somehow, it's going to be a long time before it
can make anything as complex as a spacecraft given the possible funding
level the project is going to have.

I don't think anyone seriously suggests actually building spacecraft on
the moon, but sometimes they discuss extracting oxygen from the soil.
I've never seen anything to make me vaguely believe that this is
economically or technologically worthwhile in the service of any larger
end.

-jake

Jake McGuire wrote:


But the moon? I hesitate to say "who cares," but I'm thinking it.


Lessee, who would care about the moon... hmmm...

1: Astronomers
2: Tourists
3: Anybody who wants to get fantastically rich in the beamed solar power
industry
4: Anyone who feels they need helium-3 for fusion reactors
5: Anyone wanting to head into deep space and who needs lots of aluminum
and/or oxygen
6: Anyone who wants to build big-ass space colonies
7: Anyone who wants to exploit, colonize or otherwise make use of
astroids or outer-system moons and who needs to test out tech
8: The military
9: Anyone who wants to test really dangerous technology, from bionasties
to nukes to antimatter drive systems

Note NASA has offered a reward to the team who can come up with the
fastest way of extracting oxygen from lunar regolith.

Once oxygen is extracted, the rest of the minerals might not be too
difficult to get out.

See http://fp.alexterrell.plus.com/test/...stellation.pdf
for a possible scenario.