Joe Latrell
Thu, 31 Oct 2002 12:14:07 -0800
It could work, but you would never get the craft moving again. But it would be great for just getting some readings about the area.
The best part about it is that testing is simple. Throw it out an airplane or launch it on a rocket and let it smash into an iceflow on earth. Hmmm... Joe Latrell On Thu, 2002-10-31 at 09:06, LARRY KLAES wrote: > Remember the plans for the CRAF probe over a decade ago > that was going to send a spike-shaped probe into a comet > to penetrate its surface and study the interior of an ancient > iceball? > > Would it be possible to design something similar for Icepick? > If we find a relatively thin area of Europa's crust, perhaps > one of the cracks or those upwellings just in the news, we > could literally use a hardened protective cone to smash > through the ice and deposit the Icepick Hydroobot into the > liquid ocean. Or at the least slam it deep into the ice so > we would not have to melt/drill/dig so far? > > My hope for this is to reduce the amount of power and > such to get through the ice crust so we can focus more > resources on the Hydrobot. Could the Hydrobot be > designed to survive such an impact? > > Here are some relevant URLs on CRAF: > > http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/fulltext/craf2.pdf > > http://www.nas.edu/ssb/crafcassini392.htm > > http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/never.html > > Larry == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/