> Hi All,
>
> I've just joined this list and have been following the Jupiter/Lake
> Vostock line for a while.
> I notice the you say the group has already chewed over alot of these
> problems?
> Could you tell where you are at the moment? Are you looking at possibe
> candidates for a prototype?
> Are there any problems to be solved? Payload? Instrumentation?
>
> I am keen to find out where the project is and if I can add/help?
>
> As background, I am a Naval Architect and so my field is in structural
> design, FEA, pressure vessels,
> subsea vehicles and basically anything else that needs to
> float/submerge and stay upright/intact.
>
> Very Interested to hear.
>
> Regards
>
> John A. MacSween
>
>
> The trouble is that this group has already long since chewed all that
> over
> extremely thoroughly, throughout 1999 and 2000 (apparently before you
> got
> here) -- and we're simply running out of specifically Europa-related
> stuff
> to discuss. (Hopefully there will soon be some more of it, as I
> recently
> noted.) That's precisely why many of us have moved over to Jason
> Perry's
> "ISSDG" and "Jupiter List" chat groups, which deal with Solar System
> exploration in general.
>
> Regarding your questions: Europa's crust is solid ice and anywhere
> from
> several to several dozen km thick -- so we certainly don't need to
> worry
> about floating on the surface or drifting on ice floes. It has an
> extremely
> faint trace of atmosphere -- only a few hundred-millionths as dense as
> Earth's -- and we have a good idea of most of the gases making it up.
> The
> core may or may not be hot enough to provide any volcanic vents at all
> on
> the floor of the subsurface ocean, but most of that floor is certainly
> near
> 0 deg C, just like most of Earth's ocean floor. (Europa's tidal
> heating
> from Jupiter is only about 1/10 of Io's.) This still leaves a
> tremendous
> number of interesting questions about the place, of course -- with one
> of
> the most lively recent subjects being an increased feeling among
> scientists
> that Jupiter's radiation may produce a disproportionate concentration
> of
> nutrients and other biologically useful chemicals in the TOP few
> meters of
> Europa's ice, and that these may both be slowly transported down into
> the
> underground ocean, or nourish microbes in local pockets of
> near-surface
> water within the ice. (This, in turn, would mean that a productive
> search
> for Europan life may not have to dig nearly as far down into the ice
> as the
> originaly Cryobot would have -- but then, there was some feeling along
> those
> lines anyway, since it's always seemed likely that long-dead but
> extremely
> well-preserved Europan microbes may be preserved in the ice even near
> its
> top.)
>
> Bruce Moomaw
>
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