Email addresses in posts
Hi folks. I have some suggestions for the list admninistrator. I have found out that there is at least one mail WWW archive with all our posts to the list. In such WWW posts, our email address is revealed. This feachure is often used by bulk email senders to obtain new addreses for their huge list. I would ask the administrator of this website (where teh europa discussion emails are listed) to erase all email adresses in such posts, in order to ease the work of eliminating unwanted emails for all the members of Icepick. thank you very much -- Hibai Unzueta Applied Electronics Research Team University of the Basque Country Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: Data Collection
Hibai Unzueta, 21 years old. Bilbao. Basque Country (spain) Telecommunications (electrical) Engineering student at EHU/UPV University of the Basque Country. Performing 4th year of a five year degree. Doing lab work on the TCN international standar for a realisation of a train communication network. - Original Message - From: Gail Leatherwood To: Europa Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 6:28 PM Subject: Data Collection To help us organize the nearly overwhelming amount of information and raw data we have been circulating, one of our members, Dennis Frye, Orlando, FL, has graciously offered to take on this task. He has been receiving everything we have sent over the past week or so, and has good ideas about how to collect, record, and catalog what we have been doing and want to do. For a start, we need the name, rank, and serial number stuff from everyone so we can have a good mailing list. We can then begin matching names with specific skills, talents, expertise, and availability for specific parts of the project. This will not limit anyone from contributing whatever pops into their heads in the middle of the night, for anything anyone comes up with will be added to the pot. If you have any reservations about sharing all your personal addresses, telephone numbers, or whatever, just your e-mail address will be fine. I think we have that already from your various el-mails, but if there are questions, Dennis may ask you for details. Also, if you have any specific talents not already noted, send that along to him also. And to Dennis: Thanks so much for volunteering for this important job! Gail (the guy) Leatherwood == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: Working Model
I am happy to see that this is moving and could result on something real, but I think we are somehow trying to actually go faster than we can. Talking about the ralisation of an actual model sounds good, but I think all this requires a big conceptual work and planning work. Usually every engineering project spends more time on paper than on testing. Therefore, we need a planner. A detailed description of each component, and of course, a list of components. Something else: we don't have the technology required to build a cryobot for europa. This is highly expensive and inaccessible technology. Only a high tech research institute or a space/governmental agency can gain access to it. So: What is left for us? We can do a lot on conceptual design. We can defince necessities, we can addapt other proposed bots (on a conceptual level), we can do mission planning as a simulation to see inconvenients. (...) -- Hibai Unzueta P.D.: If any website is needed I can help but I must say that we nned to keep ourselves practical and not forget what the actual crude reality is. - Original Message - From: Gail Leatherwood To: Europa Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 7:32 PM Subject: Working Model I seem to have volunteered to help organize and circulate the ideas we've come up with. I'll start working on a data base since I don't have anything else to do but sit around drinking beer and watching TV (yeah, right!) I suggest we call the project Hot Nose, since that's what the design seems to be suggesting. (No, no! Not Snot Nose! Good grief!) I suggest that anyone with any ideas or other contributions simply keep posting them on this discussion group. I will capture them and begin organizing them into the various components like Vessel, Guidance System, Electronics, Communication, etc., depending on what we come up with. Then we can begin identifying sources of hardware/software and start hunting for what we need. John's note about the model submarine hobbyist web site is excellent--I've added it to my Favorites list. It has a ton of info on who's making and selling parts for model submarines. Check it out. I also suggest someone get in touch with Nat'l Geographic, Smithsonian, and The Discovery Channel (another Byrne idea, not mine) to see if anyone would be interested in following the project. We might also check with the educational system to identify school science competitions. Each of us can check with our local high schools to see if any of them would be interested. I'll try to keep up with the documentation of the project, for I think that will be critical for both our own developmental use and possible publicity. Oh, a couple pesky questions: In whose garage will we build Hot Nose? And if we're scattered all over the US and other countries (like Hibai Unzueta in Spain) how are we going to get enough of us together to actually handle the assembly? Not insurmountable, but getting to Alaska might be like the gold rushers converging on the Chilkoot Pass. OK, your turn. Gail PS: Thanks, Bruce for your encyclopedic reference on Icepick related works. I envy your library! GBL == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: Nuclear. Power sources. Space propulsion.
From the link posted by Robert Bradbury: In medieval times, alchemists dreamed of transmuting lead into gold. They never achieved that dream, but it may _SOMEDAY_ be possible to change the high-level nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants into much more manageable wastes. Under the U.S. Accelerator Transmutation of Waste Program, Los Alamos and other Department of Energy laboratories are studying and developing accelerator-driven technologies that can transmute such waste into more benign, stable waste forms. http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/science21/ATW.html This is a line of research, as I see it. First thing to mention, we don't have that technology yet. (costs? any prototype? cost of $/kWh for a combined fussion reactor/ATW? access to this technology to the rest of the world?) If we are going to talk of the wide range of technological breakthroughs that mankind it is to make in the comming years, the list would be very big. I could mention, use of nuclear fussion (which would reduce nuclear waste in a more significant rate than the ATW you mention, since the contamination is much smaller) and development of more efficient renewable energy generators. According to the later, for example, solar energy is archiving rates of eficiency VS cost that grow up exponentially and will soon enter the rates of fosil-fuel based power production, with a relatively small support in ressearch (only magnified by space necesities). Me must take on account that solar arrays are the simplest (and most realible if connected to the power grid -- distributed power genertion) way of producting energy, here on Earth and in space. Let us not forget that the sun is a nuclear reactor and also unsustainable in the long run. Precisely. That's the idea, the sun is the most powerful thermonuclear reactor, and at a safe distance. It beams its generated energy, and we can _easily_ and in an unrisky way capture it. - Solar energy. I'm sure one day we will be able to safely reproduce its nuclear _fusion_ process, but that day has not arrived yet, and we are running unnecessary risks in the terms we are producing energy in these days. Here I think we agree. Where we may differ is with respect to perspectives regarding the rate of development of the various technologies. As a Europa mission is probably a 10-20 year mission using current technologies it is reasonable to discuss developments that might occur within that time frame that could allow the completion of the mission sooner than it would be completed using our best current technologies. Obviously. I cannot agree more with you. But nevertheless, I think we should focus more, as you say, on the materials used to build the spacecraft, the robotics, the electronics, the mechanics... the sort of things that have made previous space projects fail. We can always have a science fiction talk or make predictions about the future but since that can't be accurate, we have to think on the actual possibilities of performing such mission in the worst case: no __significant__ advance in our propulsion technology. Lets remember how old nuclear fission reactors are and that although there have been advances in the industry, none has been so radical to transform the way NASA or ESA plans it's interplanetary missions. -- Hibai Unzueta == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
Re: Giving Europa the shaft (postscript)
I agree that keeping the shaft or hole open is a nonesense and in my oppinion it seems quite technologigally inviable, for not saying nerarly imposible. To keep it open the walls must be covered with something rigid or semi-rigid and warm. The amount of material and energy to do that seems enormous and not realistic at all if we are talking about a moon on the jovian system. Besides, whats the point? The cryobot of whatever it is deployed down there is not to return to the surface and the only thing going up and down (since we are noyt talking about sample return) will be data. Science and telemetry data. Just that. Now, we agreed taht some system was necessay for that relay and we have talked about flexible cables and relay stations. To me this second seems the more feasible one, and stronger one. Redundancy can be added (even if you gain payload) to get a near reliable relay system. But keeping the shaft open? I cannot see what for... -- Hibai Unzueta - Original Message - From: Reeve, Jack W. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 7:07 PM Subject: RE: Giving Europa the shaft (postscript) The entire open shaft concept is nonsense. Dismiss it at once. I am of the opinion that the trailed behind telemetry line to a surface transmission facility is basically sound, provided ice movement doesn't tear it apart in the relative short term (+- 1 yr?) is very workable. Prior to turning the hot bot loose to melt its way down, you would want to utilize its heat to sink the surface transmission relay unit into the ice a couple of meters to get it out of the nasty Jovian radiation environment. From its chilly burrow it could periodically poke an antenna up out of the ice and send data to Earth. I don't know if the temperatures encountered would be cool enough to take advantage of any super-conductivity, or if super-conductivity would be helpful in any way. The hot bot could then just work its way down through the ice, using forward (down) looking technology to steer itself around any potential unmeltable obstructions. Another possible is that if the ice moves around too much for the cable to survive, it could be periodically heated with an electrical charge from the hot bot. Haven't explored the thermo-dynamics of that. Another way is to leave behind relaying pucks, to daisy chain data up and down through the ice. Whichever way is chosen as the way forward, I guarantee it won't involve an open hole. Jack -Original Message- From: TAYLOR, MICHAEL [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday 28 February 2002 09:45 To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Giving Europa the shaft (postscript) Why does the shaft have to stay open? I thought the original plan was to play out a thin flexible telemetry cable from a com unit on the surface, and create a system that INTENTIONALLY reseals ice behind it as it melts its way down. Otherwise, if you should hit pressurized liquid, it will shoot your probe out like a cannonball. And even if you have an open shaft, getting a telemetry signal up it without wire seems a risky business. I know that a self-sealing shaft is the plan for Vostok, where the probe HAS to be sealed away from the surface for biological protection reasons, and where there's no question that the water pressure would shoot it hundreds of feet above the surface (at Earth gravity) if the shaft were left open. Seems to me like the same rules would go for Europa. But I don't always keep up with the list, so forgive me if the cable plan has been dismissed along the way for some reason I missed. Micheal Ray Taylor -Original Message- From: Bruce Moomaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 4:17 AM To: Europa Icepick Subject: Giving Europa the shaft (postscript) It turns out that the tidal stresses in Europa's ice crust are much, much weaker than I anticipated. In their original article (http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/HIIPS/Publications/hoppa_abstracts/cycloid.h tml ), Hoppa and Tufts describe the maximum tidal tensile stress produced anywhere on Europa as being only a bar, while in the Sept. 17, 1999 Science they set it at only 0.4 bar -- and in both cases, they state that most regions of the surface are not stressed so much. (Indeed, they regard the fact that such small stresses can produce cycloidal cracks as the strongest evidence that Europa's ice crust is thin.) Thus the compressive tidal stresses can't be any higher. Since, as I said before, a walled shaft is necesssary anyway (both to prevent ordinary pressure stresses -- about 100 bars at 7 km depth on Europa -- from squeezing the shaft shut, and to heat the shaft's walls so that the water vapor produced by the shaft-melting machine doesn't refreeze higher up the shaft), making that wall strong enough to withstand a measly 1 bar of pressure would be a trivial addition
RE: About EUROPA PROBE
Don't you think it is too soon to start thinking about sample return from Europa? we'll be quite lucky if we get Martian samples back to Earth in ~10 years. But Europa is another history. If we have BIG problems landing on a desert landscape in Mars, what will we not have to land on moving tides in Europa, penetrate the ice, dive into the ocean, pick a place to collect samples, get back to the ice, push our way up, take off from the surface, and start the journey back to earth... I see this far, far away. On the other hand, I have always thought of ICEpick as a more feasible idea. Landing, penetrating the ice and somehow being able to move along the ocean on a limited range. That kind of probe would indeed give A LOT of valuable data. I guess sample return could wait. ICEpick indeed is enough of a engineering challenge. But that doesn't solve John H. Byrne's proposal. A sketch of ICEpick. Basically when we say ICEpick the goal is the subsurface ocean, isn't it? (LAND -- GO THROUGH THE ICE -- EXPLORE? THE OCEAN) therefore, the probe would consist in a mothership (propulsion to reach Europa) and lander. The lander consisting in the lander itself and the payload and the payload consisting in the Cryobot or whatever that melts through the ice and (into it) the hydrobot (we talked a lot about this thing some time ago...), to be deployed when the cryobot reaches the ocean. Please correct me. I say this because this is where you need to start a sketch. The overall structure. By the way: for the data relay: from hydrobot to cryobot radio. from cryobot to surface lander unit by radio with relays deployed during descent. From lander to (orbiting probe or directly to Earth), well there are no big problems with this last. Anyone disagree??? If you think the "sketch" thing is a good idea please say if you agree/disagree with this thing and propose your alternatives (?)... -- Hibai Unzueta [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Mensaje original - De: Bruce Moomaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] Para: Icepick Europa Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enviado: Larunbata, 2001.eko martxoak 10 3h50 Asunto: Re: About "EUROPA PROBE" -Original Message- From: A.Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 2:22 PM Subject: Re: About "EUROPA PROBE" I hope I have permission to jump in on this topic... I have an idea for the cryobot to get through the ice, but it is a little different then the others. It would involve two basic pieces. The top would be very light...enough to float. The bottom would be heavy so that it would sink. Surrounding the cryobot would be lasers. When the cryobot is placed on the ice, with the bottom lasers on, it would melt its way down (while the ice is melting, the cryobot would be sinking). When it reached the water below, after taking a sampling, the bottom would detach. The top would then turn on its laser and do the same- but floating up. Possible?? Amy Olson Well, lasers aren't necessarily your best heat source. Indeed, the current feeling seems to be pretty universal that what you do is stick some Plutonium-238 in the Cryobot's nose -- the same extremely radioactive stuff used in RTG power generators on current-day outer-planets spacecraft, which turns out a huge amount of heat (its surface temperature is around 1400 deg F!), some of which the RTG converts into electrical energy with thermocouples. Since you have to carry an RTG anyway to provide the Cryobot with electrical power -- and since its thermocouples will convert only a small fraction of the plutonium's heat into electrical energy -- you just use all the remaining amount of "waste heat" that's emitted anyway to do your ice-melting. Of course, this gives you a LOT more heat to do the ice-melting than if you used a fraction of the relatively small amount of electric power which the RTG turns out to run lasers or electric heaters or whatever. And, unfortunately, "floating back up" isn't practical either, since the ice that the Cryobot melted on the way down will have refrozen almost immediately behind it. In order to return to Europa's surface with any subsurface samples, the Cryobot has to have an additional mechanical drive system to grab at the ice and push the probe upwards while it's melting the ice above it -- an even more difficult proposition. However, Honeybee Robotics is working on the design of a so-called "inchworm probe" that could do just that: www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/outerplanets2001/pdf/4085.pdf Bruce Moomaw == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
