h a
minority of scientists think they may have been higher during that era too).
The fact that dinosaurs evolved to much bigger sizes than mammals may have
been due to the fact that -- because they were cold-blooded -- they got more
of an advantage out of having huge unwieldly bodies than manmmals do,
because those huge bodies would make it easier for them to control their
internal temperatures.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
idn't the equally
huge crawling bugs of the Carboniferous Era hold on? They didn't have the
clumsy-flight disadvantage of those huge dragonflies -- there's no obvious
competitive-evolutionary reason why we don't still have two-foot cockroaches
and 6-foot millipedes around. It see
missed you, our giant gadfly!
>
>-- JHB
Come on over to Jason Perry's "Jupiter List" and "ISSDG" discussion groups
and you can see Clements and I tearing at each other and questioning each
other's ancestry on a regular basis. It's wonderful.
Bruce Mo
-Original Message-
From: Evan James Dembskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, December 08, 2000 5:27 AM
Subject: RE: On The Rise of Oxygen...
>Bruce,
>
>
>> Come on over to Jason Perry's "Jupiter List" and "ISSDG" discussion
groups
>> and you
ket. Apparently its maximum length is
90 mm, though -- which, I think, is still somewhat smaller than the African
Goliath beetle and maybe one or two other huge insect species as well.)
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
that virtually every intelligent race in the Universe
destroys itself with nuclear or (more likely) biological weapons
(deliberately or accidentally) within at most a few centuries of discovering
electricity. Certainly our own race is easily capable of doing such a thing
without outside assistance
rrently
>thought. Levison is toying with the idea that Uranus and Neptune
>started out between Jupiter and Saturn, where his simulations suggest
>they could have orbited for hundreds of millions of years before
>flying out into the lingering debris beyond Saturn and triggering a
>late heavy b
uld have
been dragged along and accelerated by the tugs and thus spiraled
considerably outwards. (Theories vary on which direction Saturn would have
moved, although its movement would have been fairly small in either
direction. There's also some belief that Mars might have been slowed down
eno
tire
> human race) some time in this century. That deliberately mutated -- and
> almost unkillable -- version of the Caulerpa seaweed that got loose from
an
> aquarium and now seems to be wiping out the entire Mediterranean seafloor
> ecosystem is just the first pebble in the avalanche.
>
&
hance), that somehow makes it more likely that it will come down
tails than heads on the next flip. The fact that we happen to be the most
recent humans does absolutely nothing in itself to make it likely that we're
about to kick the bucket. We have REAL problems to worry about.
Bruce Moom
ays. "There are a lot of
>unresolved physics issues to address."
>
>Ian Sample
>
> From New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2000.
>
I saw this earlier, and it didn't make sense then either. What the hell
happened to Newton's Third Law? How do you keep getting
-Original Message-
From: Robert Clements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, December 08, 2000 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: On The Rise of Oxygen...
>
>Bruce Moomaw wrote:
>>
>&g
tury. That deliberately mutated -- and
almost unkillable -- version of the Caulerpa seaweed that got loose from an
aquarium and now seems to be wiping out the entire Mediterranean seafloor
ecosystem is just the first pebble in the avalanche.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Ice
ne of them
reports, "I feel my intelligence growing by the moment." Maybe we could get
Bush to approach the thing...
www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/01/02/monolithmystery.ap/index.html
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project infor
no doubt has occurred to a hell of a lot of
geologists. (It should be kept in mind, though, that one big feature in
Australia for which most geologists had rejected an impact origin has
recently been shown to really BE a impact crater.)
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mail
Europa who hops up and sings
"Hello,
>My Baby.")
>
>
Just as long as it's not wearing a Roman war helmet and a pair of tennis
shoes. (By the way, given their fondness for Warner Brothers cartoons, why
hasn't somebody in this Group proposed blasting through Europa's i
providing the several kilowatts of power that even a small Cryobot needs.)
However, a laser mounted on a Europa surface lander does definitely have the
ability to vaporize material up to several dozen meters from the lander --
and either a flash-spectrum spectrometer, or a mass spectrometer capable
a's
ice layer isn't thick enough. (And trailing a communications cable back up
through the ice is troublesome and heavy enough -- the weight and
vulnerability of a power cable would be prohibitive.) Like it or not (and I
don't), we seem to be stuck with nuclear power sources for any Europa
drilling effort.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
have also crashed on landing had both ships flown.)
So 11 people have died on manned spaceflights -- but the three men on
Soyuz-11 still have the unhappy distinction of being the only human beings
ever actually to die in outer space.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mai
quot;To Build a Planet" branch of NASA's latest
Solar System Exploration Roadmap has been greeted with general Bronx cheers,
on the grounds that its missions all fit better in other branches of the
program.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROT
pulsion Implications of a New Source for the Einstein Equations
Unfortunately, only the titles of the abstracts seem to be on the Web so
far -- but I'll now give the whole program a more thorough going-over.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROT
ntarctica's Lake Vostok may have been an exposed
surface lake that has since been covered by the ice cap (a theory that
considerably increases the chances that lakes under Mars' polar caps may
still hold extant life, and may also increase the odds of life in Europa's
ice).
Bruce Mo
cientific importance whatsoever. Maybe you should
start pointing out to your kids that these question really ARE losing their
meaning now when we talk about the Solar System -- that's a pretty
interesting fact in itself. After all, a lot of the current confusion is
due to the fact that we'
I submit that what most people dislike
about the use of RTGs for space exploration is the prospect of having the
stuff sprinkled on their own heads, thank you.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
probable fuel that will be getting us to Mars and back," Ronen said. "I
>think that we are now far enough advanced to interest international space
>programs in taking a closer look at americium-based space vehicles."
>
Before I cheerfully say that using this stuff in
i-experimental 'astronaut's playground'
and
>showcase of world cooperation to an efficient manufacturer of Americium
>pellets is a broad stretch indeed.
>
This IS a serious concern -- as I've said, I'd like to know just how
radioactive this stuff is in non-criti
I understand, starting to be some wrangling about precisely this
issue among biologists. While the definition of "species" seems to be
fairly straightforward (two different species can't breed to produce fertile
children), every bigger level of the tree by which we categorize living
he days of Galileo!
>
>Who's with me?!
>
Not me, I'm afraid. Being a silly old fogy, I'm much more concerned with
more trivial issues, such as the fact that the Electoral College has just
appointed the loser of our Presidential election to be the winner.
Bruce Moomaw
==
, it has a half-life of
fully 600 million years, making its radiation output only about 1/2000 as
intense as plutonium-239. So a uranium reactor would be a lot heavier --
and probably more expensive -- than an americium one, but it would probably
also be a lot safer to launch.)
Bruce Mooma
se the stuff in very thick, virtually crash-proof and
explosion-proof canisters, and unload it only after the carrier ship is in a
high Earth orbit 1000 km or more up -- so that even if it accidentally got
left there, it would naturally stay in orbit for tens of thousands of years,
by which time its
s flat. I think we can safely assume
that the acceleration level they're talking about for this 2-week Mars trip
is much less than 1 G at any point. (By the way, I did all these
calculations with pencil and paper in a few minutes because I didn't want to
be bothered to go get the calculato
hey won't be able to do it much longer. (And then,
maybe, all those unfortunate Kuiper Belt objects that are still unnamed
despite the fact that they're huge will finally have their day.)
Bruce Moomaw
>--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Well, if you
his wife's name was
Charlene, therby dooming astronomers for all time to come to confusing it
with "Chiron".
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
t;> participation and keep discussions together in one thread.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Simon
>
I support this enthusiastically (although it still leaves the problem of
whether Larry or Jason will be managing the unified list).
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Ice
;>radioactive this stuff is in non-critical form before I started launching
>>it
>>into Earth orbit. (And I find it hard to believe that original article
>>when
>>it says that only "a few kg" of americium could provide enough fission
>>power
>>to pr
I see that in my reply to Fritz Griffith, I accidentally trimmed out his own
message -- which reduces my response to total gibberish. Here's the
corrected version:
-Original Message-
From: Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Icepick Europa Mailing List <[EMAIL PR
caps and the possible shield volcano which Earth-based radar may have
fuzzily detected on Mercury's unknown side, it goes on to say: "What [Dr.
Robert Strom] finds truly intriguing, however, are mysterious radar
signatures that defy description -- a collection of bright dots some 1200
miles in
so, keep in mind that the abstracts for the next Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference meeting are all supposed to be put on the Web Friday
www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2001 ).
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project informatio
? Someone did. And someday
>> someone will go through with it for the stunt value
>> alone. Yuck.
>>
Yep -- the 1958 story was called "Watch This Space", and the sodium jet was
ostensibly to produce a giant artificial aurora to study the Moon's
atmosphere. As thin
27;off ramps' designed to halt station assembly short of what is now
understood as completion."
Comment is superfluous.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
at Rupert Murdoch isn't willing to put on the air. How about a
new Fox special, "When Right-Wing Pornographers Attack"? (Of course, given
the other networks' increasing willingness to devote their news magazines to
true-crime tabloid schlock since they've been taken o
l knowledge -- the average person remains just as ignorant of
elementary science as ever. If this keeps up, scientists and engineers will
end up as a sort of High Priesthood, probably complete with tall headdresses
and human sacrifices. What do you do about this? Damned if I know.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
automatically through his E-mail outlet. Fortunately, my trusty McAfee
shield intercepted the virus -- but if you get such a message, for God's
sake don't open it.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information an
harder for
Congress to cancel it -- and the AW article above sems to confirm this. I
truly believe NASA when it says it won't pull a nickel away from its other
programs, though. After all, if you can't trust NASA, who can you trust?
(Don't answer that.)
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscri
x27;s not even trying to go in for
responsible journalism. "If it sells, it's good" is his philosophy -- and
the less that responsible journalists fight this muck, the faster it will
spread. (Its spread may be inevitable anyway, but we ought to at least make
some effort against it.
strangled because it made the
Space Station look bad).
As for those spacegoing millionaires, it's going to take an awful lot of
them to pay that $100 billion bill.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
-Original Message-
From: Jeff Foust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, February 19, 2001 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: the Fox Moon "documentary"
>
>on 2/19/01 5:45 PM, Bruce Moomaw at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>
ce 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
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
se radiation has hopelessly scrambled and disrupted any biological
organic compounds that are in the ice -- but how much deeper than that do we
need to go, at least at first?
Later on, when I have the time, I'll try to provide you with a list of URLs
on these topics (including the best overall scientific descriptions of
Europa that we have up to now).
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
is exactly what happened to Mars, according to the currently favored
theory). So -- trillion-year solar lifetime or not -- red-dwarf planets
don't stay habitable for all that much longer than Earth will.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
ed cost of such an
ion-drive module would be a negative point -- but one abstract at the
just-completed Outer Solar System Missions Workshop:
www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/outerplanets2001/pdf/4103.pdf
... suggests that a new, low-powered ion drive which NASA is working on
could allow the Pluto mission to
prisingly concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid. And Chyba
and E. Pierazzo also suggest that a substantial quantity of organic
compounds have been dumped onto Europa's surface, from its very start, by
impacting comets -- providing another source of organics which could both
serve as the starting point for the evolution of life on the ancient, warmer
Europa, and as an additional food source for modern germs.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
cidentally succeeded
big-time -- has therefore provided false encouragement to generations of
cranks since. The fact remains that we still have a duty to try to identify
the ideas most (and least) likely to succeed. Guess which category I think
the Space Station falls into?
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
ting the flawless success of its coming
test of the "Project Blackout" bomb to turn the Sun off for just a few
minutes: "This Department will not be deterred from the imminent test by
the accidental destruction of the planet Mercury during a previous attempt.
This accident has bee
of world governmental organization with genuine
teeth in it is the only possible hope for minimizing this kind of thing,
contrary to the fond fairy tales of the libertarians.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
ave happened as a single
extremely rare event on Earth or Mars, which then seeded the other world.
But if life is found on Europa, it almost certainly was a separate event,
and therefore represents virtual proof that life does very often evolve in
the Universe.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
verall concern would be simply that they might find some part of Earth's
environment to their liking and turn into more or less serious pests.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
ple to it, and yanked
it. But Donald DiVincenzo -- the co-designer of Antaeus -- says he himself
has serious doubts as to whether it would be justified. Don't forget that we
have lots of germ-containment labs on Earth right now doing a good job of
containing large quantities of microbes that w
-Original Message-
From: TAYLOR, MICHAEL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 22, 2001 12:19 PM
Subject: RE: Microoganisms and Phylogeny
>
>Re Bruce Moomaw":
>
>"But if life is found o
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: Let's Go To Pluto and Europa!
>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:59 PM
Subject: Re: Red dwarf stars: Friendly to life?
>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Mooma
about the tremendous amount of public interest
Galileo's photos of Earth during its return approaches to the planet would
draw, and how they would do their part to Change the Way Humans Look at the
World. Well. Know anyone out there who's mentioned those pictures at all?
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
the eight
new candidate technologies that may be tested in Earth orbit by the upcoming
Deep Space-6. After all, the current Mars sample-return mission already
calls for such rendezvous and docking to be carried out in MARS orbit --
using U.S. equipment mounted on that French orbiter -- and so it wi
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2001 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: Let's Go To Pluto and Europa!
>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, February 23, 2001 11:02 PM
Subject: Re: Microoganisms and Phylogeny
>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PR
ill be. I am convinced that
the plain and simple fact is that the existence of every intelligent race in
this Universe is a short-lived fluke. The more power we accumulate, the
easier it will be for even one lone nut to wreak wholesale havoc on his
entire species. Our moral awareness, I think, is ver
a" --
www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/europamenu.htm
These, by the way (particularly the first one) are also splendid summaries
of what we currently know and don't know about Europa at this point --
something Gail and Roberta should keep in mind.
We are going to have to be very, very careful
lso spectacularly beautiful. Frankly, I think your Webcam idea
would work a lot better for several very small and cheap Earth-orbiting
satellites than for very long-distance whole-Earth shots, and I wouldn't be
surprised to see just that in the near future.
Bruce Moomaw
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
the Solar System, of low gravity (only 1/7 of Earth's
at Titan's surface) and dense atmosphere (4 times the density of Earth's at
the surface), humans really could strap wings to their arms and fly there.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
he serious possibility
was raised that a Europa Cryobot, in the process of melting its way through
even a few meters of ice, would find itself solidly encased in crystallized
salts -- making a mechanical drill in the nose an equal necessity.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick
-- I
had it completely backwards. Sorry. But the Japanese are unquestionably a
lot more on the ball than the U.S. in working seriously on completely
unmanned rendezvous and docking before we've even gotten around to it. (And
the Russians, of course, have been routinely doing it for 34 ye
dly anything that we need to know about Europa's
composition, and that surface composition measurements are an extremely
important part of any future Europa exploration program (and one which has
been short-changed in the curent Europa Orbiter design).
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
acid, elemental sulfur and/or sulfate salts.
>
>Bruce Moomaw
>
>
>I'm still not convinced about the stinkiness of the ocean, Bruce, although
>you're usually right about most things! ;-) Elemental sulfur is insoluble
>in water and so would likely be found only in thick
-mail my contacts there to
try to find out what was said. Finally, the National Academy of Sciences'
"COMPLEX" committee recently held a meeting on planetary exploration, in
which a draft of a set of recommendations about Europa was discussed --
although I have no idea what's in it.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
how
that the extremely deep ocean which it unquestionably has will disperse its
hot-water plume over far too big an area by the time it rises all the way up
to the underside of the ice layer for it to have any major local effect on
the structure of the ice crust.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscrib
nted out in some recent LPSC abstracts that magnesium sulfate
and sodium carbonate (natron) can't BOTH exist in Europa's ocean -- because
their solutions react with each other, producing magnesium carbonate (which
is insoluble and would precipitate out as sediment) and sodium sulfate.
B
nd that you have to burn it WITH
something, and Europa is singularly short on free oxygen (although it does
have a little, thanks to the breakdown of water ice by Jupiter's radiation).
I don't know what happens when you react sulfur with hydrogen peroxide
(which Europa does have in considerable amounts).
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
uropa from Io over its lifetime. In short, whether Kargel
is right or not, if Carlson is right Europa's ice crust and underlying ocean
must both be very sulfurous -- and acidic -- indeed. Moreover, since H2SO4
very drastically lowers water's freezing point, this makes it all the more
likely that Europa really does have a subsurface liquid ocean (and a very
electrically conductive one), regardless of how much dissolved salts it also
contains.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
color of Jupiter's upper clouds might also have
something to do with sulfur dumped into its atmosphere by Io over the eons,
although it may well be that the total amount of Ionian sulfur deposited is
far too little to have anything to do with Jupiter's still-mysterious cloud
coloring.
B
Icarus 248:226.
>>
>> Dan Zeigler
>
>That was Icarus 148:226, and IDEAL wants $35 to view that article. Is there
>anywhere I can read that free of charge?
>
Don't panic -- Kargel also detailed his ideas in several recent LPSC
abstracts, which are available free on th
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 2:31 PM
Subject: RE: The source of Europa's sulfur
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PROTEC
Make that
www.copernicus.org/EGS/egsga/nice01/programme/abstracts/aai4230.pdf
(And this one really does check out.)
BRuce
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
ate
and (insoluble) magnesium carbonate, and ammonia would react with some of
the others. (I'll poke around soon in the past few years of LPSC abstracts
on the subject and see if I can dig up something more specific.)
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
llections of essays on what makes good
SF and fantasy, I'd start with Damon Knight's classic "In Search of
Wonder" -- every bit as fresh and relevant today as it was in 1964 -- and
Ursula LeGuin's 1980 "The Language of the Night."
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
uot; After the landing, however: " 'The detector system is
working well,' Trombka reports... 'Things are looking very good,' he told
'Sky & Telescope. 'Had I known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have
been upset about landing at all!' "
Br
ous amount of autonomous intelligence to cope with the
unexpected and complex environment (both to acquire scientific information
efficiently and simply to survive), and some kind of learning ability will
surely be a part of that.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
e of
Earth and its consequences for civilization (in detail), back in 1960.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
d two years ago. Oh,
well; they were able to squeeze quite a lot of money out of the dairy
cows -- er, taxpayers -- first, which of course was what NASA had in mind
from the start:
http://space.com/missionlaunches/missions/X33_cancel_010301.html
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa
The article was really
http://space.com/missionlaunches/missions/x33_cancel_010301.html
(Who the hell would have thought a capital letter would make so much
difference?)
Bruce
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscri
that both the Republican and Democratic members
made it indignantly clear that they, not the Bush Administration, will
decided whether or not to cancel the Pluto mission. Of course, this still
leaves wide open the final fate of this Perils of Planetary Pauline.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the
-Original Message-
From: Keira McKenzie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, March 02, 2001 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: Another goddamn URL correction
>
>Poor Bruce
>
>I really do feel sorry for you when you make those URL corrections, but
just
>thought
-Original Message-
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 3:09 PM
Subject: RE: Sulfur elsewhere in the Jovian system
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PRO
's surface cools and warms during its
day-night cycle, even sites where eruptions had gone off hundreds of years
ago could probably be accurately detected. It's quite possible that such an
instrument will be carried by Europa Orbiter.
Bruce Moomaw
==
You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
"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/
ethane, and those of Neptune (along with Pluto) probably include frozen
nitrogen and carbon monoxide!
Bruce Moomaw
render Earth totally
uninhabitable by crashing into it.
Oddly, I have heard about some discussions of the distant-future possibility
of shading Earth with a titanic super-thin sunshade to prevent future
climate changes -- but even this would be a project for the very distant
human future, and it certa
-Original Message-
From: Gail & Roberta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: OK, OK, OK, Enough!
>
>Naturally I can't give away too much in the hopes that my first story will
>be published, but try this: Sup
-Original Message-
From: Deanna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, March 11, 2001 10:31 AM
Subject: Re: OK, OK, OK, Enough!
>
>> (1) It's more likely that they would live buried UNDER a few meters of
>> Europa's ice than on top of it, as a shie
You're welcome. By the way, don't depair -- I've seen surprisingly few SF
stories about Europa. Indeed, I've seen somewhat more stories lately about
Titan. Charles Sheffield did write a novel a few years ago about a future
human civilization based on the Jovian moons, with a lot of the action
the Conservation Law of Mass-Energy can be broken -- that one's
just a bit too fundamental. There have been a few recent stories, though,
about the extraction of large amounts of energy from the vacuum itself,
which according to modern quantum physics may be possible. But what happens
to the
1 - 100 of 463 matches
Mail list logo
