Well, if anything he's true to himself. Europa lander axed (no glory for his ego because he'll likely be dead when that launches) Everything to do with 'teh climate' axed (leftists bring droughs, flood and stuff, CO2 is not to blame) Education program axed (needs the dumb to win again) Rest is intact. Meaning the most important and most interesting missions are canned. Hooray.
If we can reach out to the stars, and colonize other worlds, then we might just make commie societies that can come back, and liberate Earth, so the oligarchs have to keep us trapped on this mudball in misery with them.
Holy shit!!! As Aurora says, no ego percentage here --- "Scrap it!!" The brain-damaged loon is also going to privatize air-traffic control. Figures. It makes watching this rather poignant.
I always thought the Asteroid Redirect program was largely a waste of time. And I've never understood unmanned mission planners obsessions with Europa assumed under the ice ocean or no under the ice ocean. Callisto is a better target for exploration of Jupiter's moons in my opinion. And Al Gore's pet project was a waste of time as well.
Any close fly-by Europa exploration just won't cut it. We have to get "boots-on-the-ground" even if it's a robot boot. If we can only focus on one project it should be Europa.
Even assuming the presumed below the ice ocean on Europa is the holy grail of unmanned explorationo...what good would a lander do? A lander almost certainly will not be able to access the ocean given it is probably under at least hundreds of meters, (and probably kilometers) of ice. Only a lander with some kind of highly efficient and durable drill, or more likely a nuclear powered external heated casing to melt its way through the ice would have a chance of giving any access to the ocean.
There are cracks in the ice where water is able to reach the surface before freezing. Organic compounds and even the remains of microorganisms would likely be there.
oThose "cracks" with water on the surface. "fact" or "speculation". And any microorganisms on Europa would have to survive a continous radiation storm that would fry anything known to man.
Facts. Dead or alive, it's immaterial, all we need is something we can put into a DNA sequencer, and those are now the size of a thumb drive.
Presumably ice that thick would shield any life from radiation, wouldn't it? So the purpose of a lander would, among other things, have been to look for evidence of life on the surface. That right? Apparently they think there's convection going on in the ice not unsimilar to that within the Earth's mantle. So -- apart from trickles of water -- that would bring a lot of stuff up. And the weird reddish stuff could be irradiated salt from the salty ocean beneath.
Given that Europa is the smoothest body in the solar system I have trouble believing those lines are cracks where some liquid water might be present.
"Smooth" is a relative term. If the Earth was the same size as billiard ball, it'd be smoother than the ball.
