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Uranus mission most important thing to consider?

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RichA

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Apr 19, 2022, 2:22:34 PM4/19/22
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Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61155725

Chris L Peterson

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Apr 19, 2022, 3:22:02 PM4/19/22
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On Tue, 19 Apr 2022 11:22:32 -0700 (PDT), RichA <rande...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.
>
>https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61155725

There are no human habitable worlds. There are a few places in the
Solar System where we might find life, and those have active missions
or missions in the works. One of the most important questions we're
still working on is the formation of planetary systems. So a detailed
look at another gas giant makes very good sense.

W

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Apr 19, 2022, 3:41:15 PM4/19/22
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On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 2:22:34 PM UTC-4, RichA wrote:
> Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61155725

It's a priority because there is a launch window in 9-10 years time, just about enough time to get the hardware designed and built.

Spending resources on this does not preclude doing other projects too.

Mars isn't going anywhere.

Quadibloc

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Apr 19, 2022, 6:46:07 PM4/19/22
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On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 12:22:34 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
> Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type
> of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.

The temperature of Uranus recently changed suddenly in an unexplained fashion!

So maybe we will discover something on Uranus that will help to save Earth
from global warming!

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Apr 19, 2022, 6:46:41 PM4/19/22
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On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 1:22:02 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

> There are no human habitable worlds.

Mars is a world that can be settled by people. Not that terraforming it would
be practical with foreseeable technology, but people can live in underground
habitats, with the surface not being so inhospitable that they can't go to the
surface to set up solar collection mirrors, to collect resources, and so on.

Of course, much the same could be said of the Moon, but Mars does have
more resources, and the gravity there is not quite as low, although it is
significantly lower than that of Earth, which is still a problem.

John Savard

Chris L Peterson

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Apr 20, 2022, 12:55:12 AM4/20/22
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Mars is no more habitable than the bottom of the ocean. Less. At our
current level of technology, there is no hope of people living on it
without extreme dependence on the resources of Earth. That's not what
I would call "habitable".

Chris L Peterson

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Apr 20, 2022, 12:56:33 AM4/20/22
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We already know how to save Earth from global warming. It's quite
simple. All that's missing is the political will. And we're not going
to find that on Uranus!

Michael F. Stemper

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Apr 20, 2022, 9:43:20 AM4/20/22
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And it's doing it at 24 km/s

--
Michael F. Stemper
Deuteronomy 10:18-19

Quadibloc

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Apr 20, 2022, 11:09:35 AM4/20/22
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On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 10:56:33 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2022 15:46:05 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
> <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> >On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 12:22:34 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:

> >> Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type
> >> of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.
> >
> >The temperature of Uranus recently changed suddenly in an unexplained fashion!
> >
> >So maybe we will discover something on Uranus that will help to save Earth
> >from global warming!

> We already know how to save Earth from global warming. It's quite
> simple. All that's missing is the political will. And we're not going
> to find that on Uranus!

That's true enough.

I could see politicians using a mission to Uranus as a way to justify doing
nothing, of course.

I've already explained how I feel about this. Nuclear power. It lets
conservative politicians feel they're still "owning the libs"! More
importantly, it's a _proven_ way to produce energy, and it isn't strictly
limited by the amount of available sunlight or wind. That doesn't mean
wind and solar, and the energy storage needed to make them more
useful, shouldn't be developed, but if we want to get to zero fossil
fuel use, and we don't want to crimp heavy industrial production at
all, nuclear fills the bill.

Need more energy? Build another plant.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Apr 20, 2022, 11:12:09 AM4/20/22
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While it's true that Mars is *in motion*, as a consequence of being
in orbit around the sun, it still isn't "going anywhere" in the sense of
being on the way out of the Solar System, or otherwise becoming
inaccessible in future.

Of course, Mars _could_ have a slight secular increase in the
semi-major axis of its orbit, but for practical purposes of space
travel, it's inconsequential.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Apr 20, 2022, 11:16:49 AM4/20/22
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Or, in simpler language, if you're going around in circles, you won't
get anywhere. That's even true if you're going around in ellipses
instead.

Although if the ellipse has a high enough eccentricity... but Mars
is not in that category.

John Savard

JJ

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Apr 20, 2022, 11:31:32 AM4/20/22
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On 4/19/22 14:22, RichA wrote:
> Personally, I can think of better uses of limited funds. This will likely gives clues as to why so many of these type of planets exist, but we should be concentrating on the potentially habitable worlds, not gas-giants.
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61155725
>

There was a reason why the Creator put so much distance between worlds.
There are plenty of planets out there with life, but humans will never
make contact. Oh, we'll strive and study, send probes and the like but
it's never going to result in actual contact. Sorry to rain on the
parade, but true.

Much life exists out there, some at our level, some not. There are also
worlds in significantly better shape than ours is, thanks to the
Creator. We are one of the lowest, but there are some that are actually
worse.

Free will says "believe it or not." I choose to believe, but then again
I don't believe in what I consider bogus theories, such as the "big
bang." Just my opinion.....

W

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Apr 20, 2022, 2:25:37 PM4/20/22
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It's been going around the same ole star for billions of years. It will have a new launch window every two years. Uranus' launch windows are over a decade apart.

Try to read for comprehension, OK?
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