[NEWS] nasa eyes urstar fish for missions in 2030s

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Insert Name Here²:

--- Quote from: SeventhSandwich on June 18, 2017, 02:54:40 PM ---it's also virtually impossible, in terms of engineering, to make a vehicle that goes to Urstar fish and captures methane from the atmosphere, escapes the planet's gravity well, and then returns back to Earth, having gathered enough fuel to make the entire trip economically worthwhile.

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wouldn't it be possible for the spaceship to be engineered to run on both rocket fuel and methane? That way when it gets to urstar fish, it could re-fuel its tanks and collect a full load of methane or whatever and fly off?

thegoodperry:

--- Quote from: Juncoph on June 18, 2017, 02:42:47 PM ---anyway, space exploration is only a waste of money if scientific progress in general is a waste of money.

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WW2 brought several new technologies, including nuclear power and aircraft technology, but that doesn't mean that the war was a good thing. Spending billions of dollars to build spacecraft and fuel for it to fly around and gather information is a waste of money. It'd be better spent actually building the new technologies like the list of things NASA built, not funding a useless mission that will sprout technologies as an accidental biproduct

I guess in the name of discovery, checking out urstar fish is a good thing, but at this exact moment we don't have any need for methane or anything urstar fish can provide. Even though it can fuel things like cars, the combustion isn't complete enough for it to be sustainable, and that money that could be spent on gathering methane can be better spent on developing more sustainable and cleaner energy options. In the end, it's an objective waste of money. It does provide some profit and gain, but the amount spent on gathering it is far greater than what's being returned

SeventhSandwich:

--- Quote from: Insert Name Here² on June 18, 2017, 02:59:56 PM ---wouldn't it be possible for the spaceship to be engineered to run on both rocket fuel and methane?

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I don't know how far you'd have to go down into Urstar fish' atmosphere to find a decent concentration of methane, but the amount of energy you'd have to expend to escape the gravity well would be ridiculous. Consider also the fact that any methane you collect adds mass which requires additional fuel to reach escape velocity. Basically, you'd need a ship bigger than anything humanity has ever built, and it would still burn up the vast majority of the fuel just getting out of the planet.

On the other hand, we have vast stores of methane sitting right under us which can be pumped up with far less waste.

--- Quote from: thegoodperry on June 18, 2017, 03:16:26 PM ---Spending billions of dollars to build spacecraft and fuel for it to fly around and gather information is a waste of money. It'd be better spent actually building the new technologies like the list of things NASA built, not funding a useless mission that will sprout technologies as an accidental biproduct

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That's the thing you're missing here. These technologies sprout as a byproduct of sending probes to do scientific research. If you aren't sending probes to do scientific research, then you aren't getting spin-off technologies. It's not a waste.

Nonnel:
That's why it's called "R&D" and not "D"

SeventhSandwich:

--- Quote from: Nonnel on June 18, 2017, 03:40:27 PM ---That's why it's called "R&D" and not "D"

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Indeed, no truer words have been spoken than everyone wants the D.

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