The NASA Curiosity Rover on Mars

You mean "there"? Their =/= there.

Anyway, I'd be surprised if there's life on Europa. I mean, yeah, there's water, but they must have next to zero energy going through the ice.

It would cool if there was life there tho, if only for the fact that it'll be nothing like the life on earth.

^ Arthur C. Clarke being able to posthumously say "suck it, doubters!" would be Bonus Points.

I think the prevailing theory is that they could get energy from geothermal heat.

edited 3rd Dec '12 7:06:00 PM by Gaunt88

Guys, we found the aliens. NASA was just shooting at the wrong planet

I'm undecided on whether or not life exists in other planets in our solar system. I'd like to think it does but it's not going to be planetary raiders or something. We'd have found them by now unless they're insanely good at hiding.

yes I meant there. im tried...

Mars and our Moon are really the only planets that we've been able to study extensively. Mercury and Venus are just too hostile to for probes to last long, though that does preclude much chance for life (though Mercury's recently probed Vales of Eternal Night do provide for a remote probability).

But the outer planets and their moons are completely different kettles of fish. Jupiter and Saturn are on such a scale that humans can't really comprehend. If there really are aliens floating in the deeper atmosphere beneath the cloud tops it would be searching for a needle in a haystack of haystacks. Not to mention we've never probed beneath Europa's icy shell and we've only just started to get information back on Titan's methane seas.

While on Mercury, I once read this article about how building energy sources/a dyson sphere would involve dismantling Mercury, as well as significant chunks of the asteroid belt. The author apparently felt this would be necessary to gather the energy to terraform Mars and make traveling from here to there a practical thing to do.

Kind of crazy to think about. And well... that would make Pluto no longer the unluckiest object in our solar system.

Sedna, Eris, Makemake et al would argue that Pluto is a prima donna of a dwarf planet... the lucky dog. And, I think I saw Ceres sulking somewhere, poor dear, so she was not up to commenting... She might come out of her shell in a few years, though.

edited 4th Dec '12 4:20:06 AM by Euodiachloris

Semi-apropos, maybe this should be retitled "The Space Thread"? I think we could use one.

edited 4th Dec '12 8:07:30 AM by tricksterson

I second that idea, the flow of news specific to Curiosity is drying out and space is awesome.

We could use a space thread.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I third that motion.

edited 4th Dec '12 8:29:24 AM by Colonial1.1

Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020: To save costs, it will be based on the Curiosity, even using spare parts from the current Rover.

I hope this one, at least, will look for life.

Might as well. if it's not broke don't fix it and all that.

Agreed: and, Curiosity is, currently, doing a good job bringing wonderful rashers of bacon home. No need to change the shopper, but maybe to tweak the shopping list, rather.

edited 5th Dec '12 1:32:39 PM by Euodiachloris

Disagree, actually. Curiosity isn't equiped to look for organic activity.

That's essentially what they're talking about. Using the Curiosity design but just changing the instrument suite.

Oh. To me, that's the part of the design that matters.

well, the "design" is basically the base of it. The equipment is what it does from that base. kinda like how we've got A1 abrams, and then we've got the bridge-carrier things, engineering vehicles, and a mine clearer based off of it.

There was some talk before about turning this discussion into a general space thread. At the time I didn't see enough posts about it that I could say there was a consensus, but I was asked to make a call about it so I'd like to hear what you guys think about it.

Should this thread become a general thread for space-related stuff, or should it remain focused on Curiosity?

My vote goes for keeping this the Curiosity thread, and making a new thread for general discussion about space.

I've got this thread on my watchlist so I should see your replies in a reasonable timeframe. I'll probably give the thread a couple of days to decide.

Actually, I was about to start a General space thread the other day but my battery started dying. I think we could use one.

Dedicate this thread to Mars and science. That way, Curiosity discussions still have a home where they won't get lost. Then start a new thread on space science generally.

& Is this forking really necessary though? I mean, Mars is in space and all, I don't see why we would need two different threads when one subject include the other.

The same reason theres a Minecraft thread and a Minecraft Mods thread. One may be just a smaller part of the other, but it's popular enough that it completely hijacks the main discussion too often.