... Lightning strikes from Jupiter to Io? Wow.
On a different note, why is it that NASA wants to build a colony on Mars when they haven't even tried that with the much closer Luna?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.I wouldn't say it's NASA specifically, that seems more a goal of space exploration in general; Mars, as our closest planetary neighbor, as long held the fascination in both the space exploration sector and the pop cultural consciousness. Especially since we used to believe it had actual life on it!
In any case, there are probably quite a few in NASA who'd prefer to try something on the Moon before going all the way to Mars, but I think the push, however small, from the public and such is to focus on Mars. NASA's gotta go where the money points, I am pretty sure.
Venus is actually much closer to Earth than Mars is (38 to 261 km vs 55 to 401 km).
That being said, Venus is also the celestial body in the solar system not named the sun that would kill you the most quickly if you were standing on its surface.
what do you mean I didn't win, I ate more wet t-shirts than anyone elseThe variables would be orbital speed, descent angle, atmospheric composition...or you could rule-of-thumb it and use things like the space shuttle, ISS, and lunar mission re-entries as a gauge.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.You could get the Real Solar System mod and act it out in Kerbal Space Program.
edited 22nd Dec '16 1:09:36 PM by CDRW
Why is it that the galactic coordinate system
puts the north pole outside the galaxy (specifically, at a point whose "shadow" on the galactic plane is at the center of the galactic core), rather than pick one of the galactic quadrants (probably the one in which the Solar System is in) and designate it as the "northern quadrant", then name the other quadrants accordingly? I mean, yeah, I get that you want to reflect the fact that the Galaxy is 3-dimensional, but if you set the north and south like that, how are you going to set "east" and "west"? And how do you name the third axis, anyway?
And as we all know, reduced tide strength beyond the normal range of fluctation for the Moon is very bad for Earth's biosphere, because it directly affects geological stability.
edited 22nd Dec '16 6:14:12 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.For the moon base discussion.
NASA has this year pitched the idea of a Moon Base complete with international partners.
However, in a workshop that took place in August of 2014, representatives from NASA met with Harvard geneticist George Church, Peter Diamandis from the X Prize Foundation and other parties invested in space exploration to discuss low-cost options for returning to the Moon. The papers, which were recently made available in a special issue of New Space, describe how a settlement could be built on the Moon by 2022, and for the comparatively low cost of $10 billion.
Put simply, there are many benefits to establishing a base on the Moon. In addition to providing refueling stations that would shave billions off of future space missions – especially to Mars, which are planned for the 2030s – they would provide unique opportunities for scientific research and the testing of new technologies.
More recently the ESA has suggested something similar
You don't set east and west. Your axis are spinward and anti-spinward while the third axis coreward vs rimward. And the reason for this entire thing is technically the galaxy is an a disk projected into three dimensions. Which means you need a cylindrical co-ordinate system and the three axis are height (galactic north vs south), radial distance (core vs rim) and angle (spin vs anti-spin) and the first two fall out naturally from the galaxies shape. And while a polar co-ordinate system might more easily accommodate the galactic halo it only requires the definition of a single, arbitrary meridian rather than polar co-ordinates two.
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Not quite. It's more accurate to say that gravitational effects from Jupiter prevented a planet from forming in the vicinity of what is now the asteroid belt. Jupiter's gravity kept nudging the orbits of the objects in the proto-planetary disk enough so that Ceres or some other similar body was never able to reach that critical threshold in size where it could just start pulling everything in.
... Really? I was wondering about that. Specifically, I've read about this theory that ancient Mars may have suffered a gigantic impact event with another celestial body, explaining its screwed-up axis of rotation, unusually weak magnetic field, odd dichotomy of its geography, and other traits that are peculiar to it; that got me into wondering if such an impact may have actually blown off a sizeable chunk of the red planet, leaving us with the half-Earth's-size world that we see today.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
What? Granted Mars is a little bit on the slow size and there's no obvious reason for it like Earth (tidal friction from the Moon has drastically slowed the Earth's rotation over the last several billion years) but it's Axial tilt is only a little more than Earth's. The ones with the really screwed up axial tilts are Uranus (infamously tilted more than 90 degrees) and Venus with it's retrograde rotation (effectively of an axial tilt of approx 180 degrees)
And it's lack of magnetic field is probably because its core is cooled enough that it no long gets a dynamo effect that shields Earth.
... Huh. I could've sworn that a few months ago I've read on Wikipedia that Mars' magnetic poles and axis of rotation were not even remotely closely aligned, to the point that one of its magnetic poles more or less faces the Sun directly. Must've confused Mars with Uranus when I made that post.
Still, the fact remains that almost an entire half of Mars is just one huge basin, contrasting the much more diverse other half
.
edited 25th Dec '16 2:23:46 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Actually its generally agreed that, at least for Europa if you burrowed in and hung your habitat off the underside of the ice it would have enough mass to shield you from the radiation. Ditto Ganymede and Callisto. Just dig in and all that rock and ice blocks the radiation.
Io.... Io is a different story. Problem one is that given it's the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, digging in to get enough shielding from the radiation is a lot harder. Problem two is all that volcanic on a body that small means there is a ring of particles in Io's orbit that become charged by interaction with Jupiter's magnetic field. And that creates flux tube
between Jupiter and Io that can discharge in terrifingly powerful lightning strikes between the two.