Exploring Other Worlds I was watching a conference on NASA today about Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Europa is covered with ice but it is believed there are oceans under that ice. At first there was talk about plumes rising up from the moon and being examined, but the most interesting part was a question and answer. The question was asked by the news media and it was if there could be microbial life or other life on Europa. One of the scientists admitted Europa has many of the conditions necessary for life but has a harsh environment. They had said the plumes showed they were warmer than the ice covering the oceans on Europa which probably led to the asking of the question. The scientist stated this is one of the things which make the discovery of plumes so exciting. She was referring to the fact microbial life might exist. I have heard some NASA employees even state there could be a chance fish like life could exits in the oceans. Why is the exploration of Europa so important to us? There are different estimates on how many moons are in the solar system. Counting objects orbiting dwarf planets increases the count. Every year it seems the number of moons found increases. There are only 8 planets in our solar system and about 175 moons of planets and 9 moons of dwarf planets as of 2005. There are also some unconfirmed moons. The shear number of moons is over twenty times the number of planets and increases the places to look for life. There are also comets and asteroids which just might be candidates for life, not to mention meteors. When I talk about life I am basically talking about microbes. We have begun to find out things we never realized and that is we are being seeded with biological material every second and it comes from somewhere in space. I don’t want this article to be too far out but I have to mention the fact scientists have found biological material hitting our atmosphere which is enclosed in a tiny ball of titanium which then opens and lets out the material. This would seem to indicate another advanced race is seeding our planets and this could be happening on every body in the solar system and if it isn’t this has an even more incredible meaning which is the earth has purposely been selected to be seeded. Think about this. We could also find some other planets and/or moons and such were seeded at one time, but not any longer. There might be something about this genetic material which we are still incapable of discovering because we don’t have the technology yet to do the exam justice. There are so many places to examine for life right in this solar system we may not have to go to others to find life and might even find intelligent life. There are those who believe our solar system is far older than the estimates of its age and they predict older races of intelligent and advanced beings existed in it and we are going to find evidence of these races when we finally get a chance to explore the rest of the solar system, especially when we begin human explorations. Robotic exploration is fine, but human exploration is even better since humans will do things robots don’t think of or are programmed not to do because they are to risky. There is one thing about NASA which bothers many of us and it seems they operate at a snail’s pace. We have to measure their missions in lifetimes. Some scientists at NASA which are involved in these long-term missions are retired before they finish or retire right after them. We desperately need more speed for our spacecraft. The fastest spacecraft reached 165,000 miles per hour. It was the Juno spacecraft. When it arrived at Jupiter the gravity of the giant planet accelerated the spacecraft to this speed. We truly have a need for speed and right now there are three types of speed we need. The first priority is enough speed to get around the solar system in a reasonable amount of time. Next, we will need even more speed to be able to zip around the galaxy and finally we will eventually need enough speed to get to other galaxies. We may never reach some of these speed goals, but we have to try. I believe we have to explore by fanning out from our earth base. That would mean the first thing we do is thoroughly explore the moon first. From that point we explore the two moons of Mars and the planet Venus and then Mars. When we finish with that we go inward to the planet Mercury and outward to the moons of Jupiter and continue to the planets and moons past Jupiter. I think we have to be thorough and check not only the surface of these places but also at least some of the interiors, therefore we need better instruments. There are some scientists who think life on Mars could have moved underground and if they are correct this could have happened on the moons and other planets. We should be using the best technology available today to sent out probes and that is not rocket technology which means we should be building vehicles outside of earths influence or at least sending them there before launching them. The reason for this is engines like the Ion engine put out very tiny amounts of power which would not be able to launch anything, but in space they are capable of sending probes to planets like Mars about nine times faster. They build up speed as they travel and the further away the target the more benefit we get from them. We are living in exciting times, but things are moving too slow. Is it being done on purpose to hide what has already been found using technology we have which is secret, or are we just not developed enough yet?
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