CaoCao the Wicked Posted September 22, 2003 Report Share Posted September 22, 2003 We were most saddened yesterday, when at 12:40:51 the great Galileo fell silent into Jove. We read that Galileo was murdered that he might not crash into Europa or Io; transporting microbes to those worlds and disrupting their own evolution. This confuses, as imperialism seems the attraction to space travel par excellance, but we digress. Sic transit gloria mundi. Here, it appears, and everywhere else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowKitsune Posted September 22, 2003 Report Share Posted September 22, 2003 Galileo served well and died ignobly. We hoist one in your memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 And to think some whackos thought it would cause our solar system to collapse by sending Plutonium into Jupiter! Huzah to the Galileo crew! New projects on the horizon for Jupiter as a result of Galileo's resounding success. JIMo is the next biggie but won't be read for a while :/ Here is a link to the whacko who thought Jupiter would explode -- my astrophysics professor and I had quite a laugh. Its amazing what some people can make numbers look like. http://www.yowusa.com/Archive/Sep2003/Jupi...iter_attack.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sha'thar of the Gosht Kohr Posted September 27, 2003 Report Share Posted September 27, 2003 Are we sure they did it on purpose? I mean... this IS NASA we're talking about... { Sha'thar innocently licks her paw. Of course she meant to fall off the table. She really did. Silly humans. } Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted September 27, 2003 Report Share Posted September 27, 2003 :lol: Yup the same NASA. They didn't want to introduce plutonium to the potential ecosystem on Europa (strong evidence of subocean) so opted to thrust the plutonium into the turbulent gas giant instead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumVie Posted September 28, 2003 Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 Howdy, Actually its very clear they did it on purpose. After many course corrections, minor particle hits, damage to its electronics from Radiation the folks at JPL decided it was time to retire Galileo. The single biggest reason was that the onboard fuel supply was nearly depleted hence it was going to become more difficult for future course corrections. The nice folks at JPL didn't want radioactives or organic pollution to touch any of the moons that might contain life. They collected some good info on the flight into Jupiter as well. Keep in mind that NASA has three major divisions of which JPL handles the unmanned probes. JPL has a long history of stunning successes and not nearly as many failures as the other two branches. Unmanned flights that have failed in the past (like the two mars missions) were actually managed by the Col Klinks of the non-JPL branches What I find amazing is that the Galileo probe was actually experiencing complete system resets during moon passes. Galileo's on board computers would come up again and WORK! Most of the data would also be saved. The JPL folks designed one hell of a space craft and did one hell of a job! Good Cheer, Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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