Future NASA Europa Mission

[PortalHunter]

This news post came out a few days ago.

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s...nstruments

The people over at NASA have now chosen scientific instruments for the Jupiter Europa Orbiter, which is slated for launch sometime around 2020, along with the Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter.

[Drashner1]

Hm. It might not hurt to work this and similar near future space missions into the timeline. Admittedly, reality might turn out to be different, but we wouldn't need to do that extensive a treatment such that we could remove or tweak things fairly easily.

We don't have much on space probes or their discoveries in the setting. Couldn't hurt to add more.

Todd

[PortalHunter]

Hm. It might not hurt to work this and similar near future space missions into the timeline. Admittedly, reality might turn out to be different, but we wouldn't need to do that extensive a treatment such that we could remove or tweak things fairly easily.

We don't have much on space probes or their discoveries in the setting. Couldn't hurt to add more.

Todd

The early timeline looks fairly loose and easy to change, yeah. Most of it, anyway.

OA has its first Lunar bases in 2041. The CxP didn't quite turn out as planned since NASA is now focusing on Mars. It'll be nice if the Jupiter missions go as planned.

[CptnMus]

Guess it depends on whether they are serious about helium 3 mining.

If it turns out to be viable we may still see and industrialised moon before well established colonies on Mars.

[Rynn]

Guess it depends on whether they are serious about helium 3 mining.

If it turns out to be viable we may still see and industrialised moon before well established colonies on Mars.

He3 is useful for generation 2 fusion reactors, we haven't even built the first generation yet! On top of that you can breed He3 (in theory) from certain types of fusion reactors. In other words there's no reason there would be a He3 rush any decade soon.