[extropy-chat] Rosetta (was: Mars on the cheap?)

[Amara Graps]

Dan:
>On Tuesday, January 20, 2004 4:43 PM BillK bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk
>wrote:
>>  Nobody seems to have mentioned that after
>>  the Bush plan for NASA to go to Mars was
>>  announced, the Russians put their hand up
>>  and said that they could do it a lot cheaper
>>  than NASA.

>Cool!  Let me guess why.  It won't help the big aerospace lobby in the
>US...

Dear Dan,

As a side note to this, a Russian proton rocket was one of the options
for ESA to use last year, after the problems with Ariane 5, in order to
continue to send Rosetta to comet Wirtanen.

They chose not to, because it was deemed too risky to transfer the fuel
and other launching parts from its configuration for Ariane. True? I
don't know, but ESA's solution was to chose a much more dustier (heh
"more interesting")  comet, and one for which the lander and other
instruments were not carefully tested, and a later launch  (which is
next month).

Note that nothing has changed, that I can see, regarding Ariane 5. The
investigation didn't find the cause of the previous launching failures,
the same rocket is still being used as before for Rosetta, and ESA has
no backup plan next month.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it