Europa News

[ysabetwordsmith]

 Scientists are using models to explore how Europa might support life.  I reeeaaallly want to go there.  :D

Comments

[redsixwing]

*grabby hands*

I hope they do that aerogel-capture thing. That looked like a really cool way to get samples. The squid robot would be cool, too.

Obviously the ultimate would be going there oneself, but we've got some ways to go before we can do that.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Always send unmanned missions before manned missions. They're cheaper, safer, and give crucial information for deciding where to send a manned mission later if something exciting is found. If we look around and can't find any signs of life, eh, Europa can say a casual place to poke around with all the rest. If one camera picks up alien copepods or jellyfish, then get some boots on a rocket NOW.

Re: Well...

[alatefeline]

Logical. We need to fund science (and art and scholarship) much better than we do, though.

*grabby hands* are now robot claws on a Europa rover or suit, in my mind. Hope you don't mind that redsixwing, I'll try to overwrite the image if it bothers you.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Logical. We need to fund science (and art and scholarship) much better than we do, though.<<

Oh, you should see the budget for T-America. After I'd been writing there a while, I started ... noticing things, not huge differences but pervasive ones. Like how nobody seems to need more than 5-10 minutes to catch a bus that is always within walking distance. That the metroplexes are more integrated. And everything's walkable. There are still small stores along with chain stores. There are artists and writers and oddjobbers everywhere. Just a ton of little differences adding up to a very different society.

So I cracked open the federal budget. WELL. That explained a lot. Between Whammy Lass and some other folks, they fought the military budget right down to dead man's ditch, so it is now just slightly above the next-lower country's expenditures. Still a waste, but not the several-times-overkill as here. They also have much higher corporate taxes, although those can be offset if the company is doing things for the public good, frex the free recycled cups mentioned in Bluehill. It saves shuffling money back and forth. There's no cap on Social Security; instead there is a floor. The individual tax brackets go all the way up too. A few things like Homeland Security aren't there at all.

So the government has more money to spend, and it's spent in different places. Education, NASA, the arts, and a bunch of other social programs have 2-4 times the budget they do here. So they have decent schools, a thriving space program, awesome science advances making life exciting, and municipal artists painting fun things in parks or designing neat benches to sit on or skateboard over.

Some of that would require overhauling everything. But if you look closer, you can see that a lot of it also works on a municipal scale. A town can decide to fund its mass-transit system, build bike lanes, get a bikeshare, widen sidewalks, post Little Free Libraries, sponsor a scholarship, hire artists, etc. It's just about what people think is important.