NASA's Choice: Visit Ancient Comet -- Or Saturn Moon?

Forbes ^ | 12/20/17 | Bill Retherford ,

[Ouchthatonehurt]

Dragonfly…but only if mission control is called Wolf Den.

[Windflier]

Every flyby has shown comets to be burnt dry rocks

Yep. Until cosmologists admit their theories about the origin and composition of comets is completely invalid, there's not much point in doing further flybys.

[Vaquero]

Enceladus. Titan next time. Examine the gyser outgassing for life in the ocean of Enceladus.

[Revel]

If you watch this robotics video from Boston Dynamics then one would wonder why they don’t use it to produce a probe. You make one of those with more legs than 4. And the ability to completely eject a leg if it become hopelessly non-functional.

I predict that if they use this Helo model that it will be a very short lived mission. It sounds really neat, but there is just too much that can go hopelessly wrong.

[Revel]

Link to robotics video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aJ6n1WrT0o

[6ppc]

Yeah...they DID tell us to keep off their lawn!😎

[Secret Agent Man]

Europa makes moresense than either of these.

Of course we were warned not to go there, so..... ;)

[Maceman]

I don’t think they should do either.

NASA needs to focus on the all important mission of helping Muslims build self esteem.

[adorno]

Comets, many scientists say, delivered water and organic molecules to a primordial Earth, perhaps igniting life here.

Comets: the interplanetary UPS and FEDEX delivery systems of our solar system.

I wonder who's the Amazon and E-bay at the other end.

[seastay]

Flybys are OK, but its a waist of money to build a lander to land on theoretical ice when no comet yet has shown to be made of ice,,

[dhs12345]

Only one Saturn moon (presume that they have narrowed it down to one or two), thousands or tens of thousands of comets. Comets within range narrows it down a bit.

Which comet do you pick and tricky to hit as it flies by. Some comets are only within range every 100 years.

I vote a planet or satellite of a planet.

[Moonman62]

Only one rocket available for this mission, so only one project gets the nod.

...

I wonder if a successful Falcon Heavy launcher would change that.

[Moonman62]

Actually rocket cost is only a fraction of the total cost:

Mission cost is capped at $850 million; launch cost runs about $150 million.

[Windflier]

Flybys, landers....both are a waste of time, effort, and money, due to the fact that the astrophysics community will likely reject all of the evidence gathered, in order to protect their falsified theories.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/churyumovgerasimenko/index

[Raymann]

yeah, i doubt they would work for a minute much less years at slightly above absolute zero.