{"id":793127,"date":"2025-01-29T18:42:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T23:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=793127"},"modified":"2025-01-29T18:42:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T23:42:03","slug":"science-points-out-paths-to-interplanetary-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=793127","title":{"rendered":"Science Points Out Paths to Interplanetary Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>What would you do for fun on another planet? Go ballooning in Venus\u2019 atmosphere? Explore the caves of Hyperion? Hike all the way around Mercury? Ride a toboggan down the slopes of Pluto\u2019s ice mountains? Or watch clouds roll by on Mars?<\/p>\n<p>All those adventures, and more, are offered in a new book titled\u00a0\u201cDaydreaming in the Solar System.\u201d\u00a0But the authors don\u2019t stop at daydreaming: York University planetary scientist\u00a0John E. Moores\u00a0and astrophysicist\u00a0Jesse Rogerson\u00a0also explain why the adventures they describe would be like nothing on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>In the latest episode of the\u00a0Fiction Science podcast, Moores says the idea behind the book was to tell \u201ca little story that is really, really true to what the science is, and then give the reader an idea of what science there is that actually enables that story to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Scientists dream up solar system adventures\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/1YVMZ6iOdyxexafo8OYCwW?si=-scWZNX0TSW9vd3usH64ew&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p><span id=\"more-170699\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Trips to other worlds have been the stuff of science fiction for more than a century \u2014 going back to Jules Verne\u2019s\u00a0\u201cFrom the Earth to the Moon\u201d\u00a0and continuing today with shows like\u00a0\u201cFor All Mankind.\u201d\u00a0But most of those tales are told from the perspective of intrepid explorers who have to deal with life-threatening dramas.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, most of the stories in \u201cDaydreaming in the Solar System\u201d have to do with space travelers having fun, or handling the day-to-day challenges of living in an otherworldly locale.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-medium is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson tell tales of interplanetary adventures. (Credits: John E. Moores and York University)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cOften you\u2019re visiting a place for the very first time, and of course it\u2019s an amazing, awe-inspiring place, but you\u2019re also very concerned about not dying,\u201d Moores said. \u201cSo, we wanted to take that away \u2014 that bit of danger \u2014 so that people dive into the environment. Everywhere we went, we needed the right combination of an interesting activity, an interesting environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moores and Rogerson also use a second-person perspective. You\u2019re the one riding a submarine through the hidden seas of Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. You\u2019re the one spelunking on Hyperion, a spongy Saturnian moon that appears to contain 40% empty space.<\/p>\n<p>The end of each chapter takes a deeper dive into the peculiarities of each extraterrestrial environment. For example, riding a balloon around Venus makes sense because the surroundings at an altitude of 30 to 40 miles are similar to Earth\u2019s when it comes to temperature and atmospheric pressure. In contrast, the surface of Venus is\u00a0hellishly hot.<\/p>\n<p>Ballooning on Venus is much more than a daydream. More than a decade ago, NASA engineers came up with a\u00a0concept that called for sending habitable airships into the Venusian atmosphere. More recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been looking into\u00a0a mission that would use robotic balloons\u00a0to study the clouds of Venus.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"298\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/daydreaming.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-170702\" style=\"width:250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/daydreaming.jpg 298w, https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/daydreaming-166x250.jpg 166w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 298px) 100vw, 298px\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cDaydreaming in the Solar System,\u201d by John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson. (Cover art by Michelle D. Parsons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Similarly, the idea of\u00a0sending mini-subs through Europa\u2019s subsurface ocean\u00a0is being considered as a follow-up to NASA\u2019s\u00a0Europa Clipper\u00a0mission. A robotic submarine has also been\u00a0proposed for exploring Titan\u2019s hydrocarbon seas\u00a0\u2014 although NASA\u2019s\u00a0Dragonfly mission to Titan, which relies on a rotorcraft, will be taking precedence.<\/p>\n<p>The authors don\u2019t shy away from the important issues: In one chapter, they describe in depth how to brew a delicious cup of coffee on Titan \u2014 and then explain why you could conceivably put on a pair of mechanical wings and flap your way through the Saturnian moon\u2019s dense atmosphere after your morning cup of joe.<\/p>\n<p>Will humans ever be able to experience the adventures described in the book? \u201cI hope so,\u201d Moores says<a\/>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne thing that our publisher pointed out when we submitted our final manuscript, which wasn\u2019t actually intentional, was that they felt that the book was actually very optimistic and very hopeful \u2014 just the framing of it, that you could imagine the future in a way that actually allows these things to happen,\u201d he says. \u201cSo many other works are a little bit apocalyptic right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p><em>M<\/em><em>y co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an\u00a0award-winning writer\u00a0who is a graduate of the\u00a0Clarion West Writers Workshop\u00a0and lives in San Francisco. To learn more about Phetteplace, visit her website,\u00a0DominicaPhetteplace.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Check out the original version of this posting on Cosmic Log to get Moores\u2019 recommendations for further reading, and stay tuned for\u00a0future\u00a0episodes of the\u00a0Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-24000880-170699-679abcbc0f261\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/?ver=14.0#blog_id=24000880&amp;post_id=170699&amp;origin=www.universetoday.com&amp;obj_id=24000880-170699-679abcbc0f261&amp;n=1\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-24000880-170699-679abcbc0f261\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/170699\/science-daydreaming-interplanetary-adventures\/?rand=772204\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would you do for fun on another planet? Go ballooning in Venus\u2019 atmosphere? Explore the caves of Hyperion? Hike all the way around Mercury? Ride a toboggan down the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":793128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-793127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genaero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=793127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/793128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=793127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=793127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=793127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}