Voyage to Europa

By James Press

This book developed from the search for life outside of our planet. At this time, the most likely place we can think of for external life, because of all of its water, is Europa, a moon of the planet Jupiter. We are contemplating a manned voyage to Europa to explore it. But how do we get to Europa? This book is about transporting humans to Europa, selecting the passengers for the trip, building the spaceship that will take us there, likely dangers in route, etc. Its about the first manned-space flight to Europa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503591110

James Press

James Press is the author of four fiction books, and is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Riverside. He has held professorial positions at The University of Chicago, Stanford University, Yale University, University College London, London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Riverside, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of British Columbia. He has also worked professionally at the Bureau of the Census. He consulted at The Rand Corporation for some thirty years, worked at Brookhaven National Laboratories, Northrop Aircraft Corp., McDonald-Douglas Corp., and is currently President of Statistical Analysis Inc, a statistical consulting company.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Astronomy

Before we begin our story about the first manned flight to Europa it is important and will perhaps even be useful for me to spell out some basic background material about astronomy.

We all learned in Elementary School Science class that the Earth is a planet that revolves around the Sun. The Sun is a star, one of the many that we see when we look up on a clear night. It takes our planet about a year to revolve around the Sun in an elliptical path. Furthermore, it takes the Earth about a day to rotate once on its axis. An additional heavenly body is Earth’s moon. It also rotates on its axis once every day, and the Earth’s moon revolves around the Earth once every 28 days.

There were nine planets that we learned about. They all rotate around the Sun, in separate orbits in elliptical paths that don’t intersect one another. These paths lie in approximately the same plane (called the ecliptic). Light from this plane is called zodiacal light. Zodiacal light is produced by sunlight reflecting off dust particles in the solar system, known as cosmic dust. Two of these planets are closer to the Sun than Earth (namely Mercury and Venus), and the other six of them are further from the Sun than Earth (namely Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). The smallest of the planets is Mercury, and the largest is Jupiter. All of the planets (except Mercury) have moons; some have multiple moons. The paths taken by these planets and moons are called orbits, or trajectories. The entire system of planets and moons is called the solar system.

Since those days of elementary school science class, Astronomy has taken many strides forward. We have better telescopes and have learned much electronically. As a result, now we have identified thousands of other planets outside of our solar system. Also, the planet Pluto has been re-classified as a dwarf planet, and many more moons of the basic planets have been found. Jupiter, for example, is now believed to have some 67 moons, and Saturn some 62 moons. As time progresses, more heavenly bodies are found, and we learn more about them.

CHAPTER 2

The Sputnik Era

It was Oct. 4, 1957. My wife and I were playing Bridge at a close friend’s house. The friend and his wife were Dr. William Nelson and Fran Nelson. The radio was playing classical music in the background while we played. All of a sudden, the reception was interrupted with a brief news announcement. The Soviet Union had placed a very heavy object in an orbit around the Earth. No country had ever done this before. What did it mean? The Soviet Union called this heavy object, Sputnik. The US called this object an artificial satellite. We went to my friend’s encyclopedia for the definition of a satellite. It was 23 inches in diameter, almost two feet! We quickly ran outside of the house to see it for ourselves. We searched but couldn’t find it. We spent the next hour trying to understand exactly what a satellite is, let alone an artificial satellite. My friend whom I was playing Bridge against was a professional physicist. I was glad that he also had trouble visualizing what this thing was that the Soviet Union had developed and placed in orbit around the Earth. It