Making Light :: Many moons :: comments http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html#comments Language, fraud, folly, truth, history, and knitting. Et cetera. en Tue, 11 Mar 2003 19:46:11 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.34-en Many moons A dozen more moons have been found orbiting Jupiter, all of them small, with distant retrograde orbits. This brings Jupiter's... A dozen more moons have been found orbiting Jupiter, all of them small, with distant retrograde orbits. This brings Jupiter's... http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html Many moons -- comment #1 from Bill Higgins comment from Bill Higgins on 11.Mar.03 I'm still waiting for them to find a small, icy Jovian satellite far from Jupiter in a more or less equatorial orbit.

I want one to use as a refueling base for fleets of robot spaceships that explore the whole Jovian system. Surface crawlers, sample returns, orbiters, magnetosphere probes, atmospheric floaters, the whole works. There's just so much science to be done.

So far, no luck. Most of the little ones are in highly inclined, retrograde orbits. Maybe we can work something out with gravity slingshot tricks, using the big moons to change inclinations and other orbital parameters, the way the Galileo orbiter did.

]]> <p>Posted March 11, 2003 7:46 PM by Bill Higgins</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html#16942 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html#16942 Tue, 11 Mar 2003 19:46:11 -0500 Many moons -- comment #2 from Teresa Nielsen Hayden comment from Teresa Nielsen Hayden on 13.Mar.03 May you get your wish.

]]> <p>Posted March 13, 2003 7:30 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html#17044 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002421.html#17044 Thu, 13 Mar 2003 07:30:04 -0500