> “At this point, it is hard to not find life on Earth. Microbes have been discovered living in cloud tops, inside nuclear reactor cores, and in aerosols high in the stratosphere.”
To me this is the most exciting point. Why aren’t we already building half a dozen probes simultaneously to look for life in the clouds of Venus, icy caverns of Europa, and every other interesting place in the solar system?
A steady stream of beautiful pictures and — hopefully — revolutionary biological discoveries from these unique worlds would seem like a much better investment than human selfies on Mars whose dusty mountains the public has already seen many times.
I'm sure that when Starship craters the cost per kilogram to Earth orbit (following it making some literal craters in development) we will be doing just that.
Yeah - it should not just be more probes, but faster probes & quicker pictures as a result, if you can put 1000 tons of fuel under every probe you send.
To me this is the most exciting point. Why aren’t we already building half a dozen probes simultaneously to look for life in the clouds of Venus, icy caverns of Europa, and every other interesting place in the solar system?
A steady stream of beautiful pictures and — hopefully — revolutionary biological discoveries from these unique worlds would seem like a much better investment than human selfies on Mars whose dusty mountains the public has already seen many times.