The Curse of Europa
“I think anybody who is interested in Europa wants one day for us to go back and land and answer, is life there? What’s down there?
Dr. Britney Schmidt, March 2012
Visit this book’s website for more great pictures, character bio’s, and a lot of other great information.
www.theCurseofEuropa.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, future or historical events, or real locales are used fictionally. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Brian P. Kayser
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
First edition December 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1480252776
ISBN-10: 1480252778
Cover artwork by:
D
avid
R
obinson
http://bambam131.com
Other artwork by:
D
avid
R
obinson
B
rian
K
ayser
Ship interior backgrounds by:
D
aniel
B
rown
www.danbrowncgi.com
[email protected]
Author's Note and Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following people that offered editing services and provided story feedback and reviews:
Scott Stoecker
Edward Kayser
Matthew Kayser
Thanks of course to Wikipedia, Google, and the entire Internet for the wealth of information that helped me research Europa.
Thanks to Wattpad.com for providing a venue for budding authors.
But a very special thanks to
Dr. Britney E. Schmidt
who was kind enough to answer some questions from me, via email, about Europa. Specifically stuff like: the best landing site, could a geyser really happen, is there seismic activity,
etc.
She wrote back a very detailed answer to all my questions.
As of 2012,
Dr. Schmidt
is serving as science liaison for the DAWN asteroid mission, currently in orbit around VESTA, the #2 asteroid. She is a Research Scientist Associate at the University of Texas and the institute for Geophysics. Her specialties are astrobiology (extraterrestrial life), asteroids and comets, and of course Jupiter’s moon Europa. She was the lead author on a 2011 paper proposing the existence of underground liquid water lakes on Europa.
Checkout:
http://www.universetoday.com/91040/europas-hidden-great-lakes
Contents
Author's Note and Acknowledgements
Chapter 4: Extra Vehicular Activity
Chapter 5: Doughnuts and Tremors
Chapter 7: Nuclear Heated Torpedoes
Chapter 13: Too Little Too Late
Chapter 18: Good Bye Cursed Moon!
Chapter 19: Down the Rabbit Hole
Chapter 20: Dr. Evans, is That You?
Chapter 21: Hydrothermal Vents
Chapter 23: Top of the Food Chain
Extra Reading: The Queen of Crete
Prologue:
The Curse
I
n Greek mythology Europa was the Queen of Crete, however the moon she was named after was dubbed “The Queen of Failure” in the early 21
st
century by the media. Every mission sent to Europa had ended in some sort of failure; thus also prompting jokes about it having an ancient curse on it from Zeus. Others also joked about the Alien Monolith from the book “2010: Odyssey Two,” preventing humans from landing there or even exploring it.
From 2020 to 2047 there were five unmanned missions sent to validate the existence of a water ocean under Europa’s thick icy surface. Unfortunately all of the missions were unsuccessful. Since Europa is almost one light-hour away from Earth, it was not possible to do any sort of remote control of a probe, so fully automated robotic probes were required and simply couldn’t get the job done with the challenging terrain.
By the 2050’s, the world space agencies had merged into the Global Space Organization, and they desperately wanted to prove the existence of water on Europa and look for evidence of life. By this time there were also huge advancements in Nuclear Fission Propulsion, which dramatically cut down travel times, and a first ever manned orbital mission to Europa was completed in 2055. They were able to remotely send down an unmanned lander and finally, were successful in sending a nuclear heated torpedo probe through the ice by remote control. They did confirm liquid water but shortly after reaching the underwater ocean all communications was lost to the probe.
Is this moon really cursed?
Ever determined, the GSO is trying one more mission. This mission will send down the first ever manned lander to the surface. On board this lander will be two crews, each with basically the same mission, each will send down a separate nuclear heated probe through the ice. Two chances for success.
When the nuclear heated probes reach the ocean, underwater exploration probes will be launched that can be remote controlled to explore the ocean for evidence of life. Samples of soil, rock, and ice will also be gathered from the surface and ultimately returned to Earth.
Will this be the first Europa mission that doesn’t ultimately end in failure? Will they find evidence of life? Everyone jokes about the ‘
curse’
but with the past history of Europa missions what is the crew really thinking to themselves in the back of their minds? Will they be successful?
Will they return home?
White-Bull-2 Europa Mission
(Human Landing)
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