The Generation Ships

摘要

I've written here before about a proposed mission I helped develop a decade ago that would have explored the hydrocarbon seas of Saturn's moon Titan. The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) proposal took four years to prepare, and even though the mission ultimately wasn't selected by NASA, I'm so proud of that work and that team. It's not uncommon for dozens of people to put in many years of work before a space mission is green-lit, let alone built and launched. For some missions, the timeline is much longer. Had TiME been selected, four years of development would have been followed by four years of design and production before launch, plus another seven years to reach Titan. That's more than 15 years from concept to day one on another world. Although TiME didn't get picked, decades from now there will be a boat floating on those alien seas. Meaningful work in space builds on earlier study and is often decades in the making.