NASA scientists mull sending a spacecraft on a 13-year mission to visit Neptune's 'bizarre' moon, Triton NASA is considering sending a spacecraft to fly by Neptune's largest moon, Triton, in a bid to study its random spurts of ice and strange atmosphere filled with charged particles. The proposed mission named Trident, after the spear carried by Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, is currently undergoing review as a potential …
Ahh, I hope the prospective PI, Ms Louise Prockter is, umm, less than (click click click of the calculator, click, click click, darn!, click, click click) ummm 45 years of age, lest she be subject to future forced retirement rules.
We'd all hate to have her have to sit on the sidelines while the project of a lifetime is pulled from her thoughtful, skilled and insightful fingers.
Those of us of a certain age were promised nuclear powered flying cars, colonies on the moon with excursions to the dark side. We were also promised vacations on Mars where we could ski down mountains of unimaginable heights. Oh, and long before anyone even thought of "The Energy Crisis" we were promised limitless electricity from nuclear power. Our ships and airplanes would also be nuclear powered. Speaking of airplanes, supersonic airliners were supposed to be phasing out about now in favor of sub-orbital hypersonic planes that would cut NYC - London from three hours to ONE.
THAT is why us folk approaching retirement age are so cranky all the time. We want the tech we were promised!
Those of us who had to learn about thermodynamics, how nuclear power actually works, and the energies involved in getting things to,say, Mars, never believed any of that stuff would happen.
What we got was exceedingly fast computers, fast networking, high resolution graphics and audio, and the realisation that getting from London to NY was pointless if you were going to spend 4 hours in traffic at either end.
Sending something small but clever to Triton to have a look around will actually be an achievement unimaginable to anyone in 1969 given the level of technology in Apollo. How would you get a minimum 3 man crew there and back? 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama make the point - these days we'd be sending robot probes as a first step, so much cheaper and safer than sending people, but in those days even an A C Clarke was unable to imagine that HAL would be replaced with a relatively tiny box controlling an array of instruments, and no wetware to mismanage.
Neptune was just a foreign Johnny-come-lately who nicked the whole IP right down to the logo. And, apparently, a planet.
That's one way to view it ... the other is to consider that Poseidon undertook a rebranding exercise in order to exploit opportunities for new temples in the expanding Roman empire.
Gods take the longer view, not being subject to the same mortality issues as we mortals.
IIRC Poseidon was originally the god of horses,hence his sobriquet of the "Earth-shaker". When the peoples whose god he was became a maritime society, he became the god of the sea. ("Um, Poseidon...there's been a bit of a corporate reorganisation, we want you to take on a new role in marketing.")
The Roman Empire just absorbed foreign gods, identifying them with their own if possible. They did exactly the same thing with Christianity, even pinching the Hebrew God, replacing Jupiter, and demoting all the other gods to angels or saints.
Exactly what Disney does with books today.
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Damn shame they apparently can't keep enough delta-v on board to bring it into orbit around Triton or Neptune when it gets there, assuming the repeated use of the word 'flyby' is accurate. Or send it on a slower, longer transfer orbit, which would need less delta-v to slow down there. But I guess there will have to be trade-offs, and this is what they've gone with.
... and is a *description* of the thing carried by Neptune, which looks like a cross between a pitchfork and a spear.
When it's torches-and-pitchforks time, a trident would be a pretty cool thing to have.
Sadly, it's also the name of a brand of chewing gum.
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