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NEWS > SCIENCE > EUROPE LAYS OUT PLANS TO PUT A MAN ON THE SUN
EUROPE LAYS OUT PLANS TO PUT A MAN ON THE SUN
October 6 2011
Paris, France – The European Space agency has laid out a bold new plan for the future of the organization, and potentially for the future of the human race. The Paris-based organization has laid out its plans to travel to the heart of our Solar System, the Sun, with the most robust mission yet launched towards the star.
The first part of the mission will launch in 2017 with a solar orbiter which will map out the fiery surface of the Sun, which will eventually lead into a manned mission a few years down the road. No other space agency has ever planned such a mission to the star, never mind attempted one, and the ESA is hoping that not only will this effort firmly establish them as a viable and competitive space agency, but also potentially make major strides for the future of humanity.
“Solar Orbiter is not so much about taking high-resolution pictures of the Sun, although we'll get those; it's about getting close and joining up what happens on the Sun with what happens in space,” said Tim Horbury, lead scientist for the project.
The initial mission will cost approximately one billion Euros. It’s not yet clear when the manned mission will be launched to the fiery ball of gas.
The Sun is about 5 times further away than Mars when that planet is at its closest apogee. 
“This is really an ambitious project, arguably the most ambitious in the history of space exploration. We may have done other spectacular things by the time this mission actually launches, but because of the importance, both physically and culturally, that the Sun holds for human beings this mission will be a very big deal indeed,” said Scrape TV Science analyst Dr. Howard Poe. “I would really like to see the technology behind this mission because it would have to be revolutionary. Not only would it have to be able to sustain incredible temperatures but it would also have to be able to kind of float on gas, otherwise the astronauts would just sink into the Sun, because it is made primarily of gas does not provide particularly strong footing.”
The plasmic core of the Sun is believed to only take up about 25 percent of the surface area with the remainder being gas. There is no earth on the Sun.
“I doubt sincerely that this mission will provide much in the way of scientific data, 
frankly. There is no possibility of life as we know it on the Sun samples of the material are ejected almost daily. Putting man on the Sun provides little or no scientific benefit, but it would spark the imagination and that alone may make it worth the effort,” continued Poe. “There is the possibility, a strong possibility, that the men and women who land on the surface of the Sun will evaporate almost instantly and that is something the ESA will have to consider. Spending a lot of time and money training these people may not be worth it if they simply burn to ash as soon as they land and so they might look into lesser people, soldiers rather than scientists just in case their technology doesn’t work. Those types of people are more easily replaced and there’s a good chance they will need to be.”
In response, China is no apparently considering a mission inside the Sun’s core by 2020
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
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