Underwater Drones of the Russian Navy

The easiest thing to do would be just to nuke the ice-crust to be honest. Maybe a few times

Well actually another proposal I heard would be to just melt your way through by having the probe generate huge amounts of heat; a nuclear reactor would come in handy

flamming_python wrote:The easiest thing to do would be just to nuke the ice-crust to be honest. Maybe a few times

Well actually another proposal I heard would be to just melt your way through by having the probe generate huge amounts of heat; a nuclear reactor would come in handy

Drilling thru to Lake Vostok in Antarctica has proved to be very difficult, and the ice covering it is only 4kms, yet people think we will be able to build a nuke-powered spacecraft to land on Europa and drill/melt down thru 100kms ice shell to probe the ocean beneath?

Send Bruce Willis!

Certainly some sort of power generation potential would be needed, and nuclear power is just obvious with solar and wind power not being options.

It would come down to a question over the melting temperature of the material we are talking about and how it changes as you move through the depths of the ice.

No value in melting your way through if it just refreezes above you and your sub becomes trapped and unable to transmit information collected under the ice.

Certainly some sort of base surface that is heated by uranium fuel in the core reactor of the platform that circulates the liquids the ice is made from... assuming they are able to be a liquid at the surface... even assuming it is water ice instead of turning into a cooling liquid that allows the weight of the sub to then melt its way down through the ice, it might just blast away from the site as a gas in the vacuum of space... or if the outer surface is carbon dioxide gas frozen as a solid the heat from the descending sub would convert it from solid directly to a gas, which might create problems getting the ice to melt evenly and make sure the sub remains level as its sinks into the ice.

Would require a lot of testing and checks of different ice materials at near vacuum and very low temperatures.

Having a module remaining on the surface or even in orbit with a sub platform melting its way into the ice would be interesting, and some sort of tether or fibreoptic link would allow communication through the ice... but it would be rather interesting and very exciting to get decent footage of an under ice ocean on another body in this solar system.... even if it is dead and empty, but if it isn't it might be the first light ever to reach such a place...