Re: Does nobody ever read Larry Niven?
Don't nukes fail to work very well in a vacuum? Also Europa is already bathed in very hard radiation whipped up to relativistic speeds by the local gas giant. Hardening the electronics of any lander so it survives long enough to take samples from the pink crevasses let alone drill through kilometres of likely very hard ice (cf the measurements of comet ice hardness) is very live issue.
The radiation pretty much precludes a manned presence on the surface any time soon barring some very sci-fi levels of technology advancement. But even so, think humans staying in shielded craft and sending the robots out into the radiation storm.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
