3234: Europa Missions

Europa Missions

|< < Prev #3234 (April 17, 2026)

Title text: Before resurfacing, they promise to inspect the ice for any evidence of hockey-playing life.

|< < Prev Random Explanation

Explanation

This is one of 66 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by the Zamboni Voyager. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

In recent years, NASA has sent several spacecraft into space in order to make unmanned missions to distant planets in order to provide data and take photos for scientists back on earth. This comic shows several spacecraft being sent to observe Jupiter’s moon Europa. According to NASA, the moon could be a candidate for life, so it would make sense that the scientists would send spacecraft to observe it. The first 2 crafts investigate the ocean, topography and chemistry of the planet, which would be useful in determining signs of life. (Europa’s ocean is frozen on the top, which is why they say subsurface ocean.)

A Zamboni is a vehicle that, rather than transport, is meant to quickly resurface ice rinks after hockey games. The comic talks about a hypothetical spacecraft carrying a Zamboni because the National Hockey League wants to expand their games to Europa due to the surface of the moon’s oceans being completely covered in ice. Hockey in reduced gravity would be 124|an interesting idea.

Transcript

[Cueball is standing in front of an image of a spacecraft.]

Cueball: There are now three spacecraft headed to Europa:

Cueball: NASA's Europa Clipper, which investigate Europa's subsurface ocean,

[Cueball, Ponytail, and Hairy are standing in front of another spacecraft image, with Cueball gesturing at it.]

Cueball: ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, which will study the topography and chemistry of Europa and the other moons,

[Cueball is in front of an image of a Zamboni with a firing rocket nozzle on its bottom.]

Cueball: And the NHL's Zamboni Voyager, which plans to resurface Europa.

Voice out of frame: Oh no.

Cueball: We tried to stop them, but the league is set on an expansion.

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

What is the possible area a Zamboni can do? How many would be needed to cover the whole surface? SDSpivey (talk) 02:56, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Europa has a surface area of about 3.061×10^7 km^2. A zamboni seems to cover about a 1.2 m^2 area (about 0.6m by 2m) at any given time. So if you simply cover all of Europa in zambonis (only like 3 trillion) and then drive them all forward their own length at the same time without crashing them into each other. So probably less than 3 trillion would be my guess (Also probably more than 2).

They probably do like 8L/h and cover about 8000 m^2/h. So if they had 30 litre tanks, you would need 1 billion zambonis (0.03 km^2 each), and they would take 4 hours. Or for 1 month : 5 million Zambonis, refueled 200 times each (30 billion litres propane total). For constant resurfacing, like a normal ice rink (~10 times a day), you would need 2 billion zambonis running constantly (90 terawatts). Sameldacamel34 (talk) 08:41, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Is Randall confusing the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer here? wikipedia link

Also this feels like it is probably a reference to 17776, what with all of its topics and the recent rise in interest in that work. SkiesShaper (talk) 03:47, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
        Add comment