QUESTION: 
Will there be a flight to Jupiter with human explorers?

ANSWER from Greg Harrison on January 2, 1996:
I would like to think that someday, somebody will go to Jupiter, and they
will clearly need special equipment.  But, there are a number of reasons 
why no person will be traveling to Jupiter any time soon.

Jupiter is very far away. Perhaps you and your classmates could look into
how far away Jupiter is.  You also might want to remember that the Galileo
spacecraft has taken over 6 years to get to Jupiter.  Think about how long
6 years lasts.  Perhaps you could make a list of things that you would
need if you were going to spend 6 years on a trip to Jupiter (and most
likely, 6 more years coming back to Earth). 

Of course, six years is even a long time for a robotic spacecraft, like
Galileo to go to Jupiter. That is why a number of people are working on 
better rockets and smaller spacecraft so that we can maybe get to Jupiter 
in 1 or 2 years instead of 6 years.

Another difficulty is that Jupiter has a very strong radiation
environment. So, the engineers and scientists on Earth would need to
understand more about Jupiter's radiation and then the engineers could
design a way to protect humans from the harmful radiation. 

Perhaps the main reason that I would not expect a person to go to Jupiter
is that robotic spacecraft, like the Galileo spacecraft, are much more 
efficient than manned spacecraft at these types of missions.  By using robotic
spacecraft, people can live comfortably on Earth, while closely exploring 
far away places, like Jupiter. And by using these machines, we can get 
much better scientific information than a human could ever collect.