NASA is not standing still. Europa just went to the next stage for exploration.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6755
It just takes a lot of time to plan and build ships for space travel.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6755
It just takes a lot of time to plan and build ships for space travel.
We've known about climate change for a long time. Since the 60s/70s, no? But nobody has been able to realize what it really is, because scientists do not understand gravity yet. I've been begging people to confirm this for themselves instead of believing what others say about it. If people really knew what global warming was they would have started working on ships decades ago.
My point is, people on stable self-sufficient colony outside of Earth is priority number one. Not sending a probe to Europa. But somehow I get the feeling you have no interest in this reality.
The real reason to build an offworld colony is because you're worried about a big asteroid strike. But here again, it's a lot easier to just build observation systems to spot these threats, and weapons systems to handle these threats, than to build an offworld colony that's truly self-sufficient.
Finally, offworld colonies have gigantic problems with them: 1) people don't handle radiation well, and no place in the Solar System protects us from radiation the way the Earth does, so we'd probably have to burrow underground to mitigate it, and 2) we really don't know how well the human body can handle low-gravity conditions, but we do know that the human body does not handle zero-g well and that it causes massive health problems. There's no place in the Solar System with close to Earth-normal gravity, except for Venus which is a hellhole hot enough to melt lead (on the surface). Mars is only 1/3g, and the Moon is only 1/6g, and pretty much everything else is even less except the gas giants which obviously aren't livable.
Now what climate change and offworld colonies (in this system at least) have to do with our lack of understanding of gravity, I have no idea.
There's lots of stuff you can do to grow food here even with climate change: greenhouses, indoor/vertical farming, etc. Good luck with all that on Mars.
We know exactly what climate change is and it has nothing to do with gravity.