Comment on “Mechanics of tidally driven fractures in Europaʹs ice shell” by S. Lee, R.T. Pappalardo, and N.C. Makris [2005. Icarus 177, 367–379]

We show Lee, Pappalardo, and Makrisʹ [2005. Icarus 177, 367–379] argument that surface cracks in Europaʹs icy shell penetrate 3–10 times deeper in the presence of subsurface ocean is not correct. We use numerical calculations to demonstrate that there is at most 50% increase in penetration depth for a crack opening in a shell of finite thickness compared to a half-space. We also propose a simple equation based on force balances to estimate the maximum thickness of an ice shell that can be opened under tensile stress. Our calculations show that a crack can only penetrate 330-m-thick ice shell under 200 kPa far-field tensile stress and half of that if the stress is 100 kPa. But the presence of water would allow crack penetrate ∼4.0 km into the ice shell with zero porosity.