Could We Abort a Manned Mission To Mars? 267
StartsWithABang writes: The next great leap in human spaceflight is a manned mission to a world within our Solar System: most likely Mars. But if something went wrong along the journey — at launch, close to Earth, or en route — whether biological or mechanical, would there be any way to return to Earth? This article is a fun (and sobering) look at what the limits of physics and technology allow at present.
If you're interested in a hard sci-fi, near-future look at how a catastrophic Mars mission might go, you should read an excellent novel called The Martian by Andy Weir.
Second the recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Martian" by Andy Weir is one of the best SF books I've read, and I highly recommend it. Even if you're not into SF, if you're a member here, there's a good chance you'll like it.
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Seconded. Fantastic book
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God, I hope not. After the well-intentioned trainwreck that was Prometheus I really don't want to see The Martian by Ridley Scott. Seriously, the man has no sense of humour, which is key to why that book was so damned good, and so accessible to the non-SF person.
For my part I am not sure who I'd want to direct it... but I'd really want to see Ryan Reynolds in the lead. He was exactly who I imagined through the entire book :)
Re:Second recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're interested in a hard sci-fi near-future look at how a non-catastrophic, well planned mission with unforgettable personalities and epic adventures, I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy: Red, Blue, Green Mars. There's catastrophe in there too but it occurs only occasionally. [wikipedia.org]
There's more "things go wrong... in spaaace!" novels and movies than you can shake a stick at. During these boring space creature features I wind up doing a freeze frame on the movie.
I then mentally leave the room and walk around down the space station's corridors, look out the windows, maybe browse the tech manuals for the station. Then I key up some popular music these people of the future listen to, go to the space john (not much has changed) and visit the hydroponics bays. Have some lunch. If it's a lunar colony I don a suit and go play some golf, take a buggy ride. Then I strap on wings and climb the giant trees that fill the dome and jump off and fly.
Eventually I mentally return to the room that is frozen in time on the screen, take a deep breath and un-pause the movie. And the gallant characters resume their battle with the Space Menace and mostly become eaten or horribly killed and all the precious equipment becomes ruined in the process and everything blows up.
Life can be lonely sometimes when you're not into the things that other people enjoy.
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I agree with this one. This series would be in my top five of all time.
Do yourself a favor (Score:2)
Do yourself a favor, list to it on audiobook. It is narrated by R. C. Bray. who does a fantastic job. It was one of the few times where the I found audiobook more entertaining than when I read it.
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Agreed, it's a good book, and one that seems to get most of the technicalities right. The thing which bothers me the most is the authors very flat and sometimes a bit boring writing style - there is a lot of "I did this, and then that happened. Then I did something else, and exactly the same thing happened again. Then I tried something completely different, got a bit lucky, and now it worked. Yay.". The same goes for the characters - with some exceptions for the main character, they are all very much portra
Re:Second the recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
...the main character is depicted almost as lacking emotions...
That may be why I liked it. I've read and enjoyed a lot of books with more fully realized characters and more nuanced plots; it was refreshing to read a stripped-down actioner that had a lot of geeky ingenuity and kept me reading waaay past bedtime. Plus, as far as I could tell it got the science and tech mostly right.
Re:Second the recommendation (Score:4, Insightful)
It's OK as proper SF, but the main character is depicted almost as lacking emotions.
He's not lacking emotions. It's just that when something bad happens he curses and then sits about working the problem.
At one point Venkat comments on it by explaining that he's a NASA Mars Astronaut - One of the best in the world at coping with difficult situations.
"He's stuck out there. He thinks he's totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man's psychology?" He turned back to Venkat. "I wonder what he's thinking right now?"
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They're mammals! Makes no sense."
Should we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria could've gone back home - so could the Mayflower (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm pasty white, etc.)
It's a lot harder to do that with a spacecraft if you know you need the Oberth effect of your destination to make it home.
So? A poll was done a while ago indicating that a lot of qualified people would go if they had 1 chance in 2 of surviving.
The only safe ship is the one that never leaves harbor...
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Those ships were going to places that were naturally habitable and didn't need to bring every molecule of air, water and food along with them. The ocean provided natural propulsion and food too. Space has none of these things, and Mars is an utterly dead rusty ball of rock.
I will never understand the quasi-religious fervor some people have about space.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the... [ucsd.edu]
Re:Should we? (Score:5, Interesting)
I will never understand the quasi-religious fervor some people have about space.
It's not about space. It's about not-Earth.
For most practical purposes, Earth has no more undiscovered continents, no more unexplored territory, and no more absolute wilderness. Sure, there's some areas that are generally undisturbed, but we know just about all there is to know about them. There are no more mysteries lying just beyond the horizon. There is only human civilization. There are cell phones, satellites, and rescue teams standing ready. Human exploration is at a standstill.
There are some places left to go to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. We can cut deeper into the jungles, and dive deeper into the oceans, but we still know what we don't know.
The next horizon for humanity's exploration is space. That's where we'll next spread our human empire, and for those who care about such things, the enthusiasm for space is natural.
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Ocean surface outside known shipping and cable lanes is largely unmapped.
Antarctica is largely unknown as it sits under kilometers of ice.
All of these surfaces are much easier to tap than surface of Mars. They are also being explored, slowly, as MH370 recovery operation showed.
We've barely explored the oceans (Score:2)
Earth has no more undiscovered continents, no more unexplored territory, and no more absolute wilderness.
Earth has vast amounts of mostly unexplored territory. The 3/4 of the Earth's surface that is covered by water has only barely been explored. Sure, there are bits and pieces of dry land that haven't been explored yet though those are disappearing quickly. But right now we really don't have the technology to explore the oceans comprehensively. I think people tend to forget about the oceans and how vast they really are.
Please note this isn't an argument against going into space. We absolutely should. I'
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What is the difference between sending humans, with all their implications, vs. instruments and engines to get them there? Why is the human part so important to science? And at what cost, to everyone who must pay real money for the expedition, (...never minding the folks who volunteered their 'free time'/lives to go up first)?
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It's not just the science. If you don't see that yourself, I don't know how to make you see.
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You're right. You can't make him see. The best you can hope to do is to throw Robert Burns at him...
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
Why aren't we investing more? (Score:2)
What is the difference between sending humans, with all their implications, vs. instruments and engines to get them there?
The differences are vast. It's the same difference as standing on a mountain versus looking at a post card. Sometimes machines are necessary but more often they are a poor proxy.
Why is the human part so important to science?
There is some exploration that has to be done in person. There are some questions that cannot be answered without sending people to answer them. Questions like "are we stuck on this planet"?
And at what cost, to everyone who must pay real money for the expedition, (...never minding the folks who volunteered their 'free time'/lives to go up first)?
The cost of space exploration has paid itself back economically multi-fold. The spinoff technologies alone are worth billions to trillions
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May I respectfully disagree with this point of yours? I prefer the outlook to be more along the lines of, yes, *all* of us are stuck on this planet, so let's make this work for all of us, (...case in-point is Global Warming). And, I think instruments alone are yielding far more actual science per dollar than factoring hu
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What is the difference between sending humans, with all their implications, vs. instruments and engines to get them there? Why is the human part so important to science?
Because the desire to explore is an instinct most of us possess. It's not necessarily about science, although it's certainly something we will do. Exploration is in our genes. So why not send robots instead of humans? It does not satisfy. For the same reason we don't live in purely utilitarian houses, or have purely utilitarian cars, or eat tasteless nutritional gruel. That kind of thing is for oppressive socialist governments who try to fit square pegs into round holes. Forcing us all to exist in th
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...but we know it's not mapped. We've mapped a good chunk of sea floor, and figured out what to expect. Maybe we could find some new geologic features or something, and those biologists still have a lot of work to do naming everything, but we know more or less what's down there. For an oceanographer, saying "I have no idea what's there" is a sign that you haven't done your research, not that we've hit the limits of our instruments. That's still a valid justification for space exploration, though. We have no
We've barely gotten off the beach (Score:2)
For an oceanographer, saying "I have no idea what's there" is a sign that you haven't done your research
Untrue. The oceanographer is simply being candid. Sure they are not completely ignorant but they also know enough to know their is a lot more to be discovered. They are simply stating the obvious fact that there is a lot of territory to be explored and we haven't explored very much of it in any great detail. They are saying they are like Christopher Columbus who has learned some fascinating things about this new continent while standing on the beach but there is a lot more to be learned. If they claime
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Exploration is not mutually exclusive. We can and should explore Earth's land, see, and into space.
Re:Should we? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Should we? (Score:5, Interesting)
The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
-Randall Munroe [xkcd.com]
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Well, you can make a similar graph for "Death by nuclear weapon by year" but I doubt anyone think that despite the peak in 1945 we've lost our capability or technology to do it again. It seems that many people - for no apparent good reason - think that a moon or Mars colony will lead to the warp drive. All it would do is inch the bar higher to "The universe is probably littered with the one-solar system graves of cultures..." while not bringing us significantly closer to interstellar travel. And I think it'
Necessity is the Mother of Invention (Score:2)
It seems that many people - for no apparent good reason - think that a moon or Mars colony will lead to the warp drive.
I'm not sure I would argue that it will lead to "warp drive" given the major scientific hurdles but I expect it will lead to much, much better rocket technology. Once we have human beings on another planet who are producing an important resource we want here on Earth you have all the makings of interplanetary trade which will provide a fantastic incentive to develop cheaper ways to get there.
Sail was the power used for centuries. Initially boats had to hug coasts and only later did we develop the techno
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There is no important resource you can "produce" or "harvest" on another planet.
The only thing which is _perhaps_ worth harvesting is He3 on the moon. But for that we have to solve the riddle first: how to actually craft/maintain/run a fusion reactor.
If you really want an extraterrestrial resource, like Iridium, Gold, Iron or even Coal, then you are better off to harvest/mine it from asteroids.
Sure, you could put up a "water ice mine" on Mars. Sure, you an calculate the costs per ton of water. Sure, you can
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Because space is mostly empty, and extremely hostile. There's no rational reason for anybody to go there.
So is the ocean. But hey, we got over it and now we have a global society. Every new area we haven't established ourselves yet is empty and extremely hostile. And I already gave you a very rational reason for going there.
Technological Limitations (Score:3)
Because space is mostly empty, and extremely hostile.
Given the technology available 500+ years ago so was North America: freezing cold winters, strange plants, new diseases etc. Indeed the available technology was barely able to match the challenge and some early colonies failed. However once there, as our knowledge of the new environment and our technology improved it became easy to survive there.
Isn't space exactly the same? Our technology is barely up to the job of keeping us alive on Mars and I expect some of the early colonies will fail. However give
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Your analogy makes no sense. Or more precisely, the problems with north american settlements by "whites" are much more complex than "lack of technology".
I read an article about one of the first settlements. The settlement was at a river that was incredible rich in fish, especially cat fish. After 60 years the inhabitants where killing each other and canibalizing on the weaker ones.
The background: they only had _so many_ fishing nets brought with them from Europe. After all nets where broken, they did not "k
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North America was successfully colonized with stone age technology. When the Europeans arrived, there were already people living in most every environment, even on the shores of the Arctic ocean, surviving with stone age technology. The European colonists could just ask about the plants etc and the only advanced technology they needed to support their lifestyle was blacksmithing and ship waning (carpentry). What made it hard was that they showed up to steal and conquer an already occupied continent.. How can you compare colonizing Mars and colonizing N. America?
Right you are, but you are just scratching the surface.
The real problem with the English colonialists was that they were a group of English playboy-aristocrats and their man-servants [genealogic...anings.com] arriving without any supplies or equipment. Seriously. These people had no relevant skills or equipment to survive. The fate of the colony was decided before they left port in England.
The Spanish, with their crews of illiterate seamen, did better - when they weren't abusing the natives to attack and kill them and deny them supp
Rational reasons to explore space (Score:3)
Because space is mostly empty, and extremely hostile. There's no rational reason for anybody to go there.
There are plenty of rational reasons to go there. Not all of them are economically rational. None of them are without some amount of danger. But the notion that there is no rational reason to go into space is easily and demonstrably false. Off the top of my head:
1) Scientific discovery, particularly as it relates to the human body in hostile environments
2) Technology development
3) Preserving the species (the Earth will cease to be habitable at some point)
4) Curiosity (simple curiosity is rational if ris
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Space is full of resources: energy and useful materials.
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You anti-space nutter luddites are hilarious, the human race would have died off and accomplished nothing if all were as you are. You are what submariners call "scrub load"
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Should we? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I disagree. Powerful computing may lead to finding plenty of things of interest here on Earth.
Disagree all you like... why don't we ask the dinosaurs their opinion...
Oh, right...
We can't...
If we found a 6 mile long rock headed for Earth and had a year's notice, I doubt we could do anything about it, other than try to survive it (all the fantasies about stopping it aside, we likely couldn't).
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But we'd spend the first 6 months arguing about where to build it, another 5 arguing about who should go in it and 4 weeks fighting over it.
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Have you tried deeper parts of oceans yet? Antarctica under the ice?
Both are essentially a mystery today. We know almost nothing about deep ocean life, nor life under the ice in Antarctica. Recent operation when Russians finally managed to drill through kilmeters of ice to try to get a sample of what it is down there was the first success we had on that front.
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The mantle is available, as well. We don't dig very deep.
It's not either/or (Score:2)
The Earth is thoroughly mapped, explored, photographed, populated, and exploited. There are no frontiers or mystery here any more.
Complete and utter nonsense. We are discovering things about the Earth daily. We've barely explored the 3/4 of the earth that is under water. We know a lot but there is a lot left to learn right here on Earth and for the foreseeable future Earth is exactly where we are going to learn because we have limited options regarding space travel right now. Our technology is simply not advanced enough to send people much farther than the moon a present and even that is a stretch.
There's an enormous unexplored solar system out there vastly bigger and more interesting than Earth.
And we should explore that too.
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What a stupid and ignorant argument you make, all of those issues are merely engineering problems with known solutions
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I would have well, prior to having kids... I have to be there for them...
Now, if the ship was large enough to take them? I'd consider it...
It isn't for everyone, but we need to be doing it...
Frankly, I'm of the mindset that if no one is dying, then we aren't trying hard enough...
Re:Bring your kids to Mars?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your opinion of what a good parent is, isn't the end all, be all, of parenting...
Parents brought their kids to America on ships a long time ago, ever heard of the Mayflower?
Many died...
Those who didn't, experienced something well beyond the "comfort and safety" of Europe...
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Non sequitur. As long as there have been kids getting born and raised, there have been kids getting born and raised in transit. That's neither a reason for not having the kids, nor for not making the trip.
What bothers me about you self-appointed anti-space-nutter crusaders:
1. I don't see any space nutters. I see some people who are interested in space travel the way some folks like you are interested in pro sports and pr0n.
2. Your arguments all boil down to "I'm afraid to do this; therefore, you should be f
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Let's talk about what it is that you're afraid of.
Or to put it another way ... (Score:2)
We're all going to die some day.
You can die on Earth like billions of people before you have.
Or you can die IN SPACE!!!
Personally, I'd choose to die IN SPACE.
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But if they are in space, how can anyone hear them scream?
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In space... only the passengers inside your spaceship can hear you scream.
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we have radio and comm lasers that can enable all of mankind to enjoy the screams
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It will be done, but should it be the USA?
When we went to the moon, we were deep into a PR battle with the USSR. There was a general perception that they were beating us in space. We rallied our enthusiasm and resources and took the Great Leap- sending humans to the moon. We got lucky.
Now we are the leaders in space. We have nothing to prove. Others; India, China, Europe, Russia--are eager to demonstrate their prowess.
Let them. Lives are expendable in many parts of the world. The rewards justify the risks i
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Re:Should we? (Score:5, Informative)
The US became the space leader because the N-1 failed. Had the Russian moonshot rocket worked, they would have beaten us to the moon by a week or so.
None of the N1 launches were manned, and the US had already done a manned flyby of the Moon (the Apollo 8 mission, to be exact) exactly 2 months before the first N1 test shot was made in February 1969. The US landed 2 men on the Moon 5 months after that.
So, no, there was absolutely no chance at all of that happening.
Not even then! (Score:2)
Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes!
The only safe ship is the one that never leaves harbor...
Not even then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
There are loads of examples of ships sinking in harbor or while tied to docks.
That the thing about life, it's just too damn easy to die and there isnt any way to prevent it. So, may as well risk it.
Hell, you could be killed by space sitting in your chair at home!
http://ascendingstarseed.wordp... [wordpress.com]
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It's called an "Earth Return Trajectory".
Basically, it's a two-year long transition orbit to Mars. More deltaV to enter the orbit, quite a bit more to enter Mars orbit at the other end, but if you have a problem along the way, you'll be back to Earth eventually (or your bodies will be, in any case) assuming no action on your part.
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When it's a remote prospect, they say they'd go. If you actually had a ship ready to leave next month, you might find it's more like 1 in 100 at those odds.
No, who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
The first mission or two is probably no return anyway so who cares if you can't abort?
I'd still sign on in a heartbeat.
We need to be WAY less cautious about manned space travel again, we aren't going to do much of import at this pace.
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May we all die in novel circumstances.
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A single human on Mars could do in a week more than every previous rover on mars put together has accomplished to date.
We've done what we can with the robotic approach, at some point you need humans to take research to the next level rather than inching along for centuries.
Some people will die; some people always have died, will always die. That does not matter.
If you think it's gung-ho, well all I can say is it's side you decided to stop advancing the human race, not all of us share your pitiful lethargy.
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A single human on Mars could do in a week more than every previous rover on mars put together has accomplished to date.
Yes, if you wait to start the clock when the first human steps foot on Mars. But the clock has been running for a while, and robots have a big head start in results.
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> A single human on Mars could do in a week more than every previous rover on mars put together has accomplished to date.
I hear that said a lot, but is it really true?
Could a human crew carry more scientific equipment than Curiosity did? Wouldn't they be sending most of the data to Earth for analysis anyway, making the entire thing moot?
Keep in mind that even the most basic manned mission is gonna cost so much money you could send 50 curiosity rovers there.
Wrong question (Score:2)
I hear that said a lot, but is it really true?
Probably yes.
Could a human crew carry more scientific equipment than Curiosity did?
Wrong question. You have to get the equipment there either way. The question is what can you do with the equipment once you get it there. Presently the state of the art in robotics is such that we are pretty limited in what we can do with equipment once we get it there. Generally speaking people can usually do a lot more in a short amount of time than even the most state of the art automation unless it is highly repetitive. It's exactly the same problem we have in automating factories here
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A single human on Mars could do in a week more than every previous rover on mars put together has accomplished to date.
Sure. And at only 100X the cost of all those missions, it would be such a bargain.
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Worth noting also that a machine with modern sensory equipment and software is going to be far far superior at spotting the "unusual" something as it makes it's way to point X. A human normally has 5 senses he uses to absorb information - but on Mars, this is effectively reduce to one - or less than one, because the light on Mars will fool the
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Worth noting also that a machine with modern sensory equipment and software is going to be far far superior at spotting the "unusual" something as it makes it's way to point X.
A big part of the reason I'm not convinced is because of how much boosters of unmanned-only exaggerate the capabilities of such machines. There's no current machine that can beat a pressure-suited expert on the ground. And merely having better sensory equipment (when that actually is the case) doesn't mean a better ability at spotting the unusual.
In the meantime, the current desultory effort at studying Mars, means we'll lose at least a whole generation of researchers long before we get to human-level sc
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A big part of the reason I'm not convinced is because of how much boosters of unmanned-only exaggerate the capabilities of such machines.
Odd turn of phrase. What made you think that people were trying to convince you?
There's no current machine that can beat a pressure-suited expert on the ground.
There are currently machines on the ground doing science. Aaaand where are the besuited experts currently? Are they on ground? Give us a breakdown on the actual current capability of besuited experts versus machines.
In the meantime, the current desultory effort at studying Mars, means we'll lose at least a whole generation of researchers long before we get to human-level science acquisition on Mars.
We are already doing human level science on Mars. We sent robots. They do science for us.
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Odd turn of phrase. What made you think that people were trying to convince you?
Why are you posting then?
There are currently machines on the ground doing science. Aaaand where are the besuited experts currently? Are they on ground? Give us a breakdown on the actual current capability of besuited experts versus machines.
We can look at Apollo to see what human-level exploration and research looks like. I find it disingenuous to equate human-level exploration with no exploration at all.
Forgetting about latency? (Score:2)
Robot operators have a lag time of a millisecond. They just need to get a little smarter, but we're working hard on that.
Not on mars they don't. Not when being operated from earth. Average latency to send a bit of data to mars is around 13 minutes in each direction. Sometimes longer depending on where the earth is in its orbit in relation to mars. The speed of light is fast but mars is really really far away.
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If you want to get to Mars, figure out a way to make people fear not getting to mars.
Give the Chinese a good head start.
Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
[citation needed]
I think we will never achieve a great leap forward until we come to terms with the fact that what is holding us back from leaping forward is the irrational notion that we need to send flesh for a mission to be legitimate. Sending human flesh to another planet is about as useful long term as sending frozen steak or a banana. We don't insist on using only our hand when building a house: we use tools and machinery. In fact, it is said that the thing that separates us from other species is our tool making. We make tools to achieve the things we want to do, and to advance and make our lives better. The tools for exploring outer space are unmanned probes, robots, machines. Machines that don't require flesh in situ to make them work. 10000 years ago, flesh was needed to dig a hole. Now, we use a back hoe. We don't think of a hole dug by a back hoe as somehow suspect because we didn't dig it by hand. Why is space travel subject to these artificial constraints? Sure: Before the age of computers we didn't imagine machines could be sufficiently autonomous to enable them to be effective, long term in space. But now, we know better. In the 1960s, it was thought the future lay with sending humans into space to move levers. Now, we know better. The humans are just inert luggage. Let's go luggage free.
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Why travel anywhere when you can just watch a documentary about it on TV, right?
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I think you overstate the case -- for the present.
Thought experiment: Imagine you could magically transport several humans to Mars along with all the shelter and supplies they needed. Naturally, you could also use your magic transporter to transport a robotic vehicle. Which would be more valuable?
At present, the humans would be a better choice due to their greater behavioral flexibility and autonomy. But over the next fifty years or so we can expect the gap in flexibility between humans and machines to
Exploration only first step (Score:2)
...the irrational notion that we need to send flesh for a mission to be legitimate.
Why are we interested in exploring space at all if the goal is not to eventually have humans living off-planet? We can use robots for lots of things but ultimately the aim of exploration is to find new places to live and new resources to exploit to propagate the species. Hence the interest in manned missions. That's not to say that unmanned missions are not legitimate: they are absolutely essential but we need to develop, and practice, manned technology as well.
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> For all their sophistication, the Mars rovers need days to do what a geology grad student could do in a minute.
Why the hurry? It's not like Mars is going anywhere.
Plus, the robots have a lot of autonomy. They move around obstacles pretty much by themselves, with only occasional help.
Humans would be confined to a radius of within the base camp (the maximum distance they can move to and get back before supplies run out) and to missions maybe a day or two long before having to return. But what about rover
Why delay? (Score:2)
Why the hurry? It's not like Mars is going anywhere.
Why the delay? You have something better to do? What could possibly be a better use of your time than the greatest exploration mankind has ever undertaken?
Plus, the robots have a lot of autonomy. They move around obstacles pretty much by themselves, with only occasional help.
I think you are grossly underestimating the amount of hand holding going on from mission control here on Earth.
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Already possible, quit merely rubbing your gear and start self-replicating with it, you wanker
Rushing to mars is crap science (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason a Mars mission is one way is because we insist on building the vehicles and launching from Earth.
The cost of launching from earth is much higher than from space because we have to break Earth's gravity and pass through the atmosphere.
We picked on India for making it to Mars by basically cutting corners and just slingshotting a chunk of cheap crap at Mars and then said "ours costs more because we're more conservative". What's our response? Throw a huge expensive chunk of metal at Mars to prove we do it better.
Build the next space station already. Build it big and ship it people and supplies and do it there. If we cat accomplish that, we don belong in space.
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The cost of launching from earth is much higher than from space because we have to break Earth's gravity and pass through the atmosphere.
While this is certainly true, I don't think your general conclusions follow from this fact.
Build the next space station already. Build it big and ship it people and supplies and do it there.
The biggest expense is getting things into orbit, as you point out. It requires a certain amount of fuel for every pound or kilo of stuff we want to lift up there.
Given that space isn't exactly filled with random supplies (food, fuel for other missions, etc.) floating around, most of it is still going to have to come from Earth. So, exactly HOW is it cheaper to launch a mission from space if we still need to lift
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And the space station would do what exactly, pull materials out of a magician's hat? If all the raw materials are eventually going to come from earth anyway, you're just adding intermediary steps to increase costs. Here's a number of reasons why you might want to have a space station, but practically doesn't apply today:
1) We can gather and refine materials and produce parts/fuel with the required tolerances/quality from a lower/zero-g gravity well like the moon or asteroids at a lower cost than shipping it
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The funny part is.. you don't seem to grasp that you aren't actually saving anything by "building a big station and doing it there" - as all that material comes from Earth in the first place, the station is merely a temporar
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In launch costs there is absolutely no difference if I launch a huge "rocket" from earth and sent it to Mars, or if we sent rocket parts to a space station, assemble it there, sent fuel to the space station and finally launch from the space station.
Actually: that is a complete no brainer. How can you come to your conclusions?
So: making it cheaper to go to Mars by using the Moon, that is another thing. Ofc you can build up a mining colony on moon. I guess a small city with 1000 to 10000 inhabitants would do.
Lots of things could go wrong ... (Score:2)
However, even in case of catastrophe, it means that, what, six people die who signed up for this voluntarily and made history already?
Reading a synopsis of the novel ... (Score:2)
On a mission like that, your might survive one major thing going wrong, but the second mishap will kill you. You can't duct-tape your way out of misfortune after misfortune in space.
See Apollo 13. One thing went wrong, and it took all the engineering and duct-taping skills (literally) to get the crew back alive.
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"fun" and "sobering" are mutually exclusive terms, so it's not all that surprising.