Dan DeConinck wrote:

Hello,

The cost of one manned mission to Mars ($400.00 B ) is equivalent to a
thousand robotic missions.( $0.40 B) We could put dozens of scientific
satellites in ordit around not only all our solar system's planets but also
all their major moons. In addition we could send dozens of landers to all
latitudes of all planets and their major moons. It doesn't stop there. We
could visit comets and astroids and even send spacecraft out of our solar
system. We could virtually touch every corner of our solar system and for
decades. The scientific payoff and discoveries dwarfs the alternative of a
single mission to a single location of a single planet for just a few
months.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that one manned mission to Mars
will cost $400 billion. Even NASA could do a program like Zubrin's Mars
Direct for about $50 billion. Once the systems are in operation, each
additional mission would cost about $10 billion. Each one would spend a
year and a half on the surface of Mars, and could easily return hundreds
or thousands of times more information than an unmanned flight like the
ones in progress.

Supporters of manned spaceflight like to argue that the astronaut is more
effective than a robot. Well even if this was true the astonaut would need
to be not twice as effect or ten times or one hundred times but rather a
thousand times as effective to just get the same value as the robot. Lets
concede that the astronaut is twice as effective as the robot. That makes
the robot a better choice by a factor of five hundred times. Would the Mars
pancam image be any better taken my an astronaut ?

The argument for the astronauts also claims that a human is needed in the
loop. That argument misses the point that with robots humans are in the
loop. Just look at JPL. They have hundreds of the worlds best researchers.
They are directly in the loop orchestrating the rovers activities. This is
called telepresence. Those researches are virtually on Mars. Also note how
JPL claims the rover cameras have 20/20 vision. This telepresence technology
is also on trial in the operating rooms of hospitals. Doctors are performing
surgery telerobotically from upto thousands of miles away from the patients.
The plain fact is that people are in the loop big time with the robots.

Now remember, I concede that the astronauts would be more effect than the
robots but the problem is that they would be marginally more effective for a
disproportionate cost to the tune of five hundred times less scientific
returns.

Suppose you are a member of a geology department at a major university.
The department is planning a field trip to an area that has never been
explored before, and you propose to conduct the expedition as follows:
"Lets design and build a robot that can crawl maybe 50 feet a day, on
level terrain, if there aren't too many rocks in the way, and take
pictures of rocks and do some simple geochemical analyses with sensors
on the end of an arm. All the data will be sent back to us here by
radio so we can look at it on our computer screens. Then we'll design
and build an unmanned airplane that will fly the robot to the site, drop
it by parachute, then crash." How long do you think you would remain a
member of that department?

That is essentially how we are exploring Mars now, but nobody in their
right mind would do it that way if they had a reasonable alternative. A
manned expedition could have taken thousands of photographs and
collected hundreds of samples from dozens of sites in the time that JPL
has taken to get Spirit off of it's lander. Spirit and Opportunity are
wonderful machines, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that that
is the best way to explore Mars.

The manned mission supporters realize this lack of value so they cite the
spin off technologies that benefit mankind. This is a very hollow argument.
If you really value, for instance, the medical devices that emerge then it
is silly to not pursue them in a direct targeted way rather than spending
all your money visiting the moon and hoping that this will trickle down to
an improved pace maker. Furthermore much if not all of the spin of
technologies will inevitablly emerge on their own good timetable.

Frankly, I have never been interested in the spinoff argument.

Please, lets touch and visit every corner of our solar system and for
decades rather than a single mission to a single location of a single planet
for a single moment in time.

A program like Mars Direct could explore hundreds of square miles on
Mars every two years, collecting samples from locations that no robot
could ever hope to reach (including deep cores), and bring them back to
Earth for analysis. For an unmanned program to prove that life does, or
ever did, exist on Mars would take a lot of luck. It would never be
able to prove that life has never existed on Mars. Only an extensive
program of manned exploration would be able to prove that, if that
indeed is the case. It would have a much better chance of detecting
life there if it does exist, or ever has existed, than an unmanned
program.

Dan