SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post - Once and for all...are humans or robots better for Mars?

**Jeff Findley**

In article 25f39dad-5a25-45ec-abeb-
, says...

True, there will always be places where humans can't go due to the
extreme environment (i.e. on earth, unmanned submarines could arguably
dive deeper and explore tighter spaces than any manned vehicle). *But
Mars is especially attractive because it's conditions are quite suitable
for human exploration.

Jeff
--

Lets not forget a human will spend at least half his or her time on
mars not doing anything. But eating sleeping, bathing, cooking,
personal hygiene, exercising etc etc etc?.

So what? Unmanned probes on Mars have been solar powered and typically
spend the Maritain night using their batteries to run heaters, so they
don't do (much) science at night either. They also ran into trouble
with dust covering the arrays, which could easily have been swept off by
a person in a spacesuit.

And if ISS is any example most remaing time will be spent on maintence
of stuff.

So what? The Mars rovers also ran into several difficulties which
required them to stop and not do (much) science until the people on
Earth figured out a work-around to the problem. Terrain which required
the rovers to sit idle until engineers on Earth figured out a safe way
forward would have been absolutely no obstacle to a person in a
spacesuit.

What percent of ISS astronaut time is actually devoted to science?

Figure THAT into the man vs robot equasion.

ISS is teaching us how to live and work in space, which is a necessary
precondition to a manned Mars mission. Hopefully the bugs will be
worked out of many of the systems by our ISS experience.

Spirit and opportunities landing sites were selected for max landing
safety, not how interesting they are. although they have done great!

Follow ups should be produced, sent to more challenging locations,
send 20 assume 50% loss rate, that still leaves 10 more working on
mars

Too bad unmanned missions never receive the level of funding that manned
missions do. This is politics. The Space Race wasn't won by the first
unmanned lunar probe, it was won when men set foot on the surface and
were returned safely to Earth.

Actually, this whole unmanned versus manned debate is absolutely stupid.
The most efficient way to explore Mars is with both!

In fact, having both on the *same mission* would be best. Having a
person in the Mars lander remotely command an unmanned rover would be
far more efficient than commanding the same rover from Earth with the
huge time lag in communications. Having a person in a spacesuit
available to fix problems with the rovers would also be a huge
advantage. Dusty solar arrays and dead motors could easily be cleaned
or replaced on the spot. In this case, having humans available to do
"routine maintenance" on otherwise unmanned equipment is a freaking huge
advantage!

Jeff
--
"Had Constellation actually been focused on building an Earth-Moon
transportation system, it might have survived. The decision to have it
first build a costly and superfluous Earth-to-orbit transportation
system (Ares I) was a fatal mistake.", Henry Spencer 1/2/2011