Fred J. McCall writes:

Jochem Huhmann wrote:

"Greg (Strider) Moore" writes:

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...


And exactly how many samples did *all* of the Mars rovers return to
earth? Zero.

How much would a manned Mars mission cost?

How much would a robot return mission that brings back more than grams
cost?

Less than a mission that has to keep a crew alive for years in which no
science at all is done.

I agree that this might be different if we had better propulsion or
could hibernate the crew (as robots do as a rule). But we haven't and we
can't.

And you can't be serious if you mean to say that a crew is so much
better at selecting samples and launching them back? For all intents and
purposes a crew wouldn't be much more than an extremely delicate and
expensive payload most of the time. And every pound of equipment,
supplies, crew quarters, shielding etc. you need to return the crew will
be a pound of samples you can't return.

Mind you, I agree that it would be better to have people there. But the
direct and indirect costs of actually getting them there and back alive
just isn't worth it.

Even if you want to compare returned lunar samples, Apollo 11 returned
68 times the amount of material returned from all 3 Soviet sample return
missions combined.

And from a larger area.

Selected during 2.5 hours of EVA time. And for much more money.


It was still a better return on the money.

Back then robotics was very much in its infancy. Again, using people as
bio-robots is a bad idea especially when the travel times are measured
in years. Propulsion and life support have hardly improved since Apollo
but robotics have improved. A lot. That's the reason we have rovers on
Mars and no crews.

Using people as biorobots is hideously expensive since you need to keep
them breathing and drinking and eating and comfortable during years of
no science being done at all.


Do you want results or do you want to just putter for decades?

I prefer the results of robotic misssions that actually happen over
dreaming about manned missions that don't happen and that nobody wants
to pay for.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery