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

**Jeff Findley**

In article ,
says...

ISTR, about a year into their mission(s), Steven Squires (head honcho
of the rover program) being quoted as saying that a human geologist
could do what either rover had done in a year - in thirty days.

True, but it gets better than that. A human in a suit has a better
reach (longer arms) and more power than the tiny little robotic arm and
grinder on the rovers. A human in a suit with the appropriate hand
tools could gather samples that the rovers couldn't possibly gather.

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