On the Nature of Exploration

Your Humble Servant once again opines in the pages of USA Today, this
time using the Cassini mission to discuss the nature of exploration
and to settle once and for all the tiresome humans vrs robots
argument.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ttington_x.htm

"Mark Whittington" wrote in message m...
Your Humble Servant once again opines in the pages of USA Today, this
time using the Cassini mission to discuss the nature of exploration
and to settle once and for all the tiresome humans vrs robots
argument.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ttington_x.htm

Gee. I'm glad that one is finally settled. ;-)

"Perplexed in Peoria" wrote in message ...
"Mark Whittington" wrote in message m...
Your Humble Servant once again opines in the pages of USA Today, this
time using the Cassini mission to discuss the nature of exploration
and to settle once and for all the tiresome humans vrs robots
argument.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ttington_x.htm

Gee. I'm glad that one is finally settled. ;-)

You would be surprised at the number of people who think it is not.

"Mark Whittington" wrote in message
om...
"Perplexed in Peoria" wrote in message
...
"Mark Whittington" wrote in message
m...
Your Humble Servant once again opines in the pages of USA Today, this
time using the Cassini mission to discuss the nature of exploration
and to settle once and for all the tiresome humans vrs robots
argument.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ttington_x.htm

Gee. I'm glad that one is finally settled. ;-)


You would be surprised at the number of people who think it is not.


I'd say you're correct. Most people fail to understand this simple
argument.

Meridiani is the ideal example of this. Everyone seems to refuse
to believe their own eyes, instead waiting for some detailed
microscopic or chemical 'proof' gathered by a machine
for display on some chart.

If you're correct, that human reasoning is far more capable, then
the images ...alone... of Meridiani should provide far more
useful and comprehensive answers. As those images essentially
place a human eye on the surface of Mars.

Meridiani is clearly shaped by bacteria, a form of life that taxes
the human eye, yet the effects are easy to see. But only if
we stop obsessing over what things 'are', and instead
focus on how things interact with or depend on each other.

The layered rocks, the spheres and the soil. The question
is not 'what are they exactly'. It is ...'what process or
relationship can explain them all'?

The answer is obvious ...at a glance.

Only one process can account for order that spans
all scales...it is life. Exquisite order is seen at Meridiani
whether looking from orbit, from eye level or at
the microscopic. So much order in fact, one can't
escape it if they tried.

Meridiani is the textbook example of life, as
it's /completely/ niche filled by the /simplest/ form
of life possible. It is in fact the textbook example of
'The Garden of Eden'.

Meridiani is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!
It is the most beautiful thing in the universe!

If we can't ...see...this, we can't see anything at all.


Jonathan



"THIS is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!"


By E Dickinson




"The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their
simplicity imagine, but the relations among things; outside these relations
there is no reality knowable."

Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, 1905




SIGNIFICANT POINTS IN THE STUDY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
http://www.necsi.org/projects/yaneer/points.html

Self-Organizing Systems (SOS) FAQ
http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm

An Introduction to Complex Systems
Torsten Reil, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~quee0818/comp...omplexity.html

Center for the Study of Complex Systems
http://www.pscs.umich.edu/complexity.html

STUART A. KAUFFMAN
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/




s

"Jonathan" wrote in message ...
I'd say you're correct. Most people fail to understand this simple
argument.

Which simple argument? That for the price of one manned mission to one
place on Mars you can send unmanned missions to hundreds or thousands
of places on Mars?

Humans may do a better job of exploring one place, but it's still just
one place. Anything more than a few kilometers away is still part of
the great unknown, and for all the talk about sending manned rovers
along, I can't see NASA letting astronauts get further away from the
lander than they could walk back in a space suit. The last thing
they'd want is for the crew to die because their rover broke down or
got stuck 50km from the lander.

Mark

In article ,
"Jonathan" wrote:

Only one process can account for order that spans
all scales...it is life.

What utter nonsense.

I suppose you believe that Saturn's rings are alive (or created by
life), too?

Meridiani is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!
It is the most beautiful thing in the universe!

If we can't ...see...this, we can't see anything at all.

Your aesthetic notions differ substantially from mine (I find many
things -- such as my wife for example -- far more beatiful than a dead,
dusty bunch of rocks). However, aesthetic judgements are irrelevant to
conclusions about biology (or pretty much any other science).

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Jonathan" wrote:

Only one process can account for order that spans
all scales...it is life.

What utter nonsense.


Why? Can you defend that statement? When the
head of the Nasa science team states ...

"This is a profound discovery. It has profound implications for astrobiology,"
said Edward Weiler, NASA chief of space science
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...P&type=science


.....is he uttering nonsense too?




I suppose you believe that Saturn's rings are alive (or created by
life), too?

Meridiani is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!
It is the most beautiful thing in the universe!

If we can't ...see...this, we can't see anything at all.

Your aesthetic notions differ substantially from mine (I find many
things -- such as my wife for example -- far more beatiful than a dead,
dusty bunch of rocks).


What rocks at Meridiani would you be referring to? Please
just name ...one rock.... that has been identified at
Meridiani after six months of searching. .

Nasa merely refers to them as generic sedimentary rocks.
Please, before commenting, know what you're talking
about. There are no rocks at Meridiani, there are only
stromatolites like these...

The Stromatolites of Stella Maris, Bahamas
http://www.theflyingcircus.com/stella_maris.html

Endurance Crater
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...9P1987R0M1.JPG

Nasa recently claimed that the geologists finally have something to do
after five idle months not that they're at Endurance.
Well guess what? The geologists still have nothing to
do since the crater wall is simply more of the same
layered 'rocks' covering all of Meridiani. Only difference
is they're at an angle due to the subsiding caused by
the hydrothermal vent called Endurance crater




However, aesthetic judgements are irrelevant to
conclusions about biology (or pretty much any other science).


Meridiani is a template for the very first living ecosystem.
The first life is the ...source...of all beauty. Whether it be on our
planet or anywhere else in the universe.


Jonathan

s




,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

On 14 Jul 2004 13:34:20 -0700, (Mark
Whittington) wrote, in part:
"Perplexed in Peoria" wrote in message ...
"Mark Whittington" wrote in message m...

Your Humble Servant once again opines in the pages of USA Today, this
time using the Cassini mission to discuss the nature of exploration
and to settle once and for all the tiresome humans vrs robots
argument.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...ttington_x.htm

Gee. I'm glad that one is finally settled. ;-)

You would be surprised at the number of people who think it is not.

I don't agree with the position that humans are never needed, and we
should stick to robots.

But I do also think that instrumented missions are definitely more
cost-effective, and deserve significantly more emphasis than they
currently get at NASA.

This is despite the fact that missions like the Mars rover mission and
the Cassini mission are not stimulating the public interest for the
length of time, and to the great extent, that a manned mission would.
Space exploration cannot be cost-justified _merely_ as entertainment.

Not that it *is* mere entertainment.

Sending a human crew to Mars, unlike much of the Shuttle/Space Station
program, definitely would be an appropriate use of funds. The fact
that it wasn't done in the 1980s, when it might have been just barely
feasible, plus the important contributions of Dr. Robert Zubrin, ought
to mean that such a mission will be less expensive than it might
otherwise have been.

The problem with George Bush's Mars proposal, of course, is mainly
that the political climate doesn't seem to be within light-years of
being right for such a thing. Now, if *Bill Clinton* had made the
proposal, of course, certain influential media elements would have
given it a better ride.

That President Clinton was considered in some ways to be an echo of
John F. Kennedy would also have been helped. Unlike Kennedy, though,
a) he wasn't a war hero, and b) in respect of his escapades, he got
caught while in office.

Like (I think) most people, I personally would find it to be a big
thrill to actually stand on the surface of Mars. Edmund Hillary
notwithstanding, however, neither "because it is there" nor the beauty
of the Martian landscape, which might be compared to that of the fair
Helen, can launch a hundred billion dollars.

What *does* it take to justify a manned mission to Mars?

We might discover life there.

Obviously, that would be very important. However, as a big sell, it
does have its limitations.

1) It will radically alter our understanding of biology, since we
won't have only one example.

True. However, the odds of a cure for cancer falling out of that are
*not* as high as sometimes presented.

2) The discovery of Mars will radically alter our conception of our
place in the Universe.

True. An influential segment of the American voting public, however,
reads this as 'once we find life on Mars, nobody's going to stop us
from putting Darwin into the schools'.


Also, as I've previously noted, the danger of Martian life being
harmful to Earth is not as nonexistent as Dr. Zubrin claims; while
many pathogens, like those for AIDS and malaria, have complicated life
cycles that involve interacting with their hosts, mold and mildew just
eat what they attack. The really dangerous Martian microorganisms may
not be able to survive the trip to Earth on a meteorite.

Plus, there's the question of astronauts, by their presence,
contaminating the Martian ecosystem, if any.

Even if we find only life of Earthly ancestry - from meteorites - on
Mars, contamination is still an issue, since it will be all the harder
to distinguish Martian life from that which is imported for purposes
of studying what life had made it to Mars, and what had happened to it
since, if it is very similar to regular Earth life.


So, using instrumented probes, carefully sterilized, to settle the
question of biology ahead of time is a good idea.


Then we could talk about spinoffs.

New ways to package orange juice are underwhelming.

Of course, real benefits in public health might result from designing
a life support system which allows astronauts to drink water derived
from each other's urine...

combined with a space program that can't discriminate against
HIV-positive prospective astronaut corps members.

Yes, I dare to be less sanguine than Dr. Zubrin about the life support
question.


Instead of bemoaning the fact that our present civilization has
apparently lost the will to explore, of course, it does make sense to
think about how we might *regain* it. It is no accident that George W.
Bush's Mars proposal came in the wake of September 11, 2001.

You know, the event that made male psychology respectable again,
because besides making men into rapists and wife beaters, it makes
them more effective as firefighters?

Guantanamo - and Abu Ghraib - notwithstanding, it doesn't seem to have
silenced the liberal natterers for long. Does that matter, if majority
opinion has changed decisively, and Americans in general now, once
again, favor such long (apparently, not really) discredited things as
using military force in self-defence?

Now that an emotional factor has muted the debate over whether or not
very tall buildings are an efficient use of land, or wasteful in terms
of heating costs and strain on infrastructure?

The "survival principle", the idea that it is good to strive to be
strong and powerful - because the alternative is to be ground into the
dust by someone else, if for no other reason - is still a notion that
barely dares to breathe its name. Missions to Mars are at least
peaceful nonviolent scientific research operations, at least when
carried out by "socialist countries".

A successful mission to Mars *would* capture the imaginations of a new
generation of young Americans. Which is precisely why a significant
chunk of people will do just about anything to stop it... although the
ones I'm thinking of will stop short of sabotage, if not mendacity.

Are there baby steps - but bigger than Sojourner, Cassini, or the
current Mars Rovers, which do not seem to have had a significant
effect on public consciousness - that can gradually turn this around?
Or is there no alternative to the boldness of a Mars mission?

I suppose it is just difficult for a cynic to be optimistic. But I
try. Whatever the failings of the human race, it is good at muddling
through when it has to.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

lid (John Savard) wrote in
:

Instead of bemoaning the fact that our present civilization has
apparently lost the will to explore, of course, it does make sense to
think about how we might *regain* it. It is no accident that George W.
Bush's Mars proposal came in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Umm, no, I'm afraid it *is* a coincidence. What is *not* a coincidence is
that it came in the wake of February 1, 2003.
--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

Jorge R. Frank wrote:

lid (John Savard) wrote in
:


Instead of bemoaning the fact that our present civilization has
apparently lost the will to explore, of course, it does make sense to
think about how we might *regain* it. It is no accident that George W.
Bush's Mars proposal came in the wake of September 11, 2001.


Umm, no, I'm afraid it *is* a coincidence. What is *not* a coincidence is
that it came in the wake of February 1, 2003.


I would argue that it took something like Feb 1, 2003 to even make
such a sweeping change possible. Shuttle and ISS were running NASA.
The administration (any of them for the past 30 years) simply could not
put out a proposal that did not integrate Shuttle and ISS, or phase in
to take their places.

ie, no shuttle accident, no new initiative.