Once and for all...are humans or robots better for Mars?

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On Jan 20, 7:53 pm, "Jonathan" wrote:
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" wrote in
...





On 1/19/11 7:59 PM, Jonathan wrote:

I see some NASA talking heads are out pushing a manned trip
to Mars yet again.

This debate isn't even close.

Loosely speaking, putting men on Mars is a Forty year long
$Trillion dollar (or)deal. And succeeds in putting a dozen
or so eyes on the surface for exploration.

Losely speaking, rovers take Four years or so, and cost a
$Billion dollars. And succeeds in putting ...how many eyes
on the surface of Mars?

When those eyes can pick up a rock, break it open with an appropriate
tool, run requisite tests on it, run over the next hill to check
something
at a speed somewhat faster than a drugged snail,

I'll take a snails pace that starts....next year, instead of that
'quick walk' sometime around the year 2040!

And the Mars Science lab is taking the lab to Mars, instead
of the geologist. This mission is dedicated to life on Mars
and will have the kind of instruments that can give definitive
answers, unlike the previous rovers.

If you watch the mission animation in the drop down, you'll
see this mission looks to be rather
exciting.http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.../index.cfm?v=1
2&a=2

Especially considering the kinds of instruments it
has.http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/...n/instruments/

But more to the point, at the rate electronics and computing
are advancing, we'll have the answers we want long before
men ever get there. So the geologist 'advantage' isn't a
valid argument. The manned mission has to be about...building
something permanent, not scientific exploration.

People are for ...building.
Rovers are for ...exploring.

s- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

If we repurposed the nasa manned budget for robotic exploration
imagine how much we could do

Not politically possible. You know it. If you think the howls of anger from
Congress were bad enough if you supported ObamaSpace's initial rollout back
on 1 Feb 10, any such proposal that canned the HSF program would be DOA on
The Hill-as the initial FY 11 budget was. Even the amended budget proposed
on 15 Apr 10 was dead-and Congress went and wrote their own NASA
Budget-which includes Heavy-Lift and Orion for BEO, and some development of
both commercial crew/cargo services and of technology needed for
long-duration missions.. It's not what you want to do: it's what the
Congresscritters who write the checks will allow you to do. Got that?

Michael Gordge wrote:
On Jan 21, 7:33 am, "Mike Dworetsky"
wrote:

but by
comparison to other sorts of projects relatively little is being
spent on this ultimate solution to the energy crisis.

Where's the energy crisis and why and how is it an energy crisis?

MG

If you want to be more specific, it's also a pollution/byproduct crisis.
The big demand is for clean energy, without CO2 contributing to global
warming and without consumption of fossil fuels which have value as a source
of chemicals for industrial uses such as plastics.

There is plenty of coal, for now, though it is a comparatively dirty fuel.
But oil is increasingly scarce or controlled by people you may not like very
much. It is hard to run your car or truck on coal. If oil is plentiful,
why is it considered worthwhile drilling in deep water to get it? And why
is it costing around $100/bbl?

Building new nuclear power plants would fill part of the gap for
electricity. But they are slow to construct and subject to political
popularity contests. Electricity consumption is growing fast in
industrialized countries. It will get worse as electric cars come into use.

All I am really pointing out is that very little is being spent on research
into ways of making fusion practical, in comparison to many other things.
Fusion holds the promise of producing energy with no pollution or long-lived
radioactive by-products.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

On 1/20/2011 10:50 PM, Derek Lyons wrote:
The problem is
the atmosphere is too thick for the evaporative cooling system used on
orbit, but too think for conductive cooling (air over coils) like is
used on Earth. Nor has anyone actually looked seriously at what it
would take to ensure the joints wouldn't be significantly worn by
Martian dust.

Considering that Martian dust would have had its sharp edges dulled by
tens of millions of years of having been blown around in the yearly dust
storms, it should represent no abrasive threat whatsoever.

Pat

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Howard Brazee wrote:

On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:16:17 -0800 (PST), Ilya2 wrote:

Yes, it is "hogwash" in the sense that Apollo 13 did not stop the
program or even came close to stopping it, but the answer to your
question -- because it was Cold War. Demonstrating US technological
superiority over USSR was a specific, identifiable goal. No such goal
exists today.

Actually such a goal *does* exist today - for countries such as China
and India.

Except their goal is "proving we are a Real Spacefaring Nation by
doing what Real Spacefaring Nations have done in the past".

D.

Difficult to say what China's goal is with respect to a space program.
They already have the bulk of the planet's rare-earth deposits, maybe
they want to be sure things stay that way in case there are
significant rare-earth deposits on the moon. Maybe they just need
something that will keep their population too busy to revolt. Given
that theirs is the most robust economy around just now, it doesn't
seem like there would be much point in their spending effort on
"becoming legitimate".

--
"the source of prosperity is disposable income" -Epicromulus

On 1/21/11 3:18 AM, Mike Dworetsky wrote:
Michael Gordge wrote:
On Jan 21, 7:33 am, "Mike Dworetsky"
wrote:

but by
comparison to other sorts of projects relatively little is being
spent on this ultimate solution to the energy crisis.

Where's the energy crisis and why and how is it an energy crisis?

MG

If you want to be more specific, it's also a pollution/byproduct crisis.
The big demand is for clean energy, without CO2 contributing to global
warming and without consumption of fossil fuels which have value as a
source of chemicals for industrial uses such as plastics.

There is plenty of coal, for now, though it is a comparatively dirty
fuel. But oil is increasingly scarce or controlled by people you may not
like very much. It is hard to run your car or truck on coal. If oil is
plentiful, why is it considered worthwhile drilling in deep water to get
it? And why is it costing around $100/bbl?

Building new nuclear power plants would fill part of the gap for
electricity. But they are slow to construct

Don't HAVE to be slow, comparatively speaking. There's nothing
inherently harder about building a nuke plant than building a coal
plant. And you can make many smaller nukes for local areas -- Toshiba
has one design that's meant for a moderate-sized town and lasts 20-30 years.


and subject to political
popularity contests. Electricity consumption is growing fast in
industrialized countries. It will get worse as electric cars come into use.

If you convert everyone to electric, it would become almost impossible;
you'd have to double the grid's carrying capacity and, more importantly,
you'd need MUCH higher capacity lines for anywhere that was going to try
to charge such vehicles quickly.



All I am really pointing out is that very little is being spent on
research into ways of making fusion practical, in comparison to many
other things. Fusion holds the promise of producing energy with no
pollution or long-lived radioactive by-products.

I was under the impression that any reasonable fusion reaction (i.e.
not using difficult-to-obtain isotopes of something) would produce
enough neutrons to make PLENTY of the structure radioactive.




--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

On 1/21/11 1:50 AM, Derek Lyons wrote:
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. wrote:

Human beings with suits -- and we know how to make such suits
-- can do all of these things that are terribly difficult for machines
quite easily, already.

Actually, we don't quite know how to make Mars suits. The problem is
the atmosphere is too thick for the evaporative cooling system used on
orbit, but too think for conductive cooling (air over coils) like is
used on Earth. Nor has anyone actually looked seriously at what it
would take to ensure the joints wouldn't be significantly worn by
Martian dust. Etc... etc...

There's probably no showstoppers, but there is a whole host of known
unknowns.

Don't we already have high-altitude suits, such as ones used by the
super-balloonists that go to 100k feet? That should be fairly analagous
to the about 1/100th atmosphere. Or is the level you need something like
200,000 feet or a little more, below practical orbit and above practical
ballooning?

Insofar as dust, wasn't that also a moon problem?


D.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

On 1/21/11 4:12 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 1/20/2011 10:50 PM, Derek Lyons wrote:
The problem is
the atmosphere is too thick for the evaporative cooling system used on
orbit, but too think for conductive cooling (air over coils) like is
used on Earth. Nor has anyone actually looked seriously at what it
would take to ensure the joints wouldn't be significantly worn by
Martian dust.

Considering that Martian dust would have had its sharp edges dulled by
tens of millions of years of having been blown around in the yearly dust
storms, it should represent no abrasive threat whatsoever.

Er, dust storms on Earth are very abrasive, and we have many more
"dulling" mechanisms. It's not just sharp edges that do the damage as such.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

"In the mid-1950s Armstrong transferred to NASA's Flight Research
Center, Edwards, California, where he became a research pilot NACA's
High-Speed Flight Station (today, NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center) at Edwards Air Force Base in California as an aeronautical
research scientist and then as a pilot on many pioneering high-speed
aircraft, including the well-known, 4,000-mph X-15. He flew over 200
different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters,
and gliders.

200 mostly military vehicles, do you believe the X 15 is a private
aircraft?

On 21/01/2011 11:54 PM, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
On 1/21/11 3:18 AM, Mike Dworetsky wrote:
Michael Gordge wrote:
On Jan 21, 7:33 am, "Mike Dworetsky"
wrote:

but by
comparison to other sorts of projects relatively little is being
spent on this ultimate solution to the energy crisis.

Where's the energy crisis and why and how is it an energy crisis?

MG

If you want to be more specific, it's also a pollution/byproduct crisis.
The big demand is for clean energy, without CO2 contributing to global
warming and without consumption of fossil fuels which have value as a
source of chemicals for industrial uses such as plastics.

There is plenty of coal, for now, though it is a comparatively dirty
fuel. But oil is increasingly scarce or controlled by people you may not
like very much. It is hard to run your car or truck on coal. If oil is
plentiful, why is it considered worthwhile drilling in deep water to get
it? And why is it costing around $100/bbl?

Building new nuclear power plants would fill part of the gap for
electricity. But they are slow to construct

Don't HAVE to be slow, comparatively speaking. There's nothing
inherently harder about building a nuke plant than building a coal
plant. And you can make many smaller nukes for local areas -- Toshiba
has one design that's meant for a moderate-sized town and lasts 20-30
years.


and subject to political
popularity contests. Electricity consumption is growing fast in
industrialized countries. It will get worse as electric cars come into
use.

If you convert everyone to electric, it would become almost impossible;
you'd have to double the grid's carrying capacity and, more importantly,
you'd need MUCH higher capacity lines for anywhere that was going to try
to charge such vehicles quickly.

Well, we know how do do those. Finding batteries that are capable of
being charged quickly is a different matter.

But fusion power could be used in other ways, such as producing hydrogen
by electrolysis (or by some more direct mechanism involving heat), and
the hydrogen could then be used as the fuel.

A cheap working fusion power system would open a lot of options. It's
certainly something worth pursuing as long as it seems viable.


All I am really pointing out is that very little is being spent on
research into ways of making fusion practical, in comparison to many
other things. Fusion holds the promise of producing energy with no
pollution or long-lived radioactive by-products.

I was under the impression that any reasonable fusion reaction (i.e. not
using difficult-to-obtain isotopes of something) would produce enough
neutrons to make PLENTY of the structure radioactive.

That's not much, in the scheme of things.

Sylvia.

20.1.2011 17:33, Jeff Findley kirjoitti:
In article-
hdakotatelephone,
says...

On 1/20/2011 2:58 AM, Jochem Huhmann wrote:
Or to turn that around: Look at a one-way robotic mission that gets
the
same mass to Mars as a manned mission needs. Then compare which mission
can do more. You could spray hundreds or thousands of rovers over Mars
for the same mass that a small crew needs just to stumble around in the
dust near their lander for three months and then return.

And the nice thing is, you don't have to worry about getting the rovers
back either; in fact, the longer they stay, the better.
I always thought we should have built more MER's, considering how well
Spirit and Opportunity did and the low cost of the whole program.

Double edged sword.

Abandoning unmanned probes on Mars means that they can't return samples
to Earth. A manned mission which returns people to Earth will
undoubtedly return samples too. Mars samples in an Earth lab would be
called "invaluable" by geologists, biologists, and other scientists on
earth.

Then again, if you can develop an automated mission to do the
measurements on site it will have much larger sample opportunity than
any return mission.

As to the value of samples - we already have some examples of Martian
origin on Earth (eg. ALH84...). I'm not sure how high they are valued
but concievably not to thousands of millions of USD (considering the
enthusiasm in funding more missions to Antarctica).

On the third hand a geological sample is more valuable if one knows the
natural location and can handpick (human or robotic hand) the most
prescious findings, so some random meteorites aren't entirely comparable.

H Tavaila