Should we invest in Mars Exploration

[sophiecentaur]

Humans vs Robot experimenters.
What's the current ratio for space research so far? Humans spent just a few days on Hubble and that's been working for us for years and years.
What's so different between space and Mars that suddenly turns things upside down?
The flagship ISS is the only significant example of human based labs. How many of their experiments (apart from the Ines actually on humans) couldn't have been done by robots?

 

[mfb]

Humans spent just a few days on Hubble and that's been working for us for years and years.

And it wouldn't have worked properly without human intervention. A few days of human intervention fixed something the telescope itself had no way to fix. They brought spare parts designed for the repair, sure, but developing a robot that could put these things in would have been extremely expensive (and still require a rocket to get there).

How many of their experiments (apart from the Ines actually on humans) couldn't have been done by robots?

Some of them are autonomous, but many of them require human intervention. Making all of them fully autonomous would be possible, but it would make them much more expensive.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hubble could not have been sustained with human operators. A couple of maintenance visits do not make it a manned experiment.

Some of them are autonomous, but many of them require human intervention. Making all of them fully autonomous would be possible, but it would make them much more expensive.

"More expensive". Does the word "more" include the negative cost of life support that wouldn't have been needed? When it comes to experimenting, you can't plug in just any astronaut and get optimal results for any random experiment. Humans are more flexible when it comes to re-jigging equipment where an experiment is going wrong. That's a fact. But sending up a replacement unmanned experiment (particularly LEO) would often be cheaper as a part payload with no spacemen involved.
I have to admit, I get a buzz from seeing the ISS go over my house but I also got a buzz when a Concorde went overhead or a Shuttle landing came on TV. The latter two are now known to not have been very good value in objective terms. Were the Moon landings of real significant scientific value even, compared with Cassini, for instance?
People still seem to think in terms of Buck Rogers when considering the priorities in space research. Things could always be different in the far future but too many optimistic assumptions are made, I think.
Edit: I now know that there were half a dozen vista to Hubble. But those visits involved work that couldn't have been done by a 'resident' staff.

 

[nikkkom]

If the choice is to spend money on, say, lowering the poverty rate vs space exploration

I'm not sure you can lower poverty rate by spending money on it. For example, giving $$$ to people who do not want to work and prefer to be poor by living entirely on welfare - this clearly does not work.

 

[nikkkom]

That's a nonsense reply. (Another straw man.)If you really believe that the human race is immortal

I said no such thing.
"Human race" is almost certain to quickly (within a few thousand years) modify itself so much that we won't be "humans" anymore. We may even be not biological anymore. I still would consider this to be "our" civilization.

You are proposing that we commit to a sedentary life, conservation, and eventually dying out.

 

[mfb]

Hubble could not have been sustained with human operators. A couple of maintenance visits do not make it a manned experiment.

Hubble could not have operated properly without humans going there. It did not need humans around 24/7, but it would not have worked without human missions. Why are we talking about the past? It is still working - thanks to manned missions to it.

"More expensive". Does the word "more" include the negative cost of life support that wouldn't have been needed?

My comment was about the costs of individual experiments - you cannot get rid of the ISS without side-effects just because one experiment doesn't fly there. Assigning fractional ISS costs to individual experiments is at best questionable. How much do you assign to which experiment?

 

[nikkkom]

ISS is operated by NASA's human spaceflight program, which is known for being very inefficient. Those guys are an impediment to progress.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I'm not sure you can lower poverty rate by spending money on it. For example, giving $$$ to people who do not want to work and prefer to be poor by living entirely on welfare - this clearly does not work.

You are assuming that the majority of poor people in the world have the 'choice' of receiving welfare. Perhaps you should look a bit wider than just outside your door. In Victorian times there was an expression "the idle poor". That was when people were starving to death in the UK and we had The Workhouse. I do hope attitudes have progressed past that.

 

[sophiecentaur]

My comment was about the costs of individual experiments - you cannot get rid of the ISS without side-effects just because one experiment doesn't fly there. Assigning fractional ISS costs to individual experiments is at best questionable. How much do you assign to which experiment?

Are you suggesting that space missions don't have detailed power, energy and other resource budgets? You seem unable to say whether experiments were included for good reasons or just as makeweight activities. No conclusive argument either way, then. But we all know that human life support is not good value in many cases.

 

[nikkkom]

You are assuming that the majority of poor people in the world have the 'choice' of receiving welfare.

No, I think majority of poor people in the world suffer because of bad governance (dictators / one-party-rule / "Presidents-for-life"). That, too, can't be solved by pouring money on them - we need to help them to have better government system. This is not too difficult, but requires clever people to be in charge of foreign policy.

However, "poor people" in the West, specifically its segment which staunchly refuse to do anything significant to improve their life and choose to live on welfare instead, is also a problem, albeit a very different one. They can vote. They demand that we "help the poor". Which they understand as "give us more welfare". Which can cause even more people to decide to not work and live on welfare instead.

What would happen if we reach the point where ~50% of the voting population is like this?

 

[sophiecentaur]

How many of these 'scroungers' do you actually know? Do you think life on benefits is a bed of roses? For every brazen exploiter of the system, there are many working and non- working poor who are stuck with their condition in the poverty trap or they may be disabled. You are clearly lucky and able enough not to get in that state so your value judgement of such people may be a touch clouded. Do you ever go to bed hungry? (Involuntarily, I mean)

 

[nikkkom]

How many of these 'scroungers' do you actually know?

This CNN interview is a fair example. Especially considering that CNN tries very hard to push it as "look at this poor family, they need help!", but truth shines through:



At 00:30, we see how they (mother and son) "barely managed on food stamps" to become overweight. Evidently, they suffer greatly when they need to stop buying hamburgers, and fail to do so.

Do you think life on benefits is a bed of roses?

No, it's not pleasant. But some people choose it because they detest working more than being poor.

Some people actually took upon themselves and ran a real life experiment - "Is it really impossible to escape poverty in US?"
The answer is, emphatically, "NO"! It is possible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings

"I am going to start – almost literally from scratch - with one 8' x
10' tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, $25, and the clothes on my
back. Via train, I will be dropped at a random place somewhere in the
southeastern United States that is not in my home state of North
Carolina. I have 365 days to become free of the realities of
homelessness and become a “regular” member of society. After one year,
for my project to be considered successful, I have to possesses an
operable automobile, live in a furnished apartment (alone or with a
roommate), have $2500 in cash, and, most importantly, I have to be in
a position in which I can continue to improve my circumstances by
either going to school or starting my own business."

A February 11, 2008 article about the book in The Christian Science
Monitor states, "During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived
in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends,
finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving
company. Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after
learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an
apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved around $5,300."Another "experiment" was run by none other than my sister. When she was 20, she arrived to US as an exchange student with $500 in her pocket as her total financial worth. How she has a Ph.D. in economics and is teaching in a University.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Do you think those examples prove anything about people whose intelligence, education and self esteem is low to start with? Homelessness is just two pay packets away for many people. Single parenthood is not always due to a cynical attempt to milk the system but I would bet that you would see it that way. That view is a great defence against feeling responsibility for the rest of mankind.

 

[nikkkom]

Do you think those examples prove anything about people whose intelligence, education and self esteem is low to start with?

How dare I to analyze the evidence and try to understand the problem. I should blindly follow the gospel of the Left.

Homelessness is just two pay packets away for many people.

Those people need to search for a better job then. I did exactly this when I was in a similar position.

Single parenthood is not always due to a cynical attempt to milk the system

Yes, it's often inability to think before having sex. Why I need to pay to support them?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Your 'evidence' is highly selective.
You are very fortunate to be intelligent enough to hack life. Lucky to be in a position to be paying tax.
I hope you eventually get to appreciate humanity as well as you appreciate Science. I also hope you never get in a situation that needs the "gospel of the left" to come to your aid. That could really rankle.

 

[nikkkom]

You are very fortunate to be intelligent enough to hack life.

I have a friend who is a construction worker. He is not doing anything which requires particularly high IQ. Concrete, plaster, remove old paint, paint the new one, that sort of thing.
He "only" does this very well, and is never turning down opportunities to work a bit more. As a result, he does not need any "help".

You don't have to be Einstein to succeed in life.

However, you do need to put effort into it. The woman in the video does not. She also raises her child in a mindset and behavioral model which will make him fail as well.

 

[mfb]

Are you suggesting that space missions don't have detailed power, energy and other resource budgets?

I am not saying that and I have no idea how you got that impression.
It is easy to quantify how much it costs to send experiments to the ISS - given that the ISS is there.
It is not very meaningful to say "out of the total ISS costs, we should assign X dollars to the total costs of this particular experiment".

You seem unable to say whether experiments were included for good reasons or just as makeweight activities.

What?Can we get back to the topic of Mars, please?

Here is a different approach: Let's assume we can estimate the costs of a couple of scientific Mars missions perfectly. Hypothetical example, of course. In reality, we cannot estimate the costs perfectly, and to get a realistic estimate we have to spend some money already.

If the missions cost $1 of tax money in the country you live in, would you support sending humans to Mars? I'll make a guess: we get agreement that it would be nice to do that if it is basically for free.
If they cost 10 times the GDP of the country you live in, would you support sending humans to Mars? Of course not.

Now the qualitative question gets a quantitative one: How how much can it cost before you stop supporting it? Or, from the other direction, how cheap does it have to get before you start supporting it?

If ITS works out, such a program could cost something like $5 billion. Cheaper than the JWST, and similar to the Europa Clipper mission if a lander is added.
If ITS does not work out, cost estimates are somewhere between $20 billion and $500 billion. At the lower end of the cost estimates, I would support a mission. If the $500 billion estimate is realistic, then I see better uses of the money.

 

[jack action]

But some people choose it because they detest working more than being poor.

Why do you think that is?

To get back to the subject of this thread, some people want to use public funds to finance a manned mission to Mars. But what if I don't agree with it? Apparently, I have to. I have to work for it, whether I like it or not. If I don't, then I'm lazy.

What is it to you that some people don't want to work? It is their choice and should be of no consequence to you. The problem is that you accept to live in a society that gives money to the few people that you can't convince of participating in your projects. You don't have to, you can choose to not give that money. But you won't. Probably because, on the whole, the system is good to you. Don't blame the person who chooses to not do what s/he doesn't want to do, blame the person who is willingly giving his/her money and complains about it. If you tell me you don't have a choice to give the money, well that is the exact same argument of the people who don't want - cannot? - work: They don't have a choice. Which one is right?

 

[mfb]

To get back to the subject of this thread, some people want to use public funds to finance a manned mission to Mars. But what if I don't agree with it? Apparently, I have to. I have to work for it, whether I like it or not. If I don't, then I'm lazy.

You don't have to agree with it. But you cannot stop every single budget item that you personally don't like. There are tons of things that get government funding that I don't want to support - but others do support it. We live in democracies (the majority of PF users does). If you don't like the political programs of a party, don't vote for the party. If you really dislike it, get active, convince others of your opinion, or even run for a political office.

 

[mheslep]

... and eventually dying out.

Going to Mars is no guarantee that won't happen anyway. There's an argument that investing in Earth bound infrastructure is much better insurance against many type of calamities, e.g. subterranean shelter.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It is not very meaningful to say "out of the total ISS costs, we should assign X dollars to the total costs of this particular experiment".

Why not? isn't Is standard business practice to do total costing where possible? How is even a simple thing like your stay in a hotel costed? (Staff costs, rent, breakfast ingredients etc.) / (guest times nights).
But I wouldn't argue too much against the rest of that post, in principle. The thing that has bothered me all along is that the arguments between manned and unmanned missions is very heavily weighted in favour of manned for reasons of vanity and thrills, rather than objectivity. We need to ask what we want to achieve and why? What do we want from Mars? If it's to do with colonisation, I'm seriously against the idea. Where are the real economic arguments and who would benefit? Where's the rush to find extra terrestrial life? When it is found, the message about what it means to the population of the Earth will be totally distorted. Putting it off as long as possible may be the best thing.

 

[jack action]

But you cannot stop every single budget item that you personally don't like.

That is not the point.

If everything was "voluntarily" funded, you could invest in manned Mars missions, @sophiecentaur could invest in cancer research and people who did not care for either could invest in nothing (i.e. less work for them) or in something else.

If that was the case, the subject of this thread would be pointless and everybody would be less frustrated.

 

[mfb]

Why not? isn't Is standard business practice to do total costing where possible?

Where possible.
Please show that it is possible in a meaningful way.

You can simply divide the ISS project costs by all experiments done. Then a 100 gram "we want to have some bacteria samples in space for a week and then back in the lab to see what how they grow" that took 1 researcher and $1000 to prepare gets the same additional costs as the $2 billion, 500 scientist AMS-02 project. Is that reasonable? I don't think so.
You can divide the ISS project costs proportionally by other costs. Then the 100 gram experiment from above gets tiny additional costs and AMS-02 gets much more - but without the ISS, the bacteria project wouldn't have happened, while AMS-02 could have been sent to space standalone. Is that reasonable? I don't think so.

If everything was "voluntarily" funded, you could invest in manned Mars missions, @sophiecentaur could invest in cancer research and people who did not care for either could invest in nothing (i.e. less work for them) or in something else.

Anarchy never worked well.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Please show that it is possible in a meaningful way.

You made me think there but . . .They will know the mass, very accurately. That gives the cost of getting it up there. They will know its volume. They will know its electrical power consumption. Even the man-hours spent will be logged more accurately than most factory workers. A share of the cost of the total ISS project would not be hard but we already know that ISS is expensive to run compared with an autonomous vehicle. More prep effort on Earth for an autonomous experiment, of course, but a few hundred quid per man day for a lowly lab worker is almost down in the noise. Robotics and machine intelligence are making big strides. Every year, the capabilities are getting greater and costs come down - unlike the costs of having human operators. I think you would be hard pressed to justify ISS bound experiments that were not actually to do with 'humans in space'. The argument about using existing capacity on ISS is weaker in space than for situations on earth. Everything costs you up there. Nothing is free.
You wanted to return to theMars issue but the ISS is a close parallel for discussion. Plus, the differential is many times greater for humans vs robots on Mars than on the ISS. For a start, you could rescue the ISS crew in a very short timespan, compared with a Mars rescue.

Anarchy never worked well.

True but one man's Anarchy is another man's Commercialism and isn't that what is being suggested as the way to Mars?

 

[nikkkom]

What is it to you that some people don't want to work? It is their choice and should be of no consequence to you.

It is of a consequence for everybody who works, when there are many millions of them, they need to be fed, clothed and provided with housing on other people's expense, they demand more and more of it, and this leads to even more people choosing this way of life.

(One solution which might work is "No Representation without Taxation").

 

[nikkkom]

> ... and eventually dying out.

Going to Mars is no guarantee that won't happen anyway. There's an argument that investing in Earth bound infrastructure is much better insurance against many type of calamities, e.g. subterranean shelter.

The thing is, while going to Mars does not guarantee anything, staying on Earth, forever, guarantees dying out.

There is really only one choice - "we should expand in space", unless you consider "yes, let's die out" to be a rational choice.

 

[mfb]

You made me think there but . . .They will know the mass, very accurately. That gives the cost of getting it up there. They will know its volume. They will know its electrical power consumption.

Same problem here. What is the cost to send a 100 gram experiment to space? If you have to launch a rocket for it, it costs millions, and tens of millions if you want to get it back in a controlled way. But that is not what you do. You take a rocket launch that happens anyway and put it there as tiny additional payload. Marginal cost: Nearly 0.
The ISS has a fixed power budget from its solar cells - as long as all consumers together don't exceed that, using more power has zero marginal cost. But of course there is no free electricity.

If the ISS would be operated by a company, that company would invent some formula to assign costs to every experiment, but that formula would have a lot of arbitrary decisions built in. We don't have to do that for a research station. The overall research program can be evaluated. And to decide which payload is sent to the ISS, their scientific use is judged, and mass, volume and other constraints are taken into account, of course. But not with a formula (and then you end up with tons of experiments needing high power but low mass and can't support them?), but with experts making a decision.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Marginal cost: Nearly 0.

Marginal cost has nothing to do with it. When they sell penny washers, they don't use marginal costs to decide what to charge you for one.

If the ISS would be operated by a company, that company would invent some formula to assign costs to every experiment, but that formula would have a lot of arbitrary decisions built in. We don't have to do that for a research station.

The way that Research is funded and costed can be very approximate and decisions about what to carry and what not to carry can be arbitrary. The choices associated with ISS were clearly not based on a good rationale. You are implying from that, that there is no objective way to decide between manned and unmanned experiments so we should just go for human experimenters because you like the idea?
I guess the main argument against using manned space experiments is that it has not been the choice of many experimenters; there are very few humans in orbit, doing experiments and thousands of remote experiments riding on satellites over the years. What would be so different about Mars that you are not even questioning the wisdom of using humans?

 

[mfb]

Marginal cost has nothing to do with it.

But marginal cost and total cost are everything you can reliably determine.

The choices associated with ISS were clearly not based on a good rationale.

I don't see what would be clear about that, and I think it is just your personal opinion.

You are implying from that, that there is no objective way to decide between manned and unmanned experiments so we should just go for human experimenters because you like the idea?

No I am not implying that. Where do you get that idea from?
You can look at the overall scientific impact of the ISS. And it is very large, including many experiments that could not have been performed without a space station.
The nations contributing to the ISS think it is large enough to continue operating the ISS, and both the US and Russia plan follow-up stations, while China plans to launch its own modular station. In other words: everyone involved in space stations thinks they are worth the money.

I guess the main argument against using manned space experiments is that it has not been the choice of many experimenters; there are very few humans in orbit, doing experiments and thousands of remote experiments riding on satellites over the years. What would be so different about Mars that you are not even questioning the wisdom of using humans?

I don't understand what you are saying or asking here.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It is of a consequence for everybody who works, when there are many millions of them,

Are you suggesting that there are enough properly paid jobs to go round? People in the 'rust belt' of the US would tell you different. Trump's (quoted) plans for a home industry providing employment for all are based on early 20th century manufacturing and his personal practice has been to go for automation where it made sense.

staying on Earth, forever,

How long is the "forever" in that post? Are you intending that humans will last beyond the lifetime of our Sun? What is your basis for that? And I have to ask why??

 

[sophiecentaur]

I don't see what would be clear about that, and I think it is just your personal opinion.

My opinion is based on sources like this, which lists some of the expenses involved in the ISS. The 'fun' cargo that was taken by staff would not have been needed by robot experiments. This link also has evidence that the 'value' of ISS is questionable. Otoh, there is a vast amount published by NASA etc, which opines that ISS has been much more worth while. But "they would, wouldn't they"?

I don't understand what you are saying or asking here.

My point, badly put perhaps, is that the history of space experimentation has much fewer manned experiments than autonomous experiments. The purpose of ISS was clearly (yes - clearly) more than just to do experiments and the value that was obtained from the International aspect is impossible to assess. It was as much a vanity project for the politicians as it was a platform for experiments that were tailored to human operatives. The arguments for and against a manned lab on Mars are much the same in principle as arguments for and against ISS. In hindsight, the success or value of the ISS is not an open and shut case. Any decision for a significant and long term human presence should involve even more scrutiny of what we have actually got from ISS and how much it has actually cost. The parallels are pretty obvious.

 

[mheslep]

The thing is, while going to Mars does not guarantee anything,

Pretty close to a guarantee that people will die in the attempt. Likely many people in an attempt to colonize.

I support the idea of lean manned Mars missions sometime this century for purposes of exploration, but not to 'save the species', which smacks of i) the survivalist fad of the moment, and ii) justification for big budget, self-serving, no-cost-is-too-high-for-the-cause missions.

...staying on Earth, forever, guarantees dying out.

There is really only one choice - "we should expand in space", unless you consider "yes, let's die out" to be a rational choice.

Then let's get back to this in a few billion years.

 

[mfb]

The 'fun' cargo that was taken by staff would not have been needed by robot experiments.

Neither would unmanned experiments need oxygen or food. Where is the point?

This link also has evidence that the 'value' of ISS is questionable.

It is 7 years old. At that time we had all the construction costs, but only a small fraction of science done.

My point, badly put perhaps, is that the history of space experimentation has much fewer manned experiments than autonomous experiments.

Autonomous experiments are spread out over more satellites, but if you just count the number of scientific experiments done, manned space stations dominate, doing hundreds to thousands of experiments in one place.
This outdated list (hardly any updates since 2011) has about 500 entries, the separate ESA list has 200 more, and all the small experiments done at the more flexible stations are not even included.

We had about 5000 space launches so far. Most satellites are commercial or military satellites. Technology demonstration satellites are less frequent, and dedicated science satellites (telescopes and so on) are quite rare, and these satellites are expensive as well.

 

[sophiecentaur]

This outdated list (hardly any updates since 2011) has about 500 entries,

I looked t through the list. It's hard to be sure which of the ISS-board experiments could only have been done with live operators. I realize the list of biological measurements needed humans up there but there are many others mentioned. How many of those really needed human intervention and how many have been run just to fill up spare time and to justify the presence of a human crew? We're talking $100Bn or thereabouts. Maybe not the most expensive 'thing' in history but it's up there with the front runners.

Neither would unmanned experiments need oxygen or food. Where is the point?

The point is that the overheads for humans are more than what's needed just to support life. Yet another needless expense in many cases.
The international nature of the ISS means that there is less argument needed to justify open ended costs; it's a symbol of international co operation and would be funded at almost any cost. It's equivalent to an arms race or a cold war because no one can pull out without embarrassment.
Before any serious plans for human presence on Mars, detailed and unbiased sums should be done on ISS because it's the nearest thing we have to an equivalent model. There is nothing about a Mars mission that would actually be easier or cheaper than what's been done on ISS.

 

[rootone]

What there is on Mars, while very interesting, is mostly a frigid version of the Sahara desert.
It would be great if there was more to look at than that, but so far there is no sign.