Should we invest in Mars Exploration

[nikkkom]

It will save the US some money in the short run, but over time it will cost money as the Chinese will be even faster surpassing the US in technological advancements.

You just struck gold. As I see it, a major reason for going to Mars is R&D of space tech, to learn how to do all this stuff. Whoever masters it first gets a huge advantage over those who did not.

We don't need a complete closed loop life support on Earth - and therefore we don't have this technology.
We don't need to grow a complete complement of food in an enclosed artificial base - and therefore we don't have this technology.
We don't have compact fission reactors.
We don't do enough research on microgravity effects on humans and on mitigating its effects. Hell, we don't even know whether living permanently in 0.3g is dangerous to humans.
Our spacesuits at best had 2-3 iterations of R&D on them. They are equivalent of cars from 1930.
We don't have universal space tugs.
ISRU tech for asteroid/Moon/Mars materials does not exist either.

 

[nikkkom]

I don't see a real purpose. Mars is pretty much a dead planet.

Correct.
As soon as you find a better planet in the Solar System, please let us know.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Curiosity covered 15 km in nearly 4.5 years.

How many years ago was the Curiosity design started? Was the idea of driverless cars even public knowledge, that long ago. If you are as optimistic as you clearly are about technology that suits your cause then you have to assume the same for things that don't support it. Robots may not be as smart as 'qualified' humans but they are improving. They are more rugged and they are expendable. Are those not massive advantages?

It is not my argument, please do not quote it out of context:

Sorry. I was confused by your wording. I missed the irony(?).

It is not either-or. It is both.

You are assuming that Mars has to come into the equation at all. If you're insisting on the spin off benefits then there are loads more possible technical challenges than trips to Mars. Mars isn't at the top of everyone's list - even if you feel it should be.

 

[mfb]

The idea of self-driving cars is decades old. In 1987 a European project got more than a billion (in today's dollars) as funding. At that point not even Spirit and Opportunity existed.

You are assuming that Mars has to come into the equation at all.

I don't say it has to, I say it is good if it does.

If you're insisting on the spin off benefits then there are loads more possible technical challenges than trips to Mars.

Do you have anything in particular in mind?

I highlight the spin-offs as I don't get the impression that you would welcome spending money for the main science mission.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Do you have anything in particular in mind?

Most of my priorities would not incvolve manned activities.: More deep space observation at all frequencies. More planetary probes. Defence against rogue asteroids (detection and dealing with). More gravity wave work. Plus all the non-space stuff associated with ecology, health and feeding people. (Re-terraforming Earth, even). The asteroid one would potentially do more for 'all of us' than the Mars project.

I don't get the impression that you would welcome spending money for the main science mission.

A manned "Science Mission" would, in my opinion, not be good value because I can't see a lot of point in taking it further into the colonisation stage. It would be no more of a priority project than other missions. I really don't see the 'because we can' has ever been a good reason for such an activity. Let's face it, the immense length of time since the last Moon landing has not exactly got in the way of Scientific progress and the Moon was only targeted for military reasons.
I do have a problem with the fact that the enthusiasts seem to pepper their otherwise reasonable comments with starry eyed adventure arguments. I know that the ISS crews all rave about being up there but that feel good thing is pretty bad value and has a very few beneficiaries.

 

[nikkkom]

Most of my priorities would not incvolve manned activities.: More deep space observation at all frequencies. More planetary probes. Defence against rogue asteroids (detection and dealing with). More gravity wave work. Plus all the non-space stuff associated with ecology, health and feeding people.

Why bother, since you intend humanity to die off like dinosaurs? If anything, let's just invest money in making lots of nukes and kill everybody. Same result as dying out, just faster.

 

[jack action]

I really don't understand where this idea that we have some sort of responsibility to maintain the human race alive and well at any cost comes from.

So the human race will be extincted some day. So what?

Even assuming we have this "god-given mission" to perpetuate life, wouldn't be easier to just send bacterias or other simple life forms within small spaceships throughout space, aiming for different planets and hope that one will survive and evolve to a future, well-adapted, human race? Wouldn't this be sufficient enough to maintain life in the universe? That is a low cost experiment that I could live with.

 

[russ_watters]

Curiosity covered 15 km in nearly 4.5 years. The experiments take a couple of measurements per day (e. g. "a dozen per day" for ChemCam, one of the more flexible instruments, or one measurement per day for APXS). Humans could easily drive that distance in a single EVA, and they would be able to collect thousands of samples in a week, to be analyzed in the station and/or on Earth. Apollo 17 collected 741 samples in 3 days, with a crew of just 2 astronauts. You are right, they are not 30 times more productive. They are even more than that..

You've badly missed the point of the productivity analysis. Productivity of an overall mission is not dependent on a one-for-one comparison of a person to a robot because they are not assumed or needed to be one-to-one replacements. What matters most is productivity as leveled by cost. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers cost $820 million for a 90 sol mission (I assume in roughly ~2000 dollars). Why send up two? Why the heck not - it only cost $820 million! With modest economies of scale, we could send hundreds of rovers for the cost of a single manned mission.

If there is a specific task that a robot can't do that a human can, that is one thing, but it just isn't true that humans can be more productive overall than a similar commitment of robots.

 

[russ_watters]

You just struck gold. As I see it, a major reason for going to Mars is R&D of space tech, to learn how to do all this stuff. Whoever masters it first gets a huge advantage over those who did not.

If the choice is to spend money on, say, lowering the poverty rate vs space exploration, you are right that we gain technologically from space exploration. But it most certainly does NOT follow that money spent on space exploration will provide a technological advantage over money spent on, say, cancer research. It is tough to gauge the efficiency of research, but space exploration is by nature a very inefficient way to promote technological innovation be cause it relies on by-chance spinoffs instead of direct development.

This was recently discussed...

 

[sophiecentaur]

Why bother, since you intend humanity to die off like dinosaurs? If anything, let's just invest money in making lots of nukes and kill everybody. Same result as dying out, just faster.

That's a nonsense reply. (Another straw man.)If you really believe that the human race is immortal then you have not studied history or palientology.

 

[mheslep]

but it just isn't true that humans can be more productive overall than a similar commitment of robots.

That depends on the complexity of the task. Complex tasks don't necessarily break down into simple parallel operations.

 

[russ_watters]

That depends on the complexity of the task. Complex tasks don't necessarily break down into simple parallel operations.

That *might* be true and I did allow for a task too complicated/difficult for a robot to do, but it is pretty speculative whether or not that problem would apply/couldn't be overcome. The tasks would have to be designed first and judged in the context of existing (at the time) robots to know for sure. And either way, there is a lot of important "grunt" work that certainly can and should be done by robots before sending a human to make that big discovery only s/he can make.

Regardless, @mfb didn't make that argument, he made a straight-up task completion count argument. And now that I actually look at his numbers, they don't seem to add up: 741 samples in 3 days with a crew of 2 is 123.5 samples per person per day. That's 20 times more than a dozen, not "even more than...30".* Perhaps he was referring just to the distance of travel, but that's an obvious nope; you can't be driving and taking samples at the same time. So the sample count and driving distance are mutually exclusive, not coincident tasks.

*And I let this go before, but the time actually performing the tasks isn't the relevant duration either: the relevant time is the mission development and execution duration. If a human exploration mission takes 10 years to develop and 5 years to execute for a 3-day stay, you've achieved much less than a single rover would even if the only duration difference was that the rover stayed and worked during the time the humans were flying home.

 

[russ_watters]

To take this to an only slight extreme, someone in another thread asked why we just don't send people to Enceladus since it was recently found to be a possible harborer of life. As I and others pointed out to him, there are a lot of places that might harbor life and if we just send people to Enceladus, we wouldn't have any money left over to explore anything else, anywhere, for a really long time. So it is much more time and money efficient and provides a higher chance of success if we send hundreds of probes to candidate sites in the solar system (including many on Mars) rather than sending one manned mission to Mars...er, Enceladus.

To say it more explicitly/directly: We've entered a golden age of space exploration, with vastly more exploration, for cheaper, being done over the past decade or two, enabled by the funding freed-up by the decline and fall of manned space exploration.

So I'll ask a more pointed question: if you could have one 3-day trip to Mars *or* fifty probes to explore every planet and major moon in the solar system, plus space telescopes, Earth studying satellites, etc. over the next 20 years, would you really pick the Mars trip?

[edit]
Thought not explicit in its goal regarding humans vs robots, the NASA "Faster, Better, Cheaper" mandate from 1992 is what I am referring to:
http://www.acqnotes.com/Attachments/Faster, Better, Cheaper Revisited.pdf

 

[mheslep]

I fully agree that 'bots should be sent to do that which 'bots can clearly do on Mars and not people. Sending people to simply scoop up rocks without sophisticated discernment would be a waste. However, there are certainly tasks that can not be partitioned into simpler steps. For the near future at least, and perhaps into the distant future, some of these tasks remain too complex for a many-hands approach, or the domain of human experts.

"When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned." Source.

 

[mfb]

You've badly missed the point of the productivity analysis.

Or I just considered a different aspect than you? In particular, consider the claim by velocity_boy that humans wouldn't be significantly faster than robots.
A common argument against human missions is "they cost more". Yes, sure, they do, no one questions that. But they also lead to more results, and velocity_boy asked for arguments showing that.

So the human race will be extincted some day. So what?

I prefer the state "humans are not extinct" over the state "humans are extinct", thank you.

Regardless, @mfb didn't make that argument, he made a straight-up task completion count argument. And now that I actually look at his numbers, they don't seem to add up: 741 samples in 3 days with a crew of 2 is 123.5 samples per person per day. That's 20 times more than a dozen, not "even more than...30".* Perhaps he was referring just to the distance of travel, but that's an obvious nope; you can't be driving and taking samples at the same time. So the sample count and driving distance are mutually exclusive, not coincident tasks.

The rovers don't collect samples, they make measurements and then discard whatever they studied. In terms of samples that can be studied in more detail on Earth, a rover has 0 unless we make a sample return mission. The Apollo 17 crew covered 35 km (more than twice the total distance of Curiosity, although humans have to drive back again, so let's say they are about equal) and collected 741 samples in 3 days.

if you could have one 3-day trip to Mars

There is no such thing, a mission would have to be longer.
And I don't think you can get all the things you listed for the price of a manned Mars mission (with >1 year on the surface). Wait 10 years, then buy it from SpaceX.

 

[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.