Should we invest in Mars Exploration

[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.

 

[nikkkom]

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

Otherwise, these people would live forever?
Every single day, in US about 100 people die in car crashes. We should ban cars?

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

The Earth will be uninhabitable (surface temps in excess of 100 C) in "only" one billion year, due to rising luminosity of the Sun.

In any case, regardless of how many millions of years "we can afford to wait", I don't see the point in waiting. There are possible scenarios where humans, or even most of life on Earth, can be wiped out without much warning.

 

[nikkkom]

ISS is not a model of how to do things. ISS is a model how to NOT do things. What is worse than a government program? An international government program.

IIRC full cost of bringing one kg of experiments to ISS (in Shuttle days) was estimated to be $400k. Of these, $40k is the cost of the launch (Shuttle is the most costly launch vehicle in history), but it only starts here. The expenses for "paperwork" required by ISS office at NASA dwarfed even that. Soon, ISS office discovered than many educational institutions started turning down their offers to maybe do some experiments on ISS - "thanks, but we are not exactly looking for having mountains of PITA at this moment".

 

[mheslep]

Otherwise, these people would live forever?
Every single day, in US about 100 people die in car crashes. We should ban cars?

Non sequitor. I'm not arguing to ban anything, nor that people should hide in their basements for safety. I do argue that going to Mars offers little to extend the long term survival of humans (as you say, no 'guarantee') relative to measures available on earth, and going there in the next decades will likely kill some people; those lethal risks might be worth the exploration but won't save humanity.

The Earth will be uninhabitable (surface temps in excess of 100 C) in "only" one billion year, due to rising luminosity of the Sun.

The only fact +1by is the increased solar output. In a discussion where environmental conditions that don't support life are a given, and advanced tech is assumed, many sci fi like measures are possible, e.g. space based sun shield, subterranean habitation. Surface temp on the day side of the moon, where colonies have long been proposed, can hit 123C.

In any case, regardless of how many millions of years "we can afford to wait", I don't see the point in waiting.

Fair enough. I see the same facts and assess no urgent need to go, especially with existing propulsion tech.

There are possible scenarios where humans, or even most of life on Earth, can be wiped out without much warning.

Maybe. Among the suite of such scenarios, several probably wipe out small colonies on Mars too, and there are still others where a similar amount of investment on Earth as Insurance against calamity maintains some human existence under conditions at least no more harsh than that of Mars (no breathable atmosphere or liquid water).

 

[Elaine Sokolov]

Ehh... I don't think so. Even if we could find frozen water on Mars or something, It's still way too cold to inhabits humans. And I personally think that that's the reason we explore space/galaxies/planets in the first place. I mean, think about it. We went to the moon a while ago for a few years and then we haven't been back. What's the point of spending millions of dollars if we're going to forget about the trip a year or so later?

 

[sophiecentaur]

There are possible scenarios where humans, or even most of life on Earth, can be wiped out without much warning.

It's strange how people apply different criteria in different circumstances. There are many possible scenarios that you will be wiped out on your way to work tomorrow. Have you made any special plan to eliminate that possibility? Will you drive extra slowly or choose a travel time that's not so busy. It's one thing to talk about vast schemes to preserve homo sapiens but another thing to preserve ones own life a bit longer. Eat properly, exercise , avoid smoking and alcohol.. None of us takes that amount of care. "Well, you've got to die sometime". Likewise for the human race. Why not accept it?

 

[nikkkom]

It's strange how people apply different criteria in different circumstances. There are many possible scenarios that you will be wiped out on your way to work tomorrow.

Irrelevant. I will be dead anyway, sooner or later. We don't survive individually, we survive as a civilization.

 

[jack action]

Irrelevant. I will be dead anyway, sooner or later. We don't survive individually, we survive as a civilization.

Or ... maybe we just survive as a life form and other "civilizations" are on other planets, so it's OK for our "civilization" to die sooner or later?

 

[sophiecentaur]

we survive as a civilization.

That would be a first, then. Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Third Reich . . . It also works that way with bacteria.

 

[nikkkom]

Or ... maybe we just survive as a life form and other "civilizations" are on other planets, so it's OK for our "civilization" to die sooner or later?

It depends on what you mean by "OK".

I define "OK" as surviving. Not surviving (both for lifeforms and for societies) is a failure. I am going to operate in this coordinate system.

Dinosaurs are dead and by the above definition, they failed.

If we look at them not as species surviving standalone, but as branch of life, an attempt by Nature to create a versatile, survivable life form adaptable for various conditions, they failed when "various conditions" become too harsh, but life continued on.

Now is our turn. This time evolution tries a new way to have a versatile, survivable life form adaptable for various conditions: a very *clever* animal.

It's up to us what we do now. I take it some people are okay with failing. I am not.

There is no known laws of physics which stops us from surviving for practically unlimited stretch of time by expanding into space, and all reasons to think that with more advances in technology and medicine, we can change our bodies (and brains?) as needed to live anywhere.

We certainly may fail (success is not guaranteed). However, if we don't even try, we are guaranteed to fail.

 

[sophiecentaur]

There is no known laws of physics which stops us from surviving for practically unlimited stretch of time

Likewise, there is no Law of Physics that says we should expect to be able to survive for an unlimited time. Experience tells us that there are variations in circumstances and if one doesn't get you, the next one may. Frankly, I don't have any problem with facing personal mortality nor the mortality of the human race. That doesn't mean I have no will to survive or that I would just lay back and let it happen (just to forestall any Straw Man response). I think it is amazingly over optimistic to assume that humans will not do themselves harm that will put an end to them. We won't have to wait millions of years for a Bay of Pigs or a North Korea situation that will actually not be recovered from. That's just being realistic.