Re: Why NASA should focus on the Moon, not Mars - Henry Spencer

On Nov 22, 9:04 am, Brian Thorn <bthor...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:43:31 -0800 (PST), Totorkon

<aertr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
By the 2020s, when the first expedition
might be expected to land even with a crash program, robotic explorers
will be able to carry out 90% of the science that a human team could,
over thousands of miles, at just a few percent the cost.

Facts not in evidence. The MER chief scientist has gone on record as
saying what Spirit and Opporunity do in a day, a human could do in
minutes.

I've seen Steve Squyres make that statment on tv. Being human I tend
to have a 'John Henry' bias. Maybe you could be more specific about
the advantages that a human would have over a robot that might
transmit a megabyte/s and be able to return a sample to a mechanized
lab. This seems to be the trend in terrestrial labs, ever seen CSI?
Before plans for a manned landing were announced, it would have made
sense to have studied the shortcommings of robotic vs human field
geology.

Think of how difficult your day would be if outside of a very cramped
apartment every thing you did was carried out wearing a pressurized
space suit.

Just where is this amazing new technology going to come from that will
speed up robots, make them enormously more intelligent, and make them
vastly cheaper than the $2+ billion MSL, and why is it that none of
these amazing technology improvements can be applied to manned
missions to make them more efficient?

Brian

Robots that carry out human tasks within a structured environment. I
would not be surprized if in twelve years a Japanese robot would be
able to clean, serve microwaved meals or even spoon feed a
quadraplegic patient.

The more mars is explored by machines, the more likely a human
expedition will have popular support.
.

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