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

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:23:56 -0800 (PST), Totorkon
<aertrion@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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.

A human wouldn't be stuck in a sand pit for a month, as was
Opportunity. A human could squirt WD-40 on the stuck wheel, instead of
dragging around a dead wheel, like Spirit. A human wouldn't turn off
the landing engines 1,000 feet above the surface, as did MPL. A human
could turn the antenna back to point toward Earth, instead of ending
the mission as did Viking 2.

Mechanized labs don't exist and aren't likely to in the foreseeable
future. All the labs on Earth still have significant numbers of people
working in them. But somehow, the unmanned Mars crowd thinks robot
labs are right around the corner.They're not.

This seems to be the trend in terrestrial labs, ever seen CSI?

I've seen Star Trek, too. Both are fantasy, not real world. From what
I've seen of CSI, I think Star Trek is more realistic... at least the
Enterprise's computers have to crunch data for a few hours before
giving a result.

Before plans for a manned landing were announced, it would have made
sense to have studied the shortcommings of robotic vs human field
geology.

Which we've already done, on the moon. Apollo was enormously more
productive than Surveyor or Lunakhod. Apollo returned 800x the amount
of samples Luna did, but almost certainly didn't cost 800x as much.
The Apollo 15 crew in one day traveled further on the moon than Spirit
and Opportunity together since they landed on Mars almost four years
ago, and Apollo 15 was on the moon for three such days.

No plans for a manned landing have been announced. We're only building
the infrastructure that could possibly take us to Mars some time in
the indefinite future. Currently, NASA is committed only to the lunar
part of Constellation.

And the manned Mars supporters are not saying "no more unmanned
probes!". We're saying do both.

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

But at some point you have to fish or cut bait. The unmanned crowd
seems to always be saying, "the next set of robots will make humans
unnecessary, just you wait and see, don't waste money on this manned
mission foolishness!"

I think we're getting close to the point of diminishing returns from
robots, especially if MSL succeeds. More MERs would be nice to scout a
few more potential base sites, but those can be run in conjuction with
manned expedition development. Lets stop talking about it, stop
waiting for the Intel Unobtanium chip to create R2-D2, and just go do
it.

Brian
.

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