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Even then, we can still send rovers more cost effectively than people! You can throw away the life support mechanisms, and so on, and get 550 tons of pure mars

by grkvlt 10y ago

Even then, we can still send rovers more cost effectively than people! You can throw away the life support mechanisms, and so on, and get 550 tons of pure mars rover in your interplanetary transport. At ~800kg for a curiosity-level rover that gives about 600 rovers, instead of 100 people. What to do with your 600 curiosity rovers on Mars is left as an exercise...

elsonrodriguez 10y ago
The Curiosity rover has driven 9 miles in a little over four years on Mars. The Lunar Rover that came with Apollo 17 drove 22 miles in a little over 4 HOURS. As it turns out, humans are the best robots.
- Pinckney 10y ago
  Another way to view it is that human rovers must go fast, because humans are impatient. We could build a faster, battery powered robotic rover if we wanted, but why? If it's simply mileage you want, Curiosity's RTG means it can just keep going for years. With an average speed of 30 meters/hr, I'm not seeing much reason to think that it wasn't capable of covering ~1000km over those 4 years (the LRV, on the other hand, could never exceed 92km, total, before the batteries ran out). But mileage simply wasn't the goal.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  Yes, but with my super-rover-transporter system, we can cover 5,400 miles in the same time, with the 600 rovers. I'm envisaging a sort of airbag deployment system (like pathfinder) coupled with a dispenser system that fires a rover out every few minutes as the ship orbits the planet, for optimal coverage.
  - elsonrodriguez 10y ago
    But to what end? Bigger and better probes? Finer and finer data points? We can send probes forever, but when do WE go? My underlying point is that we have enough data to start making attempts at settling Mars, and once we're there, we'll do more science and exploration than any existing robot can. If you doubt that, then show me a robot that can perform an archeological dig on a fossil site without destroying half of the fossils.

by grkvlt 10y ago

elsonrodriguez 10y ago

The Curiosity rover has driven 9 miles in a little over four years on Mars. The Lunar Rover that came with Apollo 17 drove 22 miles in a little over 4 HOURS. As it turns out, humans are the best robots.

Pinckney 10y ago
Another way to view it is that human rovers must go fast, because humans are impatient. We could build a faster, battery powered robotic rover if we wanted, but why? If it's simply mileage you want, Curiosity's RTG means it can just keep going for years. With an average speed of 30 meters/hr, I'm not seeing much reason to think that it wasn't capable of covering ~1000km over those 4 years (the LRV, on the other hand, could never exceed 92km, total, before the batteries ran out). But mileage simply wasn't the goal.
grkvlt 10y ago
Yes, but with my super-rover-transporter system, we can cover 5,400 miles in the same time, with the 600 rovers. I'm envisaging a sort of airbag deployment system (like pathfinder) coupled with a dispenser system that fires a rover out every few minutes as the ship orbits the planet, for optimal coverage.
- elsonrodriguez 10y ago
  But to what end? Bigger and better probes? Finer and finer data points? We can send probes forever, but when do WE go? My underlying point is that we have enough data to start making attempts at settling Mars, and once we're there, we'll do more science and exploration than any existing robot can. If you doubt that, then show me a robot that can perform an archeological dig on a fossil site without destroying half of the fossils.