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Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle o

Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.

elorant 8y ago
Because it takes ages to plan a new mission and the vehicle we send is related to the goals of each mission. It's not like they have a rover stand-by and then decide where to land it. The equipment of the vehicle and the research it has to carry very much determine the way it will be build. So what we've send so far depends on the data we had years ago.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Histor... Curiosity landed 8 years after the call for proposal. If I recall, the landing site (Gale Crater rim) was considered extremely interesting at the time.
walrus01 8y ago
Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  See: Armageddon, the movie. Maybe we just need to go full Bruce Willis. Somebody get Ben Affleck to sing Leaving on a Jet Plane. In seriousness, it sounds like a fascinating problem. If anyone has seen the drills they use to make holes for piles for new condo/office towers—they're probably wider than needed in this case (not actually sure of that)— the drill (bit?) is extendable, but the rig itself is enormous. Those are mobile units. Otherwise something like a semi-permanent or permanent unfolding oil-rig type machine would be needed? None of this helps with the weight problem. I wonder if there's a more clever option.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Use a digging rig combined with multiple explosive charges perhaps. Essentially a small shape charge version of solid boosters will work. It would be similar to preparing a shallow mine. After the hole is made you get to clean it up to obtain decent samples though. Whether this would save size or mass is to be seen, a digging drone would preferably be small though very sturdy and dense to survive landslides.
    - 52-6F-62 8y ago
      Right— I now remember some conversation surrounding a similar problem on Titan(?). I think a drilling drone was proposed, but communications posed complicated. That is, communicating to a base rover to route to Earth. I could picture some kind of high-tensile wire on a spool connected to the digging drone. It might not be the highest speed communication, but if it at least proved reliable, that could work, no?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity. Not necessarily. The hole will be stationary relative to Mars so you could just send a little base station with radio and power that drops a paper towel roll sized module with an unspooling data/power link cable and your science stuff into the ice. It can either bore its way through like a TBM (hard but good scientific value since you can measure environment on the way down) or just have it heat itself and let gravity drop it through (no moving parts but less scientific value since you're altering the environment around the probe). When you hit water stop unspooling the cable and just hang it there by the cable. I'm sure college students in Maine or Montana would be able to pool their ice fishing expertise and come up with some working prototypes if given a sufficient quantity of beer. It's fun to play armchair engineer.
  - larkeith 8y ago
    Huh, that's a good point - a large enough RTG on a data uplink cable would make its own way down through the ice, given time. There would be a lot of crosscontamination between the various ice layers and the lake though, so that's unlikely to fly (or sink, as the case may be).
- pvaldes 8y ago
  > Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. You need a rover of 8x mass. 1- make a rover of standard weight and size an put it in the desired place, as before. Deploy a light but strong flat platform around. 2-Look around. What do you see? Probably a lot of heavy rocks. 3-Pick some rocks of the appropriate mass, or a bag of sand 4-Load stuff of your choice over rover or put it in the flatform or in a special area designed to be filled until reaching the desired weight. Yes, like a truck. 5- Now that your rover is 8x heavier, start drilling 6- Finished?. Now remove the bags of sand or the rocks one to one.
  - NegativeLatency 8y ago
    Sure, but you now have all kinds of extra mass to lift to orbit (not the sand, but a beefier rover). You could launch more payloads and assemble in orbit. It starts to become complicated...
    - pvaldes 8y ago
      I can't see why. After you remove the load again. Rover weight would be the practically the same as before. Maybe a little heavier, but not much.
- lxmorj 8y ago
  Not contesting the point, but shouldn't Martian rock be significantly less dense due to less gravitational compression?
ebbv 8y ago
Have a little more faith in the people running these missions than that. The landing spots for any missions we send over are chosn very carefully and with a lot of thought. There are specific goals for any mission and the landing sites are chosen based on those in mind.
mattlondon 8y ago
From the BBC article it suggested that getting a rover there might be difficult. Since they were talking about flying rovers, I would assume this means that it is not a nice flat plain like the current wheeled-rovers are used to driving around on. I am guessing that it means that it probably looks a lot like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brei%C3%B0amerkurj%C3%B6kull#/media/File:Breidamerkurjoekull.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brei%C3%B0amerkurj%C3%B6kull#/... Kinda fascinating though. I would assume that instead of drilling they could just use some sort of heated "drill" that just sinks through the ice slowly but surely. Probably less to go wrong mechanically?
- qubex 8y ago
  Yeah but you’re in a polar region that by definition receives less solar energy... how are we going to power it? Radioisotopes near the only local location of extraterrestrial life?
hoorayimhelping 8y ago
A couple of reasons. The first is that to make a mission to Mars cost effective, we have to wait about 18 months for Earth and Mars to line up in the right positions, otherwise it costs too much in rocket fuel to be worthwhile. The second is that the missions lag behind the discoveries - it's much easier to analyze pictures and spectographs than it is to design a mission, secure funding for it, and then do it. Sending a landing craft to Mars is not very easy. We've done it successfully a few times, but we've failed quite a few times as well. A lot of these discoveries happen in places that it isn't trivial to land a rover. We put them in flat deserts because it's safer to and there is still much to learn there, but liquid water doesn't necessarily get found in places rovers can go. I imagine we're much more cautious with rovers on Mars than we are on say the moon. It's very costly to make a mistake and lose a rover on Mars.
- beamatronic 8y ago
  We have a proven design in Spirit/Opportunity. There should be an assembly line cranking them out.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    And rockets too, while firing 30 at the same time for redundancy? This is not a valid argument at all. You need different designs that will not fall in the same way. We could e.g. send Lockheed, United Space, SpaceX, Russian, ESA and CSA designs for all of the components at the same time, then it is perhaps possible that at least one week make it. The cost will be huge though.
    - api_or_ipa 8y ago
      > while firing 30 at the same time for redundancy? I presume this is a reference to the failed N1 project with it's 30 NK-33 engines? To be fair, the N1 rocket didn't fail because of it's engines, it failed because of numerous organizational failures, including a ruthlessly rushed design process, lack of funding, and most importantly, the death of it's chief engineer, Korolev. The NK-33 rockets were basically the only part of the rocket that actually survived the program-- they're a big part of the current Soyuz stack if I recall.
rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
I wonder if it might make sense to have a kind of satellite around Mars with a series of probes that can be deployed wherever interesting things are suggested to be but aren’t necessarily expected to be mobile, beyond perhaps drilling downwards. That way as more interesting discoveries are made via rovers or other technologies, we can deploy a probe right away instead of having to plan and build and hurl a rover through space for a year and a half.
mozumder 8y ago
This is hilarious. "Why don't we just send the rovers to the cities and historic sites and other more interesting places of Mars?"
- dang 8y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
rch 8y ago
Aside from the logistical concerns others have mentioned, I would expect the risks of contaminating this site with terrestrial stowaways would be relatively high.
- criddell 8y ago
  Wouldn't rock from Earth end up on Mars the same way that Martian rocks fall on Earth? If so, then contamination may have already happened in both directions.
  - rch 8y ago
    True, but if we transport a modern microbe then we might miss our chance to isolate the relatively "indigenous" version and be unable to prove that such naturally occurring exchanges are possible.
ryanmercer 8y ago
For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could get the top 5 GDP nations to contribute 1% of their GDP to a proper global space program we'd have 400+ billion dollars a year (NASA has has a budget of around 18 billion lately). We could probably start sending unmanned missions in 2020 with test hardware for in situ resource production, develop a decent vehicle for travelling, then land 3-4 manned missions by 2022 with overlapping areas of operation as Zubrin (and others) have proposed that way if something goes wrong with one you can travel in 1-2 days, without exiting your vehicle, to another one of the missions. You could have extra ships there waiting just to return specimens (and to offer a backup return vehicle for each team to get back up to orbit to return on an ISS-sized ship for the travel to and from Mars, not unlike in The Martian, which you could then park in Orbit around Earth or even the Moon and use as a slightly-used international space station or use it again for another trip out). You could return literal tons of specimens to earth for study, you could have human beings processing the stuff there "no this looks like a waste of time, this one is interesting, that's interesting, that's a weird feature let's drill a few samples here" not to mention just cover more area with various instruments getting all sorts of readings. sigh If only. If we could just get 5 countries to agree to contribute 1% for 2-3 years we could establish a permanent moon base and do a hardcore Mars human-exploration mission. Obviously it would take 10-20 years to pull off but an international committee could be selected (representatives from all 5 nations as well as other nations that say want to help with supporting the missions, wouldn't need to pony up nearly as much money). Call it Starfleet 0.5 and make all of the science that results from the missions 100% public, give every country the UN recognizes a certain allotment of specimens as well for display in government-sponsored museums and to allow their own citizens to study. Alas, I dream too much.
- remote_phone 8y ago
  I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be very exciting to see in my lifetime.
keketi 8y ago
NASA scientist: I built this space mission up from nothing. When I started, all I had was a martian lake! Other scientists said I was daft to send a rover into a lake, but I sent it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the lake, so I built a second one. That sank into the lake. I built a third one. It got stuck, fell over, and then it sank into the lake. But the fourth one floated! And that's what you're going to get, lad--the strongest rover on Mars!
- joshstrange 8y ago
  Love a good Monty Python reference even if most humor-only posts are discouraged on HN.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    My experience has been that Monty Python and Douglas Adams references are the clear exceptions to the no humor rules on HN, though I don't suppose you'll find that written down anywhere.
    - larkeith 8y ago
      From what I've seen, a bit of reasonably mature humor seems acceptable, it's just multiple posts devoted to jokes derailing the conversation where it's frowned upon. I quite like this system, as it prevents Reddit-esque threads with the same tired memes being repeated back and forth ad nauseum, but still allows for a bit of levity to lighten the conversation and provide some mental refreshment. And yes, I realize I just called a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference mature.
      - DC-3 8y ago
        So long as you define 'mature' to mean 'in line with the average HN reader's ego and self-image', you're pretty much on point.
        larkeith 8y ago
reaperducer 8y ago
then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert. Do you seriously believe that scientist working on billion-dollar space missions for decades just throw a dart at the wall to decide where to land their rover?
- Reedx 8y ago
  That's an amusing thought. Scientist A: "So... where should we send the rover, this marvel of technology?" Scientist B: "How about a random boring spot?" Scientist A: "Sounds good!" (repeat)
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    That's literally how the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field photo came to be. They pointed the Hubble to the most boring spot on the sky they could find, just to see what's there.
    - lxmorj 8y ago
      I mean sure, but they can just re-aim that...
    - jibal 8y ago
      You don't understand what "literally", "random", or "boring" mean. The Hubble was pointed at an apparently "empty" area ... that was anything but random: "Wiliams suspected the billion light-year stare might capture eons of galactic evolution in a single frame and uncover some of the faintest, farthest galaxies ever seen. And to him, the potential observations were so important and so fundamental for understanding how the universe evolved that the experiment was a no-brainer, consequences be damned."
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I do understand what those words mean, and was playing off the joke made by the GP. Sorry I forgot to include the "smiley face" emoticon in my previous comment.
FranOntanaya 8y ago
#1) The need for a large ellipse of flat plains with a minimal amount of hazardous rocks/slopes. Landing accuracy is constrained by our knowledge of the Martian atmosphere. Odd features tend to be on the opposite end of the ground hazard spectrum. #2) Planetary protection. Mars his a Category V target: it has potentially habitable niches, it has an atmosphere able to carry biological contamination anywhere, and we want to return samples from it to Earth. Chances of contamination are much lower when we stay far away from water ice and active gullies. Modern landers and rovers are much more delicate and intricate than the original Vikings and we can't just bake off all the contamination. #3) Communications. Equatorial plains have a better view of the relay satellites. #4) Close up, most interesting features on Mars are still a rocky desert. The Phoenix Lander landed on top of permafrost, which was unintended as it was thought to be just another rocky desert. #5) Odd features are often complex geologically and characterizing the area near the rover may not say much about Mars nor provide useful context for future, more detailed missions. #6) Perhaps, a tiny bit of backlash from Viking's ambiguous chemical experiments. It's easier to get conclusive science and write solid papers from old, stable parts of Mars.
- godber 8y ago
  The #1 reason here is one of the most important. You have to be able to draw your landing ellipse in a spot that you can be confident the rover can safely land. Technological advances have shrunk the size of this ellipse considerably, check this image from JPL for comparison of past missions: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4398 https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=439... Another reason is the decisions are made ... ok, perhaps only influenced by committee ... you have to satisfy at least a significant subset of the Mars research community with your site selection. See this site for public information on the process: https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/ There are a number of other hard engineering concerns, like limits on latitude based on heating (or solar power) requirements, e.g. if you go to far north or south you have to use all your available power to heat the spacecraft and won't have any left to do science. I don't remember the exact values, but I think existing technology puts you in a +/- 60 degrees from the equator. I think it was even less than that, but I don't recall exactly.
BurningFrog 8y ago
If I understand the Science article¹ right, this lake is 1.5 km beneath the surface. That's a lot of digging when you can't go buy a new shovel. Besides the fact it was only discovered right now, that is. ¹ The two-way pulse travel time between the surface and basal echoes can be used to estimate the depth of the subsurface reflector and map the basal topography. Assuming an average signal velocity of 170 m/μs within the SPLD, close to that of water ice (20), the depth of the basal reflector is about 1.5 km below the surface
jibal 8y ago
The water's a mile down. Duh. Here's a clue for you: the people who make these decisions as to where to send rovers are intelligent. That's why their choices aren't the choices you would make.
- sctb 8y ago
  Personal attacks are not OK on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
andygates 8y ago
They only look like random rocky deserts. Gale was carefully selected as a site with lots of exposed layer geology. And none of the current rovers could drill a mile into ice, or get there in the first place. First drill will be InSight real soon now. OP, I think, suffers from Earthbound preconceptions of development in a field that has physics laughing back.
modzu 8y ago
for starters this lake is 2km beneath the surface of the ice cap...

Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.

elorant 8y ago

Because it takes ages to plan a new mission and the vehicle we send is related to the goals of each mission. It's not like they have a rover stand-by and then decide where to land it. The equipment of the vehicle and the research it has to carry very much determine the way it will be build. So what we've send so far depends on the data we had years ago.

throwaway5752 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Histor... Curiosity landed 8 years after the call for proposal. If I recall, the landing site (Gale Crater rim) was considered extremely interesting at the time.

walrus01 8y ago

Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity.

52-6F-62 8y ago
See: Armageddon, the movie. Maybe we just need to go full Bruce Willis. Somebody get Ben Affleck to sing Leaving on a Jet Plane. In seriousness, it sounds like a fascinating problem. If anyone has seen the drills they use to make holes for piles for new condo/office towers—they're probably wider than needed in this case (not actually sure of that)— the drill (bit?) is extendable, but the rig itself is enormous. Those are mobile units. Otherwise something like a semi-permanent or permanent unfolding oil-rig type machine would be needed? None of this helps with the weight problem. I wonder if there's a more clever option.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Use a digging rig combined with multiple explosive charges perhaps. Essentially a small shape charge version of solid boosters will work. It would be similar to preparing a shallow mine. After the hole is made you get to clean it up to obtain decent samples though. Whether this would save size or mass is to be seen, a digging drone would preferably be small though very sturdy and dense to survive landslides.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Right— I now remember some conversation surrounding a similar problem on Titan(?). I think a drilling drone was proposed, but communications posed complicated. That is, communicating to a base rover to route to Earth. I could picture some kind of high-tensile wire on a spool connected to the digging drone. It might not be the highest speed communication, but if it at least proved reliable, that could work, no?
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity. Not necessarily. The hole will be stationary relative to Mars so you could just send a little base station with radio and power that drops a paper towel roll sized module with an unspooling data/power link cable and your science stuff into the ice. It can either bore its way through like a TBM (hard but good scientific value since you can measure environment on the way down) or just have it heat itself and let gravity drop it through (no moving parts but less scientific value since you're altering the environment around the probe). When you hit water stop unspooling the cable and just hang it there by the cable. I'm sure college students in Maine or Montana would be able to pool their ice fishing expertise and come up with some working prototypes if given a sufficient quantity of beer. It's fun to play armchair engineer.
- larkeith 8y ago
  Huh, that's a good point - a large enough RTG on a data uplink cable would make its own way down through the ice, given time. There would be a lot of crosscontamination between the various ice layers and the lake though, so that's unlikely to fly (or sink, as the case may be).
pvaldes 8y ago
> Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. You need a rover of 8x mass. 1- make a rover of standard weight and size an put it in the desired place, as before. Deploy a light but strong flat platform around. 2-Look around. What do you see? Probably a lot of heavy rocks. 3-Pick some rocks of the appropriate mass, or a bag of sand 4-Load stuff of your choice over rover or put it in the flatform or in a special area designed to be filled until reaching the desired weight. Yes, like a truck. 5- Now that your rover is 8x heavier, start drilling 6- Finished?. Now remove the bags of sand or the rocks one to one.
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  Sure, but you now have all kinds of extra mass to lift to orbit (not the sand, but a beefier rover). You could launch more payloads and assemble in orbit. It starts to become complicated...
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    I can't see why. After you remove the load again. Rover weight would be the practically the same as before. Maybe a little heavier, but not much.
lxmorj 8y ago
Not contesting the point, but shouldn't Martian rock be significantly less dense due to less gravitational compression?

ebbv 8y ago

Have a little more faith in the people running these missions than that. The landing spots for any missions we send over are chosn very carefully and with a lot of thought. There are specific goals for any mission and the landing sites are chosen based on those in mind.

mattlondon 8y ago

From the BBC article it suggested that getting a rover there might be difficult. Since they were talking about flying rovers, I would assume this means that it is not a nice flat plain like the current wheeled-rovers are used to driving around on. I am guessing that it means that it probably looks a lot like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brei%C3%B0amerkurj%C3%B6kull#/media/File:Breidamerkurjoekull.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brei%C3%B0amerkurj%C3%B6kull#/... Kinda fascinating though. I would assume that instead of drilling they could just use some sort of heated "drill" that just sinks through the ice slowly but surely. Probably less to go wrong mechanically?

qubex 8y ago
Yeah but you’re in a polar region that by definition receives less solar energy... how are we going to power it? Radioisotopes near the only local location of extraterrestrial life?

hoorayimhelping 8y ago

A couple of reasons. The first is that to make a mission to Mars cost effective, we have to wait about 18 months for Earth and Mars to line up in the right positions, otherwise it costs too much in rocket fuel to be worthwhile. The second is that the missions lag behind the discoveries - it's much easier to analyze pictures and spectographs than it is to design a mission, secure funding for it, and then do it. Sending a landing craft to Mars is not very easy. We've done it successfully a few times, but we've failed quite a few times as well. A lot of these discoveries happen in places that it isn't trivial to land a rover. We put them in flat deserts because it's safer to and there is still much to learn there, but liquid water doesn't necessarily get found in places rovers can go. I imagine we're much more cautious with rovers on Mars than we are on say the moon. It's very costly to make a mistake and lose a rover on Mars.

beamatronic 8y ago
We have a proven design in Spirit/Opportunity. There should be an assembly line cranking them out.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  And rockets too, while firing 30 at the same time for redundancy? This is not a valid argument at all. You need different designs that will not fall in the same way. We could e.g. send Lockheed, United Space, SpaceX, Russian, ESA and CSA designs for all of the components at the same time, then it is perhaps possible that at least one week make it. The cost will be huge though.
  - api_or_ipa 8y ago
    > while firing 30 at the same time for redundancy? I presume this is a reference to the failed N1 project with it's 30 NK-33 engines? To be fair, the N1 rocket didn't fail because of it's engines, it failed because of numerous organizational failures, including a ruthlessly rushed design process, lack of funding, and most importantly, the death of it's chief engineer, Korolev. The NK-33 rockets were basically the only part of the rocket that actually survived the program-- they're a big part of the current Soyuz stack if I recall.

rm_-rf_slash 8y ago

I wonder if it might make sense to have a kind of satellite around Mars with a series of probes that can be deployed wherever interesting things are suggested to be but aren’t necessarily expected to be mobile, beyond perhaps drilling downwards. That way as more interesting discoveries are made via rovers or other technologies, we can deploy a probe right away instead of having to plan and build and hurl a rover through space for a year and a half.

mozumder 8y ago

This is hilarious. "Why don't we just send the rovers to the cities and historic sites and other more interesting places of Mars?"

dang 8y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

rch 8y ago

Aside from the logistical concerns others have mentioned, I would expect the risks of contaminating this site with terrestrial stowaways would be relatively high.

criddell 8y ago
Wouldn't rock from Earth end up on Mars the same way that Martian rocks fall on Earth? If so, then contamination may have already happened in both directions.
- rch 8y ago
  True, but if we transport a modern microbe then we might miss our chance to isolate the relatively "indigenous" version and be unable to prove that such naturally occurring exchanges are possible.

ryanmercer 8y ago

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could get the top 5 GDP nations to contribute 1% of their GDP to a proper global space program we'd have 400+ billion dollars a year (NASA has has a budget of around 18 billion lately). We could probably start sending unmanned missions in 2020 with test hardware for in situ resource production, develop a decent vehicle for travelling, then land 3-4 manned missions by 2022 with overlapping areas of operation as Zubrin (and others) have proposed that way if something goes wrong with one you can travel in 1-2 days, without exiting your vehicle, to another one of the missions. You could have extra ships there waiting just to return specimens (and to offer a backup return vehicle for each team to get back up to orbit to return on an ISS-sized ship for the travel to and from Mars, not unlike in The Martian, which you could then park in Orbit around Earth or even the Moon and use as a slightly-used international space station or use it again for another trip out). You could return literal tons of specimens to earth for study, you could have human beings processing the stuff there "no this looks like a waste of time, this one is interesting, that's interesting, that's a weird feature let's drill a few samples here" not to mention just cover more area with various instruments getting all sorts of readings. sigh If only. If we could just get 5 countries to agree to contribute 1% for 2-3 years we could establish a permanent moon base and do a hardcore Mars human-exploration mission. Obviously it would take 10-20 years to pull off but an international committee could be selected (representatives from all 5 nations as well as other nations that say want to help with supporting the missions, wouldn't need to pony up nearly as much money). Call it Starfleet 0.5 and make all of the science that results from the missions 100% public, give every country the UN recognizes a certain allotment of specimens as well for display in government-sponsored museums and to allow their own citizens to study. Alas, I dream too much.

remote_phone 8y ago
I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be very exciting to see in my lifetime.

keketi 8y ago

NASA scientist: I built this space mission up from nothing. When I started, all I had was a martian lake! Other scientists said I was daft to send a rover into a lake, but I sent it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the lake, so I built a second one. That sank into the lake. I built a third one. It got stuck, fell over, and then it sank into the lake. But the fourth one floated! And that's what you're going to get, lad--the strongest rover on Mars!

joshstrange 8y ago
Love a good Monty Python reference even if most humor-only posts are discouraged on HN.
- CPLX 8y ago
  My experience has been that Monty Python and Douglas Adams references are the clear exceptions to the no humor rules on HN, though I don't suppose you'll find that written down anywhere.
  - larkeith 8y ago
    From what I've seen, a bit of reasonably mature humor seems acceptable, it's just multiple posts devoted to jokes derailing the conversation where it's frowned upon. I quite like this system, as it prevents Reddit-esque threads with the same tired memes being repeated back and forth ad nauseum, but still allows for a bit of levity to lighten the conversation and provide some mental refreshment. And yes, I realize I just called a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference mature.
    - DC-3 8y ago
      So long as you define 'mature' to mean 'in line with the average HN reader's ego and self-image', you're pretty much on point.
      - larkeith 8y ago

reaperducer 8y ago

then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert. Do you seriously believe that scientist working on billion-dollar space missions for decades just throw a dart at the wall to decide where to land their rover?

Reedx 8y ago
That's an amusing thought. Scientist A: "So... where should we send the rover, this marvel of technology?" Scientist B: "How about a random boring spot?" Scientist A: "Sounds good!" (repeat)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  That's literally how the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field photo came to be. They pointed the Hubble to the most boring spot on the sky they could find, just to see what's there.
  - lxmorj 8y ago
    I mean sure, but they can just re-aim that...
  - jibal 8y ago
    You don't understand what "literally", "random", or "boring" mean. The Hubble was pointed at an apparently "empty" area ... that was anything but random: "Wiliams suspected the billion light-year stare might capture eons of galactic evolution in a single frame and uncover some of the faintest, farthest galaxies ever seen. And to him, the potential observations were so important and so fundamental for understanding how the universe evolved that the experiment was a no-brainer, consequences be damned."
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I do understand what those words mean, and was playing off the joke made by the GP. Sorry I forgot to include the "smiley face" emoticon in my previous comment.

FranOntanaya 8y ago

#1) The need for a large ellipse of flat plains with a minimal amount of hazardous rocks/slopes. Landing accuracy is constrained by our knowledge of the Martian atmosphere. Odd features tend to be on the opposite end of the ground hazard spectrum. #2) Planetary protection. Mars his a Category V target: it has potentially habitable niches, it has an atmosphere able to carry biological contamination anywhere, and we want to return samples from it to Earth. Chances of contamination are much lower when we stay far away from water ice and active gullies. Modern landers and rovers are much more delicate and intricate than the original Vikings and we can't just bake off all the contamination. #3) Communications. Equatorial plains have a better view of the relay satellites. #4) Close up, most interesting features on Mars are still a rocky desert. The Phoenix Lander landed on top of permafrost, which was unintended as it was thought to be just another rocky desert. #5) Odd features are often complex geologically and characterizing the area near the rover may not say much about Mars nor provide useful context for future, more detailed missions. #6) Perhaps, a tiny bit of backlash from Viking's ambiguous chemical experiments. It's easier to get conclusive science and write solid papers from old, stable parts of Mars.

godber 8y ago
The #1 reason here is one of the most important. You have to be able to draw your landing ellipse in a spot that you can be confident the rover can safely land. Technological advances have shrunk the size of this ellipse considerably, check this image from JPL for comparison of past missions: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4398 https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=439... Another reason is the decisions are made ... ok, perhaps only influenced by committee ... you have to satisfy at least a significant subset of the Mars research community with your site selection. See this site for public information on the process: https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/ There are a number of other hard engineering concerns, like limits on latitude based on heating (or solar power) requirements, e.g. if you go to far north or south you have to use all your available power to heat the spacecraft and won't have any left to do science. I don't remember the exact values, but I think existing technology puts you in a +/- 60 degrees from the equator. I think it was even less than that, but I don't recall exactly.

BurningFrog 8y ago

If I understand the Science article¹ right, this lake is 1.5 km beneath the surface. That's a lot of digging when you can't go buy a new shovel. Besides the fact it was only discovered right now, that is. ¹ The two-way pulse travel time between the surface and basal echoes can be used to estimate the depth of the subsurface reflector and map the basal topography. Assuming an average signal velocity of 170 m/μs within the SPLD, close to that of water ice (20), the depth of the basal reflector is about 1.5 km below the surface

jibal 8y ago

The water's a mile down. Duh. Here's a clue for you: the people who make these decisions as to where to send rovers are intelligent. That's why their choices aren't the choices you would make.

sctb 8y ago
Personal attacks are not OK on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

andygates 8y ago

They only look like random rocky deserts. Gale was carefully selected as a site with lots of exposed layer geology. And none of the current rovers could drill a mile into ice, or get there in the first place. First drill will be InSight real soon now. OP, I think, suffers from Earthbound preconceptions of development in a field that has physics laughing back.

modzu 8y ago

for starters this lake is 2km beneath the surface of the ice cap...