3 ms·
Constructing a spacecraft capable of sustaining a human being for multiple years, landing them with all necessary support equipment, building an ISRU plant for
by tridentlead 6y ago
Constructing a spacecraft capable of sustaining a human being for multiple years, landing them with all necessary support equipment, building an ISRU plant for which solid designs do not currently exist, and for which even the principles are still very much the subject of research, launching and returning is much, much more complicated than sending an unmanned spacecraft or two to recover a sample. This is really not too far off from what JAXA is already doing with Hayabusa 2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2
- valuearb 6y agoMultiple rounds of aerobraking and landings in deep gravity wells is vastly different than Hayabusa 2. And Mars is eminently survivable for humans, far better than the moon for example. Starship makes landing a few hundred tons of food, supplies and equipment before the first crews relatively easy. ISRU experiments on earth have proven the concepts already. We can figure out ISRU details along the way, even if it takes a few extra synods and delivering more equipment. we will be getting far more science out of a human landing than robots can ever provide. In fact, the first humans on Mars will explore more of it in a few weeks than 50 years of rovers have done. The first human to take a single shovel full of Mars will have have dug deeper than than the Insight orbit has done in a year of trying.
- valuearb 6y agoBTW: The budget for this robotic Mars dirt retrieval mission is $7B. Based on NASAs track record on large projects, it’s unlikely to be less than double that. Elon Musk has estimated the cost of landing the first round of humans on Maes (probably over a hundred) at $10B total. Now Elon is a huge optimist on schedules, but on budgets he’s been pretty accurate.