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> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 1

> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on Mars much, much longer than a human mission would (Curiosity is going on 8 years). Human space exploration is a solution in search of a problem. People don't seem to be rationally looking for the best way to get certain information from Mars or for the best sources of materials that could be obtained with future technology (there are many overlooked terrestrial ones) and soberly deciding that astronauts are the best answer. They seem to start out with the goal of defending human space exploration, and then searching for problems to try to justify it.

jeffdavis 6y ago
People who feel passionately about something impractical can get pretty creative trying to justify their passion. The creativity is the output here -- not the stated goal.
trentdk 6y ago
I appreciate your thoughts, but they are sad thoughts to me. Isn’t there something about “exploration” that seems important to a non-neglible amount of humans? I don’t want everything we do to serve the rat race we’re in. Let’s loose our money on something amazing.
- kiba 6y ago
  We send humans into space because we want to, science and engineering benefits are side rewards.
- Chathamization 6y ago
  Sure, as a society we do some things purely for emotional reasons. But we should be honest about that - we shouldn't pretend that the reason we're building the Washington monument is because of it's potential use as a grain silo. There's a lot more to exploration than space exploration (I think exploring something like the human brain will end up having a greater emotional and practical impact myself). But even if we just look at space exploration, we don't really get a lot from human space flight. As I said, in situations where it's possible to use human astronauts, robots seem like they would be more effective. And for most of the places in our solar system, we simply won't be able to use humans at all anytime soon. The missions to, say, Europa are going to be done by robots. Still, many people, including myself, enjoyed watching the launch. Maybe something like this is more analagous to a cathedral or memorial.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Light lag is one reason for humans to go. Until we crack robotics and AI to the point science can do itself (which I doubt it'll happen in the next 30-50 years), we'll still need humans micromanaging the robots remotely, and it's much easier to do with HD video streams and with millisecond RTT when you're on a science ship orbiting the body in question, vs. using occasional photos that take hours to send, on top of 3-22 minutes of lag, as we have now with Mars. Not to mention, a probe or rover sent far away all have to go through one of the few DSNs, that can only do so much and so fast[0], and are generally scarce services. Forget about e.g. running 20 simultaneous robotic missions in different areas of Mars. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network#Current_signal_processing_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network#Curren...
    - stickfigure 6y ago
      which I doubt it'll happen in the next 30-50 years I have to ask, why the rush? Why not wait 30-50 years until the robots are smart enough? Or we can bioengineer humans that are better adapted to that harsh environment? This feels a bit like a real time strategy game, where someone at the start of the game wants to spend all their resources on big expensive research projects near the end of the tech tree. You're always better off building up the economy so you have enough surplus to tackle those expensive items later.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        This is building the relevant aspects of the economy. Sitting on our butts, playing zero-sum games to squeeze more money out of each other with ads and products increasingly optimized to be as fragile as possible... that isn't getting us anywhere. (Note that RTS economy is based around acquiring new resources. You can't make minerals by advertising, speculating, or even having your soldiers trade with each other. There are games that try to simulate trade, e.g. Stellaris, but even there it behaves more like a mine than like an economy.) (Also: the rush is because our lifespans are finite, and I'd like to at least see some of that before I die.)
- thu2111 6y ago
  Our notion of exploration is very much tied to ancient history and in particular exploring places that we could not otherwise learn anything about other than by going there. The problem with space exploration is that we already have explored it to a huge degree just by using telescopes and remote probes. It's not entirely clear what humans could learn by going to somewhere like Mars, that couldn't otherwise be learned using satellites, robots and telescopes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
usefulcat 6y ago
Perhaps ironically, advances in technology have generally served to make human space exploration more expensive, not less expensive, when compared to the alternative (unmanned/robotic exploration).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jhgb 6y ago
The estimate I've seen was that fourteen years of work of Opportunity would have been two weeks for a geologist in a Mars buggy. So 52x is probably very pessimistic.
kenneth 6y ago
We (well, Europeans) explored the earth when it looked quite similar to space exploration today. Year-long journeys with very little chance of survival, and no idea what was waiting on the other side. We ended up making some amazing discoveries (the new worlds) that turned out to be of vast economical benefits. Who says space exploration can't be similar. (Yes, there is a lot of controversy over colonialism that I won't get into here.)
- adrianN 6y ago
  The good thing about space is that you don't have to worry about the native people.
  - _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
    Well...until you do...
  - 1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
    Let's hope someone with a similar view-point doesn't discover Earth, then! :D Jokes aside, you are right, of course. We don't have to worry about environmental effects or native populations in the same way when dealing with off-World colonies on sterile worlds. That alone should provide some incentive for commercial exploitation of things like asteroids; at some point Earth will either run out of certain elements, or other factors will result in certain elements being more easily obtainable off-world.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      It doesn't matter. The speed of light is too slow for anyone out there to get here in a reasonable amount of time. Even if the universe is densely populated with aliens more knowledgeable than us odds are none are close enough to establish useful communication. That is by the time they realize they know more than us and that knowledge arrives we probably will have discovered it in on our own. (that leaves room to have alien art on the wall but nothing else useful)
- burntoutfire 6y ago
BobbyJo 6y ago
Humans are capable of doing things machines aren't. If you want some of those things done on Mars, there isn't much of a choice.
1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
There are some latency involved when it comes to interplanetary exploration, not to mention communication between planets. That alone gives human exploration a certain advantage in some cases. I suspect the majority of future exploration will stay robotic though. There are going to be some high-profile missions, but once we start looking more at asteroids and other targets far out in the solar system, then robots will continue to do the bulk of the work. As far as I am concerned, the major breakthrough here is the reusability that SpaceX is bringing into the table. If we can lower prices of sending stuff to outer space, then we'll be able to do so much more with current space exploration budgets.
pharke 6y ago
My problem with this framing of the argument is that it's reasoned from the position of "If we want to do X then how much do we have to spend to make it happen". It's very much a "moonshot" style of thinking where you are only considering doing it once, it's not sustainable and it's not scalable. What we need to be asking is "If we want to do X what systems do we need to put in place so that X is trivial". Then the goal becomes to build sustainable and profitable industries that make everything leading up to X easier, cheaper, safer, and more accessible to everyone. It's not as direct of a route but it has a compounding effect built into it that works for you and eventually does all the work to keep X going. This is exactly what SpaceX is doing with the eventual goal of putting people on Mars. They've been finding and solving problems the whole time but the ultimate problem is that we still have all of our eggs in one basket and we're one asteroid, volcano, war, or pandemic away from civilizational collapse. Creating a self-sustaining population off planet is the only way to solve that problem.

jeffdavis 6y ago

People who feel passionately about something impractical can get pretty creative trying to justify their passion. The creativity is the output here -- not the stated goal.

trentdk 6y ago

I appreciate your thoughts, but they are sad thoughts to me. Isn’t there something about “exploration” that seems important to a non-neglible amount of humans? I don’t want everything we do to serve the rat race we’re in. Let’s loose our money on something amazing.

kiba 6y ago
We send humans into space because we want to, science and engineering benefits are side rewards.
Chathamization 6y ago
Sure, as a society we do some things purely for emotional reasons. But we should be honest about that - we shouldn't pretend that the reason we're building the Washington monument is because of it's potential use as a grain silo. There's a lot more to exploration than space exploration (I think exploring something like the human brain will end up having a greater emotional and practical impact myself). But even if we just look at space exploration, we don't really get a lot from human space flight. As I said, in situations where it's possible to use human astronauts, robots seem like they would be more effective. And for most of the places in our solar system, we simply won't be able to use humans at all anytime soon. The missions to, say, Europa are going to be done by robots. Still, many people, including myself, enjoyed watching the launch. Maybe something like this is more analagous to a cathedral or memorial.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Light lag is one reason for humans to go. Until we crack robotics and AI to the point science can do itself (which I doubt it'll happen in the next 30-50 years), we'll still need humans micromanaging the robots remotely, and it's much easier to do with HD video streams and with millisecond RTT when you're on a science ship orbiting the body in question, vs. using occasional photos that take hours to send, on top of 3-22 minutes of lag, as we have now with Mars. Not to mention, a probe or rover sent far away all have to go through one of the few DSNs, that can only do so much and so fast[0], and are generally scarce services. Forget about e.g. running 20 simultaneous robotic missions in different areas of Mars. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network#Current_signal_processing_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network#Curren...
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    which I doubt it'll happen in the next 30-50 years I have to ask, why the rush? Why not wait 30-50 years until the robots are smart enough? Or we can bioengineer humans that are better adapted to that harsh environment? This feels a bit like a real time strategy game, where someone at the start of the game wants to spend all their resources on big expensive research projects near the end of the tech tree. You're always better off building up the economy so you have enough surplus to tackle those expensive items later.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      This is building the relevant aspects of the economy. Sitting on our butts, playing zero-sum games to squeeze more money out of each other with ads and products increasingly optimized to be as fragile as possible... that isn't getting us anywhere. (Note that RTS economy is based around acquiring new resources. You can't make minerals by advertising, speculating, or even having your soldiers trade with each other. There are games that try to simulate trade, e.g. Stellaris, but even there it behaves more like a mine than like an economy.) (Also: the rush is because our lifespans are finite, and I'd like to at least see some of that before I die.)
thu2111 6y ago
Our notion of exploration is very much tied to ancient history and in particular exploring places that we could not otherwise learn anything about other than by going there. The problem with space exploration is that we already have explored it to a huge degree just by using telescopes and remote probes. It's not entirely clear what humans could learn by going to somewhere like Mars, that couldn't otherwise be learned using satellites, robots and telescopes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

usefulcat 6y ago

Perhaps ironically, advances in technology have generally served to make human space exploration more expensive, not less expensive, when compared to the alternative (unmanned/robotic exploration).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jhgb 6y ago

The estimate I've seen was that fourteen years of work of Opportunity would have been two weeks for a geologist in a Mars buggy. So 52x is probably very pessimistic.

kenneth 6y ago

We (well, Europeans) explored the earth when it looked quite similar to space exploration today. Year-long journeys with very little chance of survival, and no idea what was waiting on the other side. We ended up making some amazing discoveries (the new worlds) that turned out to be of vast economical benefits. Who says space exploration can't be similar. (Yes, there is a lot of controversy over colonialism that I won't get into here.)

adrianN 6y ago
The good thing about space is that you don't have to worry about the native people.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  Well...until you do...
- 1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
  Let's hope someone with a similar view-point doesn't discover Earth, then! :D Jokes aside, you are right, of course. We don't have to worry about environmental effects or native populations in the same way when dealing with off-World colonies on sterile worlds. That alone should provide some incentive for commercial exploitation of things like asteroids; at some point Earth will either run out of certain elements, or other factors will result in certain elements being more easily obtainable off-world.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    It doesn't matter. The speed of light is too slow for anyone out there to get here in a reasonable amount of time. Even if the universe is densely populated with aliens more knowledgeable than us odds are none are close enough to establish useful communication. That is by the time they realize they know more than us and that knowledge arrives we probably will have discovered it in on our own. (that leaves room to have alien art on the wall but nothing else useful)
burntoutfire 6y ago

BobbyJo 6y ago

Humans are capable of doing things machines aren't. If you want some of those things done on Mars, there isn't much of a choice.

1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago

There are some latency involved when it comes to interplanetary exploration, not to mention communication between planets. That alone gives human exploration a certain advantage in some cases. I suspect the majority of future exploration will stay robotic though. There are going to be some high-profile missions, but once we start looking more at asteroids and other targets far out in the solar system, then robots will continue to do the bulk of the work. As far as I am concerned, the major breakthrough here is the reusability that SpaceX is bringing into the table. If we can lower prices of sending stuff to outer space, then we'll be able to do so much more with current space exploration budgets.

pharke 6y ago

My problem with this framing of the argument is that it's reasoned from the position of "If we want to do X then how much do we have to spend to make it happen". It's very much a "moonshot" style of thinking where you are only considering doing it once, it's not sustainable and it's not scalable. What we need to be asking is "If we want to do X what systems do we need to put in place so that X is trivial". Then the goal becomes to build sustainable and profitable industries that make everything leading up to X easier, cheaper, safer, and more accessible to everyone. It's not as direct of a route but it has a compounding effect built into it that works for you and eventually does all the work to keep X going. This is exactly what SpaceX is doing with the eventual goal of putting people on Mars. They've been finding and solving problems the whole time but the ultimate problem is that we still have all of our eggs in one basket and we're one asteroid, volcano, war, or pandemic away from civilizational collapse. Creating a self-sustaining population off planet is the only way to solve that problem.