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It's really amazing work, and the knowledge and skills NASA and collaborators learned from doing that are invaluable. I honestly think for the next decade or t

It's really amazing work, and the knowledge and skills NASA and collaborators learned from doing that are invaluable. I honestly think for the next decade or two that NASA should double down on propulsion science, energy science, and robotics. Instead of trying to send a few men and biospheres to Mars, lets send a greater quantity of increasingly advanced robots/AI on increasingly challenging missions to study Mars and the Asteroid Belt. Use NASA's limited budget to advance theoretical and applied AI, robotics, and new propulsion/energy generation technologies for industrial use in space, with the ultimate goal of creating a fully robotic space mining and refining industry and supply chain back to Earth. Keep the ISS of course, as a relatively less expensive way of studying the effects of low-G on the human body, space agriculture, and human sustainability in space. But for anything beyond Earth orbit, let robots prepare the way for humanity. If NASA had an unlimited budget, then by all means do it all. But unfortunately that's not the reality right now. The robotic missions of the last several decades, from Mars Rovers, to Hubble, to probes of asteroids and the outer planets, have had such an amazing track record and ROI that they're worth doubling down on for the foreseeable future. The rapid advance of both AI and robotics is also expanding the mission capabilities of this technology, and its worth pushing that envelope hard for another decade or two. Finally, given limited budgets, we can send a greater quantity of robotic missions than we can manned missions. Quantity is an important factor in quality, as I think the tech world has learned in the last decade or two.

ohazi 6y ago
Most of the robotics expertise that you're attributing to NASA is actually JPL. JPL may technically be a NASA lab, but it has been managed by Caltech since 1958, unlike every other NASA center. JPL employees work for Caltech, not NASA. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about/history.php https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about/history.php
- pauldino 6y ago
  JPL has been managed by Caltech for NASA since 1958, but JPL actually predates the formation of NASA (and has always been managed by Caltech).
blackrock 6y ago
Yawn.. robots are boring. Edit: Look. Robots are not boring. Ok. But the fact of the matter, is that they just don’t excite us the same way as sending a human to explore it ourselves.
- jHackenthal 6y ago
  There’s no fun like human disaster
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  >But the fact of the matter, is that they just don’t excite us the same way as sending a human to explore it ourselves. Yeah, I don't think sending humans excites enough people anymore to generate the broad political support required for doing that. Over the past ~20yrs, America has cannibalized our middle class to enrich the 1%. Expensive, manned Mars missions are an absurd luxury to the many who can't afford healthcare, whose small business has gone bankrupt due to COVID, or has to wait in food lines to feed their family. It's quite possibly the case now that manned Mars missions will have to be handled by the private sector, which as someone above commented, is already working towards that.
dmurray 6y ago
> If NASA had an unlimited budget, then by all means do it all. But unfortunately that's not the reality right now. It doesn't feel like NASA has a budget at all. Sure, they probably know how much discretionary cash they can spend this year, but for large projects, don't they pitch them to Congress and get them approved or denied? Congress has effectively an unlimited budget, so if NASA have multiple exciting ideas, they "just" have to sell them each to the real bosses.
- bumby 6y ago
  The last few iterations, Congress has actually given them more budget than they asked for
nickik 6y ago
> Keep the ISS of course, as a relatively less expensive way of studying the effects of low-G on the human body The ISS is actually very expensive. > If NASA had an unlimited budget, then by all means do it all. NASA is not free to decide these things by themselves. It is true that the robotic side has been more successful, but that is simply because human spaceflight has been totally mismanaged for the last 50 years. It is not inherently the case. The new Mars rover was about as expensive as the complete development of Orbital human flight at SpaceX. And for that SpaceX was also able to finish the most advanced reusable rocket and make it human rated. Actually getting humans onto Mars together with robots to work locally will actually produce a much bigger bang for the buck. Having local labs, local control of robots, human scientists directly on sight. It would also advanced the technology for transportation, agriculture, medicine and so on. Specially with SpaceX already development the technology need to build a base on Mars, not taking advantage of it and only sending rovers out there, is in my opinion a bad policy. Its both bad from a scientific and from a political view. Endlessly doing low-G research and getting more details on Marsian stones, is simply not on the same level as human permanently occupying Mars. And a Mars base is in my opinion not outside of the current budget if it were spent in a smarter way.
- bumby 6y ago
  >not taking advantage of it and only sending rovers out there, is in my opinion a bad policy I wonder much of this choice is due to political risk. A policy to send humans to Mars would have to span multiple administrations and risk being put on the chopping block due to multiple re-prioritizations. Maybe they think a less optimal sure bet is better?
  - nickik 6y ago
    Its not as simple. The political transitions are part of it. However the politics of NASA are complicated. One of the major issues is simply that NASA for human-space flight could in the past not build on top of commercial rockets and NASA has been terrible at developing launch vehicles. Simply put, Marshall Space flight center, Boeing and Alabama is where the money is going. There simply is no accountability. The money just keeps flowing there year after year no matter what is achieved or not achieved. No matter if the president changes or not, no matter if you are going to Moon, Mars or an Asteroid. Before that the Shuttle was all consuming program that limited you to LEO, partly because you have very little budget left over as long as you had Shuttle operating. This is likely not gone change unless there are some real power shifts in congress.

ohazi 6y ago

Most of the robotics expertise that you're attributing to NASA is actually JPL. JPL may technically be a NASA lab, but it has been managed by Caltech since 1958, unlike every other NASA center. JPL employees work for Caltech, not NASA. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about/history.php https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about/history.php

pauldino 6y ago
JPL has been managed by Caltech for NASA since 1958, but JPL actually predates the formation of NASA (and has always been managed by Caltech).

blackrock 6y ago

Yawn.. robots are boring. Edit: Look. Robots are not boring. Ok. But the fact of the matter, is that they just don’t excite us the same way as sending a human to explore it ourselves.

jHackenthal 6y ago
There’s no fun like human disaster
SkyMarshal 6y ago
>But the fact of the matter, is that they just don’t excite us the same way as sending a human to explore it ourselves. Yeah, I don't think sending humans excites enough people anymore to generate the broad political support required for doing that. Over the past ~20yrs, America has cannibalized our middle class to enrich the 1%. Expensive, manned Mars missions are an absurd luxury to the many who can't afford healthcare, whose small business has gone bankrupt due to COVID, or has to wait in food lines to feed their family. It's quite possibly the case now that manned Mars missions will have to be handled by the private sector, which as someone above commented, is already working towards that.

dmurray 6y ago

> If NASA had an unlimited budget, then by all means do it all. But unfortunately that's not the reality right now. It doesn't feel like NASA has a budget at all. Sure, they probably know how much discretionary cash they can spend this year, but for large projects, don't they pitch them to Congress and get them approved or denied? Congress has effectively an unlimited budget, so if NASA have multiple exciting ideas, they "just" have to sell them each to the real bosses.

bumby 6y ago
The last few iterations, Congress has actually given them more budget than they asked for

nickik 6y ago

> Keep the ISS of course, as a relatively less expensive way of studying the effects of low-G on the human body The ISS is actually very expensive. > If NASA had an unlimited budget, then by all means do it all. NASA is not free to decide these things by themselves. It is true that the robotic side has been more successful, but that is simply because human spaceflight has been totally mismanaged for the last 50 years. It is not inherently the case. The new Mars rover was about as expensive as the complete development of Orbital human flight at SpaceX. And for that SpaceX was also able to finish the most advanced reusable rocket and make it human rated. Actually getting humans onto Mars together with robots to work locally will actually produce a much bigger bang for the buck. Having local labs, local control of robots, human scientists directly on sight. It would also advanced the technology for transportation, agriculture, medicine and so on. Specially with SpaceX already development the technology need to build a base on Mars, not taking advantage of it and only sending rovers out there, is in my opinion a bad policy. Its both bad from a scientific and from a political view. Endlessly doing low-G research and getting more details on Marsian stones, is simply not on the same level as human permanently occupying Mars. And a Mars base is in my opinion not outside of the current budget if it were spent in a smarter way.

bumby 6y ago
>not taking advantage of it and only sending rovers out there, is in my opinion a bad policy I wonder much of this choice is due to political risk. A policy to send humans to Mars would have to span multiple administrations and risk being put on the chopping block due to multiple re-prioritizations. Maybe they think a less optimal sure bet is better?
- nickik 6y ago
  Its not as simple. The political transitions are part of it. However the politics of NASA are complicated. One of the major issues is simply that NASA for human-space flight could in the past not build on top of commercial rockets and NASA has been terrible at developing launch vehicles. Simply put, Marshall Space flight center, Boeing and Alabama is where the money is going. There simply is no accountability. The money just keeps flowing there year after year no matter what is achieved or not achieved. No matter if the president changes or not, no matter if you are going to Moon, Mars or an Asteroid. Before that the Shuttle was all consuming program that limited you to LEO, partly because you have very little budget left over as long as you had Shuttle operating. This is likely not gone change unless there are some real power shifts in congress.