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Space is much more suited for our robots, and it shows, with them doing most of the exploring. Humans can survive in space, but it is quite hostile, and astrona

Space is much more suited for our robots, and it shows, with them doing most of the exploring. Humans can survive in space, but it is quite hostile, and astronauts come home wrecked after extended stays.

Robotbeat 6y ago
This isn't really accurate. Astronauts travel longer in a couple days than a robot rover will in years. Human survival in microgravity and largely unshielded seems fine even up to a year at a time or more (and "wrecked" is pretty arguable...). On a planet with gravity and ability to provide cheap shielding, indefinite habitation is feasible.
- skybrian 6y ago
  One reason Mars rovers travel so slowly is because they can. Being able to take all the time you need is an advantage, since it reduces power consumption and risk. It's a dead planet (as far as we know) so everything they're studying will still be there. If there were an important reason to move faster, they would have built something different.
  - vimacs2 6y ago
    Another far larger reason why they travels so slowly is because of power constraints. It takes a lot of rocket fuel to deliver a significant payload to any interplanetary destination and both batteries and RTG's are prohibitively heavy at the kinds of wattage required for a pace that goes beyond that of a snail. It is difficult to overstate what a limitation this has been for research there. Even without the benefit of a vehicle, a human walking at a natural pace would over a year be able to cover a larger region than all of the previous rovers sent combined across their entire lifetimes.
    - skybrian 6y ago
      Well yes, but if they actually had the payload capacity to get a human and their supplies there, would batteries and RTG’s still be prohibitively heavy? With fewer constraints, they would have built something different.
      - vimacs2 6y ago
        That's a good point but humans would easily beat out the utility of any probe if we get to that capability. It's not just a question of mobility and manual dexterity. We do have very capable robotics. The even bigger factor here is light lag. Even if we don't bother landing humans on Mars, it would still be very useful to have some in orbit to be able to have a real time feed on the ground as opposed to anywhere between the 3 to 22 minutes (one way!) delay that it is from Earth. While our automation is getting better, it is nowhere close to matching that of a human scientist for at least several decades yet.
        skybrian 6y ago
        Yes, the lag is very limiting, but on the other hand, the scientists can go home to their families after work, rather than being away from home for many months. Or maybe work from home? That’s gotta make up for a lot. Scientific experiments often take a lot of time and patience anyway. There are some mild improvements to autonomy. Apparently this rover is somewhat more self-driving? The helicopter apparently won’t do much, but maybe on another mission it will.
- vimacs2 6y ago
  Now this is where I have to disagree. "Wrecked" is very much an indisputable description for what micro-gravity does. There are health problems that develop even with short stints of micro gravity (less than a month) including abnormalities in the brain that we still don't know the long term health implications of. Keep in mind that the majority of people who have been sent up there are astronauts who are by necessity at a level of physical fitness that's not representative to the local population. For the average person, they will cope even less well. If we want to establish a long term presence in space, we want to use rotating habitats to approximate the forces gravity places on the body. For these to not nauseate the human body, they need to be fairly large which is part of why there has not been any such stations built yet (another is scientists are obviously more interested in the effects of micro gravity than of something that already exists on Earth). Rocket launches are dropping in price sharply in recent years though and space tourism is likely to grow exponentially starting this year and out (there are already more civilian launches scheduled for this year than there has been since the space age started combined). One question which we have no idea about is what are the effects of low gravity on the human body. There have only been 24 people who have visited the moon (only half of which walked on it's surface) and none of them stayed for longer than a few days. We don't know if the Moon's gravity is more than enough or if Venus's gravity would still too little. If the program does not burn into a fiery heap from a corrupt congress and Boeing, the hope is that the Artemis program may begin answering these questions.
  - maccam94 6y ago
    > to not nauseate the human body, they need to be fairly large I completely agree with your reasons why it hasn't been explored further (sadly budget issues killed even a small experimental module for the ISS[1]). Just how large is somewhat disputed though[2, pages 20-22]. By these estimates, ~10 Starship launches (ballpark $100M-500M launch price tag) could loft a dumbbell-shaped rotating station into LEO. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Modu... 2: https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Settlement-Population-Rotation-Tolerance-Globus.pdf https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Settlement-Po...
    - 6y ago

Robotbeat 6y ago

This isn't really accurate. Astronauts travel longer in a couple days than a robot rover will in years. Human survival in microgravity and largely unshielded seems fine even up to a year at a time or more (and "wrecked" is pretty arguable...). On a planet with gravity and ability to provide cheap shielding, indefinite habitation is feasible.

skybrian 6y ago
One reason Mars rovers travel so slowly is because they can. Being able to take all the time you need is an advantage, since it reduces power consumption and risk. It's a dead planet (as far as we know) so everything they're studying will still be there. If there were an important reason to move faster, they would have built something different.
- vimacs2 6y ago
  Another far larger reason why they travels so slowly is because of power constraints. It takes a lot of rocket fuel to deliver a significant payload to any interplanetary destination and both batteries and RTG's are prohibitively heavy at the kinds of wattage required for a pace that goes beyond that of a snail. It is difficult to overstate what a limitation this has been for research there. Even without the benefit of a vehicle, a human walking at a natural pace would over a year be able to cover a larger region than all of the previous rovers sent combined across their entire lifetimes.
  - skybrian 6y ago
    Well yes, but if they actually had the payload capacity to get a human and their supplies there, would batteries and RTG’s still be prohibitively heavy? With fewer constraints, they would have built something different.
    - vimacs2 6y ago
      That's a good point but humans would easily beat out the utility of any probe if we get to that capability. It's not just a question of mobility and manual dexterity. We do have very capable robotics. The even bigger factor here is light lag. Even if we don't bother landing humans on Mars, it would still be very useful to have some in orbit to be able to have a real time feed on the ground as opposed to anywhere between the 3 to 22 minutes (one way!) delay that it is from Earth. While our automation is getting better, it is nowhere close to matching that of a human scientist for at least several decades yet.
      - skybrian 6y ago
        Yes, the lag is very limiting, but on the other hand, the scientists can go home to their families after work, rather than being away from home for many months. Or maybe work from home? That’s gotta make up for a lot. Scientific experiments often take a lot of time and patience anyway. There are some mild improvements to autonomy. Apparently this rover is somewhat more self-driving? The helicopter apparently won’t do much, but maybe on another mission it will.
vimacs2 6y ago
Now this is where I have to disagree. "Wrecked" is very much an indisputable description for what micro-gravity does. There are health problems that develop even with short stints of micro gravity (less than a month) including abnormalities in the brain that we still don't know the long term health implications of. Keep in mind that the majority of people who have been sent up there are astronauts who are by necessity at a level of physical fitness that's not representative to the local population. For the average person, they will cope even less well. If we want to establish a long term presence in space, we want to use rotating habitats to approximate the forces gravity places on the body. For these to not nauseate the human body, they need to be fairly large which is part of why there has not been any such stations built yet (another is scientists are obviously more interested in the effects of micro gravity than of something that already exists on Earth). Rocket launches are dropping in price sharply in recent years though and space tourism is likely to grow exponentially starting this year and out (there are already more civilian launches scheduled for this year than there has been since the space age started combined). One question which we have no idea about is what are the effects of low gravity on the human body. There have only been 24 people who have visited the moon (only half of which walked on it's surface) and none of them stayed for longer than a few days. We don't know if the Moon's gravity is more than enough or if Venus's gravity would still too little. If the program does not burn into a fiery heap from a corrupt congress and Boeing, the hope is that the Artemis program may begin answering these questions.
- maccam94 6y ago
  > to not nauseate the human body, they need to be fairly large I completely agree with your reasons why it hasn't been explored further (sadly budget issues killed even a small experimental module for the ISS[1]). Just how large is somewhat disputed though[2, pages 20-22]. By these estimates, ~10 Starship launches (ballpark $100M-500M launch price tag) could loft a dumbbell-shaped rotating station into LEO. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Modu... 2: https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Settlement-Population-Rotation-Tolerance-Globus.pdf https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Settlement-Po...
  - 6y ago