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More accurate is we can either go there or study it properly. A human mission to Mars would be entirely dedicated to keeping the crew alive; only remote probes

More accurate is we can either go there or study it properly. A human mission to Mars would be entirely dedicated to keeping the crew alive; only remote probes can do real exploration for the foreseeable future.

nsxwolf 3y ago
The robots we've sent thus far seem far more limited than what humans could do with their own hands and standard tools and lab equipment. We wait decades to maybe get a tiny sample of a rock.
- idlewords 3y ago
  This is a common thing that trips people up — you can't compare the capabilities of robots on Mars with what humans can do on Earth. You have to compare like with like, and a human crew on Mars would essentially be living in a Level 4 biocontainment facility and remotely operating the same kind of robots we could send to the planet autonomously. And their effective time available for work would be worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 people) does something like 35 hours/week of science. Robotic Mars exploration has made huge progress on what is a shoestring budget compared to boondoggles like Artemis or ISS. Just look at the improvement between Sojourner and Ingenuity and imagine what an adequately funded robotic exploration program could look like.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    > "worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 people) does something like 35 hours/week of science." You may have seen China launching their youngest ever crew to their space station this week, and I noticed the quotes from the three crew members: "I'm solely focused on the mission, on how to accomplish the mission successfully. I have to get prepared every minute, every second, and this was my aspiration when I joined the Air Force, and that aspiration has never changed," said Tang Hongbo, Commander. "I feel that I am fully prepared physically, mentally and technically. I am confident to complete this upcoming flight mission. In fact, to be honest, I can't wait to carry out the mission now." - Tang Shengjie, Operator. "Talking about the roles and responsibilities, I will try my best to complete the routine maintenance of the space station" - Jiang Xinlin, Operator. One of those sounds less exciting than the others. [1] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-25/China-unveils-Shenzhou-17-crew-for-space-station-mission-1obkmdpDOx2/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-25/China-unveils-Shenzhou...
hutzlibu 3y ago
Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. But in general yes, sending a swarm of robots to mars will deliver way more data for way less money, than a human mission.
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. True. For example: suffocating, starving, dying of thirst, getting sick, suffer psychologic breakdowns, having their bodies deteriorate due to low gravity,... Robots cannot do any of these things.
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    We can definitely starve a robot, just don't give it a way to recharge itself.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    No but robots on the other hand have the disadvantage of being dumb with no understanding of the situation. Also, they can "die" of thirst for energy as well. Have some unplanned thing gone wrong? Boom, all mission is lost. Happened countless times. Human are flexible. Why do you think, they sometimes need to go outside to fix something on the ISS? Not automated yet. With more advanced robots that might be possible, but currently robots can only do, what you exactly told them to do. Depending on the real parameters, that might be enough, or not. And they certainly can get "sick" and broken as well. Hardware as well as software.
    - usrbinbash 3y ago
      > robots on the other hand have the disadvantage of being dumb with no understanding of the situation Which is hardly a disadvantage given that this includes not understanding that we send them on a mission with no return, and a high likelihood of something going horribly wrong. > Also, they can "die" of thirst for energy as well. True, but that energy can be collected via a few solar panels, or provided for decades from a relatively small nuclear battery. Human supplies for a prolonged stay cannot be collected on Mars, and take up alot of space and payload capacity for even a single human. And that's not including the fact that with humans we also have to take many many extra steps to be able to bring them back. > but currently robots can only do, what you exactly told them to do Depending on the situation, that can easily become necessary for humans as well. Astronauts on missions do very few things that ground control doesn't know about or didn't order them to do / plan ahead for them to do. Yes, this includes procedures during emergencies. Given the more severe resource constraints and even slimmer margins for error, the situation won't be any different on Mars. Sorry if that sounds un-romantic, but the movies of brave buckaroos McGuyver-ing their way out of trouble on the Red Planet, relying on their wits, duct tape and tons of plot armor, isn't how this will play out in real life.
jackcviers3 3y ago
I totally disagree. Ro optic probes are awesome, but their range of activity is extremely limited. They can stay on mission for years at a time in that limited area, but the ground you can cover with several manned missions is currently greater. We've proven that we can keep humans alive indefinitely in space with the International Space Station. Expanding that practice beyond Earth's orbit can and will go a long way in advancing our understanding of our solar neighborhood. The initial human explorations of the planets will be more limited than the rover projects. But I think we are getting very close to being able to mount much more significant investigations of our closest neighbors. We just need to choose to go.
- idlewords 3y ago
  The ISS is heavily dependent on regular resupply from Earth, is teleoperated from Earth, and depends on large Earth laboratories to analyze air and water samples. We can keep humans alive "indefinitely" there in the same way we could keep people alive indefinitely on the ocean floor; it's an expensive stunt entirely reliant on support operations from the surface that does nothing to advance our ability to explore.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    The ISS is way more limited in what it can do because it exists in a vacuum, which inherently limits the size it can reasonably have, and there's zero gravity. The moon has a bit more gravity, but zero atmosphere. In contrast, there's enough atmosphere available on Mars to make it possible to build larger, pressurized structures and even use aerial flight, and more gravity than on the Moon.
    - idlewords 3y ago
      The ISS design is ultimately constrained by cost and fairing size (how big a thing you can fit on your rocket), limits that are far more stringent for the surface of Mars (where the limiting size is set by the descent stage). The fact that it's in vacuum doesn't affect its size at all. The average surface pressure on Mars is a few millibars; from an engineering perspective it's the same as building pressurized structures in vacuum. If anything, it's more difficult, since your design will have to deal with wind loads and airborne dust.
sho_hn 3y ago
By the way, I enjoyed your essay on this topic: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm I imagine it must be hard to participate in the conversation without simply pointing people at it, so I've decided to let you off the hook :-) Still occasionally refresh hoping to find the sequel ...

nsxwolf 3y ago

The robots we've sent thus far seem far more limited than what humans could do with their own hands and standard tools and lab equipment. We wait decades to maybe get a tiny sample of a rock.

idlewords 3y ago
This is a common thing that trips people up — you can't compare the capabilities of robots on Mars with what humans can do on Earth. You have to compare like with like, and a human crew on Mars would essentially be living in a Level 4 biocontainment facility and remotely operating the same kind of robots we could send to the planet autonomously. And their effective time available for work would be worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 people) does something like 35 hours/week of science. Robotic Mars exploration has made huge progress on what is a shoestring budget compared to boondoggles like Artemis or ISS. Just look at the improvement between Sojourner and Ingenuity and imagine what an adequately funded robotic exploration program could look like.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  > "worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 people) does something like 35 hours/week of science." You may have seen China launching their youngest ever crew to their space station this week, and I noticed the quotes from the three crew members: "I'm solely focused on the mission, on how to accomplish the mission successfully. I have to get prepared every minute, every second, and this was my aspiration when I joined the Air Force, and that aspiration has never changed," said Tang Hongbo, Commander. "I feel that I am fully prepared physically, mentally and technically. I am confident to complete this upcoming flight mission. In fact, to be honest, I can't wait to carry out the mission now." - Tang Shengjie, Operator. "Talking about the roles and responsibilities, I will try my best to complete the routine maintenance of the space station" - Jiang Xinlin, Operator. One of those sounds less exciting than the others. [1] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-25/China-unveils-Shenzhou-17-crew-for-space-station-mission-1obkmdpDOx2/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-25/China-unveils-Shenzhou...

hutzlibu 3y ago

Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. But in general yes, sending a swarm of robots to mars will deliver way more data for way less money, than a human mission.

usrbinbash 3y ago
> Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. True. For example: suffocating, starving, dying of thirst, getting sick, suffer psychologic breakdowns, having their bodies deteriorate due to low gravity,... Robots cannot do any of these things.
- tcmart14 3y ago
  We can definitely starve a robot, just don't give it a way to recharge itself.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  No but robots on the other hand have the disadvantage of being dumb with no understanding of the situation. Also, they can "die" of thirst for energy as well. Have some unplanned thing gone wrong? Boom, all mission is lost. Happened countless times. Human are flexible. Why do you think, they sometimes need to go outside to fix something on the ISS? Not automated yet. With more advanced robots that might be possible, but currently robots can only do, what you exactly told them to do. Depending on the real parameters, that might be enough, or not. And they certainly can get "sick" and broken as well. Hardware as well as software.
  - usrbinbash 3y ago
    > robots on the other hand have the disadvantage of being dumb with no understanding of the situation Which is hardly a disadvantage given that this includes not understanding that we send them on a mission with no return, and a high likelihood of something going horribly wrong. > Also, they can "die" of thirst for energy as well. True, but that energy can be collected via a few solar panels, or provided for decades from a relatively small nuclear battery. Human supplies for a prolonged stay cannot be collected on Mars, and take up alot of space and payload capacity for even a single human. And that's not including the fact that with humans we also have to take many many extra steps to be able to bring them back. > but currently robots can only do, what you exactly told them to do Depending on the situation, that can easily become necessary for humans as well. Astronauts on missions do very few things that ground control doesn't know about or didn't order them to do / plan ahead for them to do. Yes, this includes procedures during emergencies. Given the more severe resource constraints and even slimmer margins for error, the situation won't be any different on Mars. Sorry if that sounds un-romantic, but the movies of brave buckaroos McGuyver-ing their way out of trouble on the Red Planet, relying on their wits, duct tape and tons of plot armor, isn't how this will play out in real life.

jackcviers3 3y ago

I totally disagree. Ro optic probes are awesome, but their range of activity is extremely limited. They can stay on mission for years at a time in that limited area, but the ground you can cover with several manned missions is currently greater. We've proven that we can keep humans alive indefinitely in space with the International Space Station. Expanding that practice beyond Earth's orbit can and will go a long way in advancing our understanding of our solar neighborhood. The initial human explorations of the planets will be more limited than the rover projects. But I think we are getting very close to being able to mount much more significant investigations of our closest neighbors. We just need to choose to go.

idlewords 3y ago
The ISS is heavily dependent on regular resupply from Earth, is teleoperated from Earth, and depends on large Earth laboratories to analyze air and water samples. We can keep humans alive "indefinitely" there in the same way we could keep people alive indefinitely on the ocean floor; it's an expensive stunt entirely reliant on support operations from the surface that does nothing to advance our ability to explore.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  The ISS is way more limited in what it can do because it exists in a vacuum, which inherently limits the size it can reasonably have, and there's zero gravity. The moon has a bit more gravity, but zero atmosphere. In contrast, there's enough atmosphere available on Mars to make it possible to build larger, pressurized structures and even use aerial flight, and more gravity than on the Moon.
  - idlewords 3y ago
    The ISS design is ultimately constrained by cost and fairing size (how big a thing you can fit on your rocket), limits that are far more stringent for the surface of Mars (where the limiting size is set by the descent stage). The fact that it's in vacuum doesn't affect its size at all. The average surface pressure on Mars is a few millibars; from an engineering perspective it's the same as building pressurized structures in vacuum. If anything, it's more difficult, since your design will have to deal with wind loads and airborne dust.

sho_hn 3y ago

By the way, I enjoyed your essay on this topic: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm I imagine it must be hard to participate in the conversation without simply pointing people at it, so I've decided to let you off the hook :-) Still occasionally refresh hoping to find the sequel ...