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I think people are more enthusiastic about robots than justifiable, because they see things like the Atlas robot and imagine that's the future. In reality the f

I think people are more enthusiastic about robots than justifiable, because they see things like the Atlas robot and imagine that's the future. In reality the first man on Mars will likely discover far more in a week than we have in more than 50 years of probes, or in all probability would in 50 more. The fundamental problem is that moving parts break. This results in things like rovers being exceptionally conservative in both their design and behavior, out of necessity. For instance Curiosity's drill can only drill to about 6cm, and even then it broke after 7 limited activations, which then took a team of scientists 2 years to come up with a partially effective workaround. A guy on the scene could have fixed it a few minutes, or done just as effective 'drilling' himself with a spoon. We're literally not even scratching the surface of what Mars has to offer. Another issue is in mobility. That involves lots of moving parts. So Curiosity tends to move around at about 0.018 mph (0.03 km/h) meaning at its average speed it'd take about 2.5 days to travel a mile. But of course that's extremely risky since you really need to make sure you don't bump into a pebble or head into a low value area. So you want human feedback on a ~40 minute round trip total latency on a low bandwidth connection - while accounting for normal working hours on Earth. So in practice Curiosity has traveled a total of just a bit more than 1 mile per year. And as might be expected its tires have also, broken. So it's contemporary travel time would be even worse. Imagine trying to dig into all the secrets of Earth by traveling around at 1 mile per year, and once every few years (on average) being able to drill hopefully up to 6cm. And all of these things btw are bleeding edge relative to the past. The issue of moving parts break is just an unsolvable issue for now and for anytime in the foreseeable future. ---------- Beyond all of this, manned spaceflight is inspiring, extremely inspiring. Putting a man on the Moon inspired an entire generation to science and achievement. The same will be true with the first man on Mars. NASA tried to tap into this with their helicopter drone on Mars but people just don't really care about rovers, drones, and probes. It'd be nice to live in a world where kids don't aspire to be friggin streamers when they grow up.

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varjag 2y ago
In reality the first man on Mars will likely discover far more in a week than we have in more than 50 years of probes We can't be so sure. The probes have discovered that Mars has no channels and vegetation. That water is uncommon (then discovered that it is still there in some quantity). They found out precise atmospheric composition, mapped out all major surface features, observed the climate over decades. They discovered perchlorate toxicity of the soil for humans, something that would have been a nasty surprise to a manned crew. Am not opposed to Mars expeditions in principle, it's an exciting thought. But I just can't see humans contributing all that much on the odd few landings, with a high chance of contaminating whatever traces of life there could be.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Initial manned missions anywhere will never depend on in situ resource utilization, like soil, anywhere. And they will also assume that the environment is toxic until proven otherwise. You want redundancy to ensure that when things go wrong, which they will, it doesn't necessarily mean everybody dies. Of course though you're completely right that mapping out the rough surface and climatic patterns is critical, but that would have been capable with the first probe to Mars - launched some 53 years ago. There's just really extreme diminishing returns with probes and rovers. For instance these [1] are NASA's highlights for what Perseverance, the latest Mars rover, has achieved in 4 years. To call them uninspiring would be an understatement. [1] - https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/science-highlights/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/scie...
  - varjag 2y ago
    This is because there are increasingly fewer big discoveries to be made. No, an astronaut with a shovel won't excavate a lost Martian city, it'll be more of ISS science but in gravity and with sanitizer smelling dust.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      We haven't even realistically begun to explore Mars. There are vast underground cave systems, it's still unknown what lays under the moist surface areas, and so on endlessly. Heck, we haven't even been able to expose subsurface strata. Even searching for metal deposits will be extremely important. But these are things we can't realistically do with rovers anytime in the foreseeable future.
exitb 2y ago
Big part of the problem is how big of a hurdle it is to actually send a robot to Mars. I imagine that once we have a cheap and reliable platform to reach the surface, we could iterate the robots much faster. If you had a budget for one human mission, or a dozen new robots every two years, which one would you consider more beneficial?
whiplash451 2y ago
> In reality the first man on Mars will likely discover far more in a week than we have in more than 50 years of probes Robots will make a lot more progress in the next decades than humans will. Also, it if takes us 50 years to send humans to Mars vs sending a constant stream of improving robots now, then robots win.
devit 2y ago
This seems to be a problem with rocket/lander technology resulting in a ~900kg weight limit on Curiosity. According to Internet searches, Starship can bright 100 tons to Mars surface. A common large Earth backhoe seem to weight 20 tons, so with Starship you can just ship one and it will be capable of driving at normal speeds (up to 100km/h), excavating for meters and not centimeters, etc. (obviously it would need adaptations since diesel engines need air that isn't present on Mars and EV batteries might have problems with the cold, but it would be a similar weight magnitude)
- somenameforme 2y ago
  It's not just the lack of air. You'd need an entirely different power and hydraulic system. And any sort of maintenance, liquid changing, etc is completely out of the question. And you need to be able to ensure you can capably operate it with a ~40 minute round trip time between action and getting a response. And then you need to be able to do all of this with temperatures that regularly drop down to -60C with high radiation levels, and so on. These issues are why things that act like really poor performing go-karts with a few gizmos attached end up costing billions of dollars and taking years to develop and finally manufacture.
  - ourmandave 2y ago
    And why all the people involved cry tears of joy when they hear, "We're safe on Mars" after 7 minutes of terror.
glenstein 2y ago
>The fundamental problem is that moving parts break. So do human bodies, and the extensive life support systems they would depend on in space, which I think was the theme, more than anything, of this particular article. The only unique think I can personally add here that we're probably a lot more comfortable with high failure rates for machines than even low rates of failure for humans.
layer8 2y ago
I’m not an AGI believer, but I think the time horizon for AGI robots on Mars might actually be shorter than the one for humans on Mars.

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varjag 2y ago

In reality the first man on Mars will likely discover far more in a week than we have in more than 50 years of probes We can't be so sure. The probes have discovered that Mars has no channels and vegetation. That water is uncommon (then discovered that it is still there in some quantity). They found out precise atmospheric composition, mapped out all major surface features, observed the climate over decades. They discovered perchlorate toxicity of the soil for humans, something that would have been a nasty surprise to a manned crew. Am not opposed to Mars expeditions in principle, it's an exciting thought. But I just can't see humans contributing all that much on the odd few landings, with a high chance of contaminating whatever traces of life there could be.

somenameforme 2y ago
Initial manned missions anywhere will never depend on in situ resource utilization, like soil, anywhere. And they will also assume that the environment is toxic until proven otherwise. You want redundancy to ensure that when things go wrong, which they will, it doesn't necessarily mean everybody dies. Of course though you're completely right that mapping out the rough surface and climatic patterns is critical, but that would have been capable with the first probe to Mars - launched some 53 years ago. There's just really extreme diminishing returns with probes and rovers. For instance these [1] are NASA's highlights for what Perseverance, the latest Mars rover, has achieved in 4 years. To call them uninspiring would be an understatement. [1] - https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/science-highlights/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/scie...
- varjag 2y ago
  This is because there are increasingly fewer big discoveries to be made. No, an astronaut with a shovel won't excavate a lost Martian city, it'll be more of ISS science but in gravity and with sanitizer smelling dust.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    We haven't even realistically begun to explore Mars. There are vast underground cave systems, it's still unknown what lays under the moist surface areas, and so on endlessly. Heck, we haven't even been able to expose subsurface strata. Even searching for metal deposits will be extremely important. But these are things we can't realistically do with rovers anytime in the foreseeable future.

exitb 2y ago

Big part of the problem is how big of a hurdle it is to actually send a robot to Mars. I imagine that once we have a cheap and reliable platform to reach the surface, we could iterate the robots much faster. If you had a budget for one human mission, or a dozen new robots every two years, which one would you consider more beneficial?

whiplash451 2y ago

> In reality the first man on Mars will likely discover far more in a week than we have in more than 50 years of probes Robots will make a lot more progress in the next decades than humans will. Also, it if takes us 50 years to send humans to Mars vs sending a constant stream of improving robots now, then robots win.

devit 2y ago

This seems to be a problem with rocket/lander technology resulting in a ~900kg weight limit on Curiosity. According to Internet searches, Starship can bright 100 tons to Mars surface. A common large Earth backhoe seem to weight 20 tons, so with Starship you can just ship one and it will be capable of driving at normal speeds (up to 100km/h), excavating for meters and not centimeters, etc. (obviously it would need adaptations since diesel engines need air that isn't present on Mars and EV batteries might have problems with the cold, but it would be a similar weight magnitude)

somenameforme 2y ago
It's not just the lack of air. You'd need an entirely different power and hydraulic system. And any sort of maintenance, liquid changing, etc is completely out of the question. And you need to be able to ensure you can capably operate it with a ~40 minute round trip time between action and getting a response. And then you need to be able to do all of this with temperatures that regularly drop down to -60C with high radiation levels, and so on. These issues are why things that act like really poor performing go-karts with a few gizmos attached end up costing billions of dollars and taking years to develop and finally manufacture.
- ourmandave 2y ago
  And why all the people involved cry tears of joy when they hear, "We're safe on Mars" after 7 minutes of terror.

glenstein 2y ago

>The fundamental problem is that moving parts break. So do human bodies, and the extensive life support systems they would depend on in space, which I think was the theme, more than anything, of this particular article. The only unique think I can personally add here that we're probably a lot more comfortable with high failure rates for machines than even low rates of failure for humans.

layer8 2y ago

I’m not an AGI believer, but I think the time horizon for AGI robots on Mars might actually be shorter than the one for humans on Mars.