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I hate to be that guy, again, but I still feel like I haven't seen a very clear explanation of why this is a good idea. It'd be a great tourism experience, but

by Cushman 14y ago

I hate to be that guy, again, but I still feel like I haven't seen a very clear explanation of why this is a good idea. It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity? Especially in light of Curiosity, why is it assumed that the logical next step after sending a robotic lab is to send a person, rather than sending a few dozen more robots? For a fraction of the cost of sustaining human life on another planet, we could construct a huge automated research complex capable of doing everything a human would want to do -- even golf -- and that would be valuable research toward developing the fully-autonomous robotic scientists which are definitely the only way we're going to have real long-term exploration of the outer solar system and beyond. Basically, I can understand why someone might want to go to Mars, but I'm not sure why someone else would want to send them.

sktrdie 14y ago
Consider the frailty of our planet. The speck of dust that it is compared to the depths of the universe. If we don't start colonizing other planets, and gain the experience on how to do so, we'll essentially become extinct quite rapidly. Forget the robots. We need the experience in sending actual humans there. This has to happen sooner or later if we want to ensure that our race lives on, after our planet becomes inhabitable. With all this in mind, it's better to do this sooner rather than later. And why not start in 12-15 years? I hope you can see the value now.
- draggnar 14y ago
  The experience is not only necessary for survival, but also will lead to new opportunities. Once there is a market for interplanetary transport, experience will lead to innovations that we can't think of today. One huge example that is already being explored is asteroid mining. Add the business case to the point you made about our species becoming more resilient by turning multi-planetary, and there the case for Mars is strong.
acomar 14y ago
> It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity? Survival. We will go extinct at some point if we stay on Earth. The more spread out we are, the less likely any single catastrophe is to wipe out the entire race. In the more near term... Do we really need more motivation than "because it's there"?
- Cushman 14y ago
  Yes, but not in the next twenty years. Or the next hundred years. Or the next thousand years. A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus could kill all the humans on Mars. The Earth is the perfect place for humans to live, out of the entire universe. If we can't figure out how to survive long-term on this planet, that's why we'll go extinct. "Because it's there" is a great reason for an explorer to want to go somewhere. But that doesn't automatically have value for the future of humanity.
  - almost_usual 14y ago
    > A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus could kill all the humans on Mars. Terraforming Mars would prevent a 'puncture' or 'short circuit' from wiping out its population. The goal isn't to only spread human life but all of life.
    - Cushman 14y ago
      Terraforming Mars is a great long-term goal. But I don't see how putting a human being on the surface of the planet gets us there any faster.
      - cryptoz 14y ago
        You don't? That assumption is extremely obvious to me. Most people don't care about Mars right now - in fact, most Americans are against space travel because they think it's expensive. So, terraforming Mars is seen by people (including those with money) as ridiculous. But if SpaceX puts a team on Mars for less money than, say, making a blockbuster film, an obvious result is massive increase in space travel, colonization, etc. Progress is progress. Choosing to make progress accelerates the process, especially when the progress we're talking about would be the first humans on another planet (and the first known life on Mars).
Tuna-Fish 14y ago
Elon Musk does not want to just send someone over on a holiday -- the stated goal of SpaceX is to put a permanent, self-sufficient colony of people on Mars.
- Cushman 14y ago
  So my proposal is this: Spend a lot less money building a much larger, much more durable self-sufficient colony of robots. Once that's going good and strong, maybe we program the robots to produce the oxygen and water and complex organic molecules and radioactive shielding we need in a reliable enough way that it's worth sending people. If that all doesn't quite work out, well, we still got a self-sufficient colony of robots.
- roc 14y ago
  We can't even put a self-sufficient colony of people in Antarctica, where we don't have to worry about the lack of atmosphere or radiation shielding.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    No, we haven't attempted to put a self-sufficient colony of people in Antarctica. Which is not at all the same as "we can't".
    - roc 14y ago
      Right. We attempted to put a self-sufficient colony in the American Southwest and still failed. Surely it's fair to extrapolate our inability to succeed there into an inability to succeed in a far more harsh and remote locale. Keep in mind that this isn't to say we could never succeed. Just that this is a very, very difficult problem that we don't even talk about seriously today, let alone study and pursue. Yet everyone just assumes it's somehow trivial and automatic once we decide to try.
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        Assuming you're talking about Biosphere 2, do you know why it didn't succeed? What problem did it have that is unsolvable?
derrida 14y ago
> what's the ultimate value to humanity? What if we found a bacteria that would spread on Mars and create an atmosphere? There are so many questions like that. Science for science sake, art for arts, because dammit, we are alive!
- Kilimanjaro 14y ago
  Why don't we better terraform the sahara desert or the death valley? Greenland? Australia's outback? Antarctica? Honest question.
  - tocomment 14y ago
    Conservation I guess. And cheap existing land.
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      Simpler explanation: Because we can't. As Neil Tyson says, we can't even accurately predict the weather a week down the road, you want to terraform something?
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        Of course, he also says that humans have had a preventable effect on Earth's climate.
      - ceejayoz 14y ago
        > As Neil Tyson says, we can't even accurately predict the weather a week down the road, you want to terraform something? Did he really say that? I'd think NDT would be acutely aware of the difference between short-term weather and long-term climate, given that he gets to fight climate change denialists using that absurd misunderstanding on a regular basis.
        StavrosK 14y ago
        He is, and he did: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38va48?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degras...
waterlesscloud 14y ago
"For a fraction of the cost of sustaining human life on another planet, we could construct a huge automated research complex capable of doing everything a human would want to do" No, we couldn't. It's a common refrain, but there's no evidence of it. Where on Earth are these robots that are as productive as humans? They simply do not exist.
- accountoftheday 14y ago
  Humans on Earth are (still) cheaper than robots for almost any task.
- aasarava 14y ago
  You'll find those productive robots in every modern factory in the world, building everything from cars to candy more efficiently than humans.
  - ballooney 14y ago
    > You'll find those productive robots in every modern factory in the world, building everything from cars to candy more efficiently than humans. Doing one pre-programmed thing, and they they can't automatically adjust the feed rate as the drill bit wears down, or pick up the bit they drop when their suction pump jams, or change their own electrodes when their spot weld quality drops. Automated factories take vast human effort to set up and are extraordinarily sensitive (i.e. prone to breaking) to unexpected inputs or deviations in operating environments. This is not a good line of reasoning when arguing for their suitability for exploring an unknown planet, though I appreciate you might just be specifically addressing your parent's point.
allenp 14y ago
I think the best reason for wanting to do this is that the rover's top speed is around 2in / second, it requires significant man power on the earth to drive/control, and they have a limited toolset with few ways to augment what it starts with. Over the course of 6 years the two rovers had only covered 13 miles collectively. All of these things can be overcome with time, money, science, engineering, etc. In the short term, for a relatively large amount of money -OR- the acceptance of deaths, we can put a human on that same surface who can cover miles per day, autonomously explore and discover, use new tools as soon as they arrive, can deal with unexpected circumstances, and make suggestions about what would be useful to have to do more science/work. All that said - it is hard issue and I think it more likely a commercial effort will send a human before the government.
Dn_Ab 14y ago
Ah what is the value to humanity? What is the value to humanity of a stadium, of the Olympics, of a monument, of a great piece of art or a beautiful performance? What is the value to humanity of entertaining blockbuster movies, fun video games, comics and science fiction? What is the value to humanity of inspiration? Right now science is held almost in contempt, all its wonders are subtle - appreciable only to the trained mind. Such an accomplishment would be large and obvious. The peripheral effect in inspiring young minds cannot be overestimated. One of those may one day go on to develop powerful DNA repair mechanisms because their imagination was captured at a young age by space travel and wanted to do something useful to that. Let alone the boon to cancers. They want to travel to and live on another planet with low gravity and scant atmosphere. How could they possibly do that without spurring the invention of a lot of amazing things as a side-effect? I've mentioned my hypothesis that it would have positive effects on geopolitics by making it possible to view Earth as a locality. But. Most of all it would at once be an incredible piece of science and the greatest piece of art ever created. For what is art but a celebration of humanity and human ability?
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  The medical field is replete with examples of clinically-beneficial products that would never have existed without fundamental 'basic science' research that was, at one point, 'frivolous' and without a clear benefit.
jessriedel 14y ago
Sending humans is an intrinsic goal, worth accomplishing for itself. It's like producing a great work of art. (You're wrong to think that the robotic missions can be justified instrumentally. The science being done by Curiosity is kinda interesting, but it's hardly $2.5 billion worth of interesting. We could do much more important science on Earth with that money.)
Goronmon 14y ago
Especially in light of Curiosity, why is it assumed that the logical next step after sending a robotic lab is to send a person, rather than sending a few dozen more robots? Why not both? Humans are infinitely more versatile than a robot, unless of course, you build the robotic equivalent of a human being.
Reltair 14y ago
"It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity?" Developing the future technology to accomplish this feat would be worth it already. Furthermore, being the first company/country to send a human to Mars would be an enormous achievement. The number of people this would inspire to pursue this field in our current and future generations is not something that can be measured.
jcfrei 14y ago
the best reason I can come up with is meteors. and although taking the michael bay movie armageddon as a reference seems kinda unscientific, it's still an actual (although quite unlikely) threat. I think of mars as a backup in case something terrible happens to earth. Btw. the video in the report mentions Elon Musk designing the rocket himself, I assume that's BS?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
"It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity?" If you realize that our destiny on this planet is to be wiped out then it seems prudent to be able to leave it and live elsewhere nearby. Sure there have been 5 mass extinctions and hundreds of smaller ones, not to mention almost doing ourselves in in the 60's over Cuba or perhaps in future due to climate change.
Florin_Andrei 14y ago
> what's the ultimate value to humanity? Humanity is like a software that's currently sitting on a single hard-drive. There is no backup. The clock is ticking.

by Cushman 14y ago

sktrdie 14y ago

Consider the frailty of our planet. The speck of dust that it is compared to the depths of the universe. If we don't start colonizing other planets, and gain the experience on how to do so, we'll essentially become extinct quite rapidly. Forget the robots. We need the experience in sending actual humans there. This has to happen sooner or later if we want to ensure that our race lives on, after our planet becomes inhabitable. With all this in mind, it's better to do this sooner rather than later. And why not start in 12-15 years? I hope you can see the value now.

draggnar 14y ago
The experience is not only necessary for survival, but also will lead to new opportunities. Once there is a market for interplanetary transport, experience will lead to innovations that we can't think of today. One huge example that is already being explored is asteroid mining. Add the business case to the point you made about our species becoming more resilient by turning multi-planetary, and there the case for Mars is strong.

acomar 14y ago

> It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity? Survival. We will go extinct at some point if we stay on Earth. The more spread out we are, the less likely any single catastrophe is to wipe out the entire race. In the more near term... Do we really need more motivation than "because it's there"?

Cushman 14y ago
Yes, but not in the next twenty years. Or the next hundred years. Or the next thousand years. A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus could kill all the humans on Mars. The Earth is the perfect place for humans to live, out of the entire universe. If we can't figure out how to survive long-term on this planet, that's why we'll go extinct. "Because it's there" is a great reason for an explorer to want to go somewhere. But that doesn't automatically have value for the future of humanity.
- almost_usual 14y ago
  > A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus could kill all the humans on Mars. Terraforming Mars would prevent a 'puncture' or 'short circuit' from wiping out its population. The goal isn't to only spread human life but all of life.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    Terraforming Mars is a great long-term goal. But I don't see how putting a human being on the surface of the planet gets us there any faster.
    - cryptoz 14y ago
      You don't? That assumption is extremely obvious to me. Most people don't care about Mars right now - in fact, most Americans are against space travel because they think it's expensive. So, terraforming Mars is seen by people (including those with money) as ridiculous. But if SpaceX puts a team on Mars for less money than, say, making a blockbuster film, an obvious result is massive increase in space travel, colonization, etc. Progress is progress. Choosing to make progress accelerates the process, especially when the progress we're talking about would be the first humans on another planet (and the first known life on Mars).

Tuna-Fish 14y ago

Elon Musk does not want to just send someone over on a holiday -- the stated goal of SpaceX is to put a permanent, self-sufficient colony of people on Mars.

Cushman 14y ago
So my proposal is this: Spend a lot less money building a much larger, much more durable self-sufficient colony of robots. Once that's going good and strong, maybe we program the robots to produce the oxygen and water and complex organic molecules and radioactive shielding we need in a reliable enough way that it's worth sending people. If that all doesn't quite work out, well, we still got a self-sufficient colony of robots.
roc 14y ago
We can't even put a self-sufficient colony of people in Antarctica, where we don't have to worry about the lack of atmosphere or radiation shielding.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  No, we haven't attempted to put a self-sufficient colony of people in Antarctica. Which is not at all the same as "we can't".
  - roc 14y ago
    Right. We attempted to put a self-sufficient colony in the American Southwest and still failed. Surely it's fair to extrapolate our inability to succeed there into an inability to succeed in a far more harsh and remote locale. Keep in mind that this isn't to say we could never succeed. Just that this is a very, very difficult problem that we don't even talk about seriously today, let alone study and pursue. Yet everyone just assumes it's somehow trivial and automatic once we decide to try.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Assuming you're talking about Biosphere 2, do you know why it didn't succeed? What problem did it have that is unsolvable?

derrida 14y ago

> what's the ultimate value to humanity? What if we found a bacteria that would spread on Mars and create an atmosphere? There are so many questions like that. Science for science sake, art for arts, because dammit, we are alive!

Kilimanjaro 14y ago
Why don't we better terraform the sahara desert or the death valley? Greenland? Australia's outback? Antarctica? Honest question.
- tocomment 14y ago
  Conservation I guess. And cheap existing land.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    Simpler explanation: Because we can't. As Neil Tyson says, we can't even accurately predict the weather a week down the road, you want to terraform something?
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Of course, he also says that humans have had a preventable effect on Earth's climate.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      > As Neil Tyson says, we can't even accurately predict the weather a week down the road, you want to terraform something? Did he really say that? I'd think NDT would be acutely aware of the difference between short-term weather and long-term climate, given that he gets to fight climate change denialists using that absurd misunderstanding on a regular basis.
      - StavrosK 14y ago
        He is, and he did: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38va48?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degras...

waterlesscloud 14y ago

"For a fraction of the cost of sustaining human life on another planet, we could construct a huge automated research complex capable of doing everything a human would want to do" No, we couldn't. It's a common refrain, but there's no evidence of it. Where on Earth are these robots that are as productive as humans? They simply do not exist.

accountoftheday 14y ago
Humans on Earth are (still) cheaper than robots for almost any task.
aasarava 14y ago
You'll find those productive robots in every modern factory in the world, building everything from cars to candy more efficiently than humans.
- ballooney 14y ago
  > You'll find those productive robots in every modern factory in the world, building everything from cars to candy more efficiently than humans. Doing one pre-programmed thing, and they they can't automatically adjust the feed rate as the drill bit wears down, or pick up the bit they drop when their suction pump jams, or change their own electrodes when their spot weld quality drops. Automated factories take vast human effort to set up and are extraordinarily sensitive (i.e. prone to breaking) to unexpected inputs or deviations in operating environments. This is not a good line of reasoning when arguing for their suitability for exploring an unknown planet, though I appreciate you might just be specifically addressing your parent's point.

allenp 14y ago

I think the best reason for wanting to do this is that the rover's top speed is around 2in / second, it requires significant man power on the earth to drive/control, and they have a limited toolset with few ways to augment what it starts with. Over the course of 6 years the two rovers had only covered 13 miles collectively. All of these things can be overcome with time, money, science, engineering, etc. In the short term, for a relatively large amount of money -OR- the acceptance of deaths, we can put a human on that same surface who can cover miles per day, autonomously explore and discover, use new tools as soon as they arrive, can deal with unexpected circumstances, and make suggestions about what would be useful to have to do more science/work. All that said - it is hard issue and I think it more likely a commercial effort will send a human before the government.

Dn_Ab 14y ago

Ah what is the value to humanity? What is the value to humanity of a stadium, of the Olympics, of a monument, of a great piece of art or a beautiful performance? What is the value to humanity of entertaining blockbuster movies, fun video games, comics and science fiction? What is the value to humanity of inspiration? Right now science is held almost in contempt, all its wonders are subtle - appreciable only to the trained mind. Such an accomplishment would be large and obvious. The peripheral effect in inspiring young minds cannot be overestimated. One of those may one day go on to develop powerful DNA repair mechanisms because their imagination was captured at a young age by space travel and wanted to do something useful to that. Let alone the boon to cancers. They want to travel to and live on another planet with low gravity and scant atmosphere. How could they possibly do that without spurring the invention of a lot of amazing things as a side-effect? I've mentioned my hypothesis that it would have positive effects on geopolitics by making it possible to view Earth as a locality. But. Most of all it would at once be an incredible piece of science and the greatest piece of art ever created. For what is art but a celebration of humanity and human ability?

chimeracoder 14y ago
The medical field is replete with examples of clinically-beneficial products that would never have existed without fundamental 'basic science' research that was, at one point, 'frivolous' and without a clear benefit.

jessriedel 14y ago

Sending humans is an intrinsic goal, worth accomplishing for itself. It's like producing a great work of art. (You're wrong to think that the robotic missions can be justified instrumentally. The science being done by Curiosity is kinda interesting, but it's hardly $2.5 billion worth of interesting. We could do much more important science on Earth with that money.)

Goronmon 14y ago

Especially in light of Curiosity, why is it assumed that the logical next step after sending a robotic lab is to send a person, rather than sending a few dozen more robots? Why not both? Humans are infinitely more versatile than a robot, unless of course, you build the robotic equivalent of a human being.

Reltair 14y ago

"It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity?" Developing the future technology to accomplish this feat would be worth it already. Furthermore, being the first company/country to send a human to Mars would be an enormous achievement. The number of people this would inspire to pursue this field in our current and future generations is not something that can be measured.

jcfrei 14y ago

the best reason I can come up with is meteors. and although taking the michael bay movie armageddon as a reference seems kinda unscientific, it's still an actual (although quite unlikely) threat. I think of mars as a backup in case something terrible happens to earth. Btw. the video in the report mentions Elon Musk designing the rocket himself, I assume that's BS?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

"It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity?" If you realize that our destiny on this planet is to be wiped out then it seems prudent to be able to leave it and live elsewhere nearby. Sure there have been 5 mass extinctions and hundreds of smaller ones, not to mention almost doing ourselves in in the 60's over Cuba or perhaps in future due to climate change.

Florin_Andrei 14y ago

> what's the ultimate value to humanity? Humanity is like a software that's currently sitting on a single hard-drive. There is no backup. The clock is ticking.