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Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020
- tocomment 14y agoI'd like to see it have an instrument to "culture" soil samples with various temperature, and moisture settings. It would also try increasing atmospheric pressure, and sunlight to possibly speed up any biological reactions.
- nakedrobot2 14y agoDoesn't Elon Musk want to have people walking around on Mars by 2020?
- MichaelAO 14y agoYep! I thought this clip was cool - What Is The Business Model For Mars? Elon Musk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fS1FxBq64A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fS1FxBq64A
- worldsayshi 14y ago"I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach." - [Bruce Sterling](http://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/sterling-ill-believe.html http://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/sterling-ill-believe.html) I don't see how people can believe in a long time prospect of Mars colonization as long as we shun deserts and polar regions. Seriously. Sure Mars would be fun to visit (at this point). But live there, with our current technological advancements in mind?
- MichaelAO 14y agoThat quote is pretty spot on. However, the whole point is to "back up the biosphere" in order to protect human consciousness from an earth shattering event (pun intended). At some point in the future, we're going to have to get off this planet.
- rwmj 14y agoThat would be a useful outcome, but it's not a motivation for the people who have to live in what is in reality a freezing, extremely remote desert.
- worldsayshi 14y agoThen we will have to find ways to make it enjoyable, or give up the prospect all together.
- mkr-hn 14y agoIt's easier to build a sustainable bubble city on Earth than to build a simple survivable habitat on Mars.
- theklub 14y agoWhy would anyone waste their time trying to live in the Gobi desert? The point is to get humanity into space.
- worldsayshi 14y agoThe fact that we don't choose to live in deserts shows that it's highly likely that living in deserts - and all the more in even less hospitable environments - is not sustainable given our current way of living. Unless we can show that we can have a working ecosystem in the least hospitable environments here on earth we aren't going to be able to set one up 4 light minutes away on a desert planet without an atmosphere. We are going to send those colonizers to a slow death.
- Dylan16807 14y agoWhat do you mean by sustainable? Plenty of things are capable of being done, but people happen to prefer alternatives. An example might be constructing every building in the US on stilts. It's more expensive and wastes some resources but you can still manage to run farms and cities that way.
- worldsayshi 14y agoCan we sustain a ecosystem capable of sustaining human life in a desert without atmosphere or other protection from background radiation yet then? It seems like figuring this out should be the first step. Then again, sustainable colonies on the moon might be the most efficient way to establish that.
- GavinB 14y agoThere are entire cities in the Gobi desert. The population is one person per square km: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236545/Gobi/47958/People-and-economy http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236545/Gobi/47958/... In the cities, you have to stay in a hotel because you're not allowed to pitch a tent: http://www.travelmarket.com/Gobi%20Desert/a-GOBI_DESERT/travelguide.htm http://www.travelmarket.com/Gobi%20Desert/a-GOBI_DESERT/trav... Colonies on Mars probably don't make economical sense currently, but the thing to keep in mind is that there are resources on Mars that no human or animal population is using. On Earth, it seems like anywhere you start digging you ruin someone's life. With eventual terraforming of Mars, we don't have to worry about accidentally de-terraforming China and Mongolia. We would have a free hand to change the atmosphere, melt the poles, etc. But ultimately Sterling's point on terraforming is probably true. We'll probably beat desertification long before we have the ability to terraform Mars.
- danielweber 14y agoSeparate the marginal from the average. Most people will not choose to go to Mars. This is not a problem for settling Mars. Settling always happens via a very small fraction of the originating population. The people who will settle Mars will do it because they want to settle Mars.
- meaty 14y agoWell it looks like I'm going to be dead by the time they send something interesting there. Back in the days of Apollo, they risked a hell of a lot in the name of exploration. It'd be nice to see the same spirit applied to Mars.
- takluyver 14y agoMy inner devil's advocate says: is that the spirit of spending massive amounts of money on one-upmanship and buying votes* ? ;-) In reality, I don't have a strong opinion on this. It would be amazing to see humans reach Mars in my lifetime, but I can see why governments aren't pouring money into it. * From the Wikipedia page Moon Landing: "Mindful that the Apollo Program would economically benefit most of the key states in the next election—particularly his home state of Texas because NASA's base was in Houston—Johnson championed the Apollo program."
- melling 14y agoAnyone think it will be possible to crowd-fund a private rover by then?
- cryptoz 14y agoThis is a crowd-funded rover in a way, though not private. About 200 million people have contributed a little bit of money to the project.
- rpm4321 14y agoWe should really try and crowd-fund a melt-bot to Enceladus or Europa, or a boat-bot to Titan. They're being criminally ignored by the various space agencies, and all have the potential to host life. See my comment above.
- MichaelAO 14y agoAwesome idea. It'd be quite fun coming up with the perks/rewards - $2,500 for a small space rock would definitely sell ha
- scotty79 14y agoI think this kinds of headlines would really anger me if I were 85.
- panacea 14y agoI can't but think this is bad PR for NASA (in an unintended consequence kind of way). "How cool is it that we've got an awesome rover on Mars! ...oh they're sending a new generation one there in 18 years time? Bah... now I have to wait for the good stuff to happen. Curiosity is already last generation gear."
- aptwebapps 14y ago8 years, not 18, and I don't think many people think of Mars rovers the same way as they think of their phone.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoI'm not so sure. There was a lot of griping about the early photos from Curiosity as compared to the iphone camera. That went away when the "real" pictures started coming back, but people definitely expect space technology to move as fast as consumer tech.
- aptwebapps 14y agoI'm sorry, but I have to go on a little rant here. Let me state in advance that it's completely out of proportion to the subject matter and that this is more of chance to drag out my soap box than anything else. HN is a place where you shouldn't have to spell everything out or restate the context every step of the way. But here's what just happened: 1) panacea posited the idea, perhaps humorously, that the news of another rover on the horizon would diminish interest in Curiosity much like the announcement of a new phone diminishes interest in the current model. 2) I said I didn't think people thought of the rovers the same was as they thought of their phones. 3) You disagree with that in a completely orthogonal way. Context is everything. If you read panacea's comment and then my comment you should not get the idea that I'm saying there can not be any congruence between rovers and smart phones in the public's thoughts. Obviously, if the pictures were not high res people would complain and the easiest reference point to hand would be a phone camera. That has nothing to do with what I was saying. Again, this a pet peeve, but carrying on a discussion via medium such as this rewards a little carefulness.
- doogle88 14y agoThis is good. They'll be able to ask the Chinese to walk over and repair it if it breaks.
- tocomment 14y agoBy 2020 I'd kind of hope we're sending mostly-autonomous humanoid robots. Wouldn't that really inspire people's imagination? And they could start building the infrastructure for a colony.
- freehunter 14y agoI wouldn't want to seriously see humanoid robots as the first workers on Mars. The human body isn't terribly well-shaped to perform the kinds of tasks needed in an efficient manner. Balance, for example, is monumentally tricky and doesn't need to be with a four-wheeled style robot.
- e03179 14y agoWhy "humanoid" robots? Why not just "robots" that can do a job no matter what they look like?
- jonknee 14y ago2020 is not very far away, definitely not far enough away to make a large robotic advancement in time to make it flight ready.
- brador 14y agoWhy does it take so long? I mean 8 years to send a V2? what's stopping them rolling it out in 1 year? I don't understand the reason for such an extended timescale.
- arrrg 14y agoWith what money?
- htf 14y agoWith its annual budget of $18.724 billion maybe? Seriously, where does that money go?
- MichaelAO 14y agoI watched a talk by Peter Diamandis where he said that around 90% of the costs (for a NASA rocket) is in labor. By 2020, we should be sending people, not another robot.
- natep 14y agoFor a start... * Operating their current missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html * Designing and building future missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html * Public outreach/education
- robodale 14y agoThis is great news, but I hope Elon Musk's human crew will be watching the landing from Mars.
- prawks 14y agoIt is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was supposed to be like the rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they need? It seems like there must be something else to do aside from.... rove. Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards that? Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on whether life has or has not existed on Mars prior to introducing organisms to the planet"? Am I the only one who thinks that the search is kind of, well, silly at this point? How much of the surface have they covered with rovers? I'd imagine it would take much longer, and a much more exhaustive search to come to any sort of definitive conclusion.
- Dylan16807 14y ago>how much of the surface have they covered Oh, right about 0%. And that was with rovers not properly equipped to find microscopic life.
- gojomo 14y agoI'm a fan of all the missions so far, but when I hear that none of the rovers have been "properly equipped to find microscopic life", I fear that some of the mission planning may be trying to "preserve the mystery", trickling out plot revelations to keep the viewers/funders hooked. Couldn't Curiousity have had some agar plates and just dragged them through the dust, for subsequent observation over weeks? (Even if any organisms detected were eventually suspected to be earth-originated contaminants, their growth details would be new info, right?)
- Dylan16807 14y agoThe problem with relying on that method is that finding life on mars could be like finding life at geothermal vents; deep down in hard-to-reach volcanic pockets. If you don't poke around some of those areas before bringing masses of earth contaminants to the surface, you could easily screw up future searching.
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- rpm4321 14y agoJesus, I'm all for sending out as many missions as Congress will pay for, but another Mars rover? Can't they throw a little bit of money towards sending a melt-bot to Europa or Enceladus, or a boat-bot to Titan already? It'll be 2015 before we even know what Ceres really looks like. Mars is certainly critically important, but the solar system is a massive place, and with such limited budgets why wouldn't you spend at least a chunk of your resources on explorations that have the potential of finding life in our solar system? We've known about these options for decades, and yet each mission gets scrapped at the last minute. I don't get NASA's priorities sometimes. Also, in that time frame Elon Musk, China, and even NASA have bounced around various plans for getting humans to Mars. I'm usually an advocate for robotic exploration, but for the deep digging you will probably have to do to find something interesting, it may be better to have boots on the ground (for example exploring for microbial life or fossils below the surface.) It really seems like we're at the beginning of a Mars space race anyway, and this rover will inevitably be cancelled 5-10 years from now in order to focus on beating the Chinese there.
- mkr-hn 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace > In April 2011, ESA stated that it seemed unlikely that a joint US–European mission will happen in the early 2020s given NASA's budget, so ESA is investigating the possibility of proceeding with a European-led mission.[3] The ESA-led mission is called the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) and will be based on the JGO design. Selection of JUICE for the L1 launch slot of ESA's Cosmic Vision science programme was announced on May 2, 2012.[4] It always comes down to budget. There's only so much you can do with $n billion, and NASA gets less money each year. Billionaires and governments are free to declare that they'll do it faster and cheaper, but NASA has a head start on science and engineering. It's easier to believe NASA's timetables and budgets because it has the experience.
- worldsayshi 14y agoI don't see how it can be made feasible to return humans from Mars for a very long time. Think about the expenditure and infrastructure required to launch a vehicle to escape velocity on earth. Shipping that kind of equipment to Mars seems like a undertaking so many times larger than a few rovers. And I don't see how a one way trip would be politically/ethically possible. edit: This sounds negative. All things considered; We have to try though. But perhaps knowing that we can have a sustainable settlement have to be the step zero of space colonization.