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If EVA isn't even an option, what exactly is this manned mission supposed to accomplish that an entirely robotic one can't? It seems like a manned mission purel

by wtracy 12y ago

If EVA isn't even an option, what exactly is this manned mission supposed to accomplish that an entirely robotic one can't? It seems like a manned mission purely for the sake of being a manned mission.

Pxtl 12y ago
Eva is an option in general, just not for that planned mission. The problem with Venus isnt the temperature and pressure, it's that the ground is too far down. At air ship altitude it's comfortable except for the acid.
thearn4 12y ago
My guess is the main advantage is feasibility - a manned airship-like laboratory in the upper atmosphere of Venus is something we could likely accomplish sooner than a manned mission to Mars, if we chose to make that a priority. Though the scientific benefit of such an effort would largely be secondary to other considerations. But that is fairly normal in the politics of human spaceflight.
aethertap 12y ago
It sounds like one of their main arguments is that it would be a less difficult and/or dangerous way to get some experience with medium to long-term human habitats on other planets, partially in preparation for a Mars trip. Also, while robots can do any specific experiment we devise before the trip, it's much harder to make one that can support improvisation or hacking together a follow-up experiment if an interesting result is found. The pace of iteration for experiments would probably be much higher with a human present.
- gambiting 12y ago
  I would argue that you could get that experience by establishing a colony on the bottom of the ocean. Conditions there are also deadly to human life without protection, and getting there and back is also not easy. Not as hard as getting to a different planet, but if we want to learn how to sustain human life in artificial habitats, then a colony 10km under water sounds like a way to start.
- Amezarak 12y ago
  > It sounds like one of their main arguments is that it would be a less difficult and/or dangerous way to get some experience with medium to long-term human habitats on other planets, partially in preparation for a Mars trip. I'm still not sure why we're interested in inhabiting Mars. Virtually no atmosphere and one-third of Earth's gravity means that humans will always have immense difficulty colonizing the planet. People who lived on Mars for any extended period of time, for example, would have huge difficulties in adjusting to Earth's gravity, if they could at all. People would always have to live in pressurized habitats. Meanwhile Venus has a thick atmosphere and a much more Earthlike gravity. There's certainly huge problems with Venus (most obviously: it's very hot) but I can at least imagine with time and technological advances we could terraform the planet to be suitable for Earth life - all the raw material is there. This is not to say, of course, that establishing some kind of manned scientific facility on Mars wouldn't be worthwhile. But long-term habitation? I just don't see it.
  - aethertap 12y ago
    Yeah, I happen to agree about Mars, at least with our current state of technology. It may become feasible to establish something out there with some big advances in biotech though (engineering much more rugged species that would make the transition easier for us). I have to admit that I'm excited by the prospect of exploring our solar system though, regardless of whether or not it makes economic sense. Having people up there in a semi-permanent arrangement seems like it would really put innovation in overdrive for the development of colony-building technology. There's something important about being there that just makes things move faster.
javert 12y ago
> what exactly is this manned mission supposed to accomplish that an entirely robotic one can't? Honestly, to satisfy a bunch of people's personal science fetish using other people's money.
lukeschlather 12y ago
From the atmosphere, humans can control surface probes in near real-time, enabling them to carry out experiments that are nearly impossible when you have to wait minutes to see the results of every action. You look at the way the Rosetta/Philae mission went, there were a few things that went wrong with Philae that might have been addressed by a human crew if Rosetta had one. For example, Philae had to do a fully autonomous landing, but a crew on Rosetta could potentially have piloted the lander in real-time and made course corrections to avoid the crash. More concretely, a thruster designed to keep Philae from bouncing was damaged - a human crew could have repaired it before releasing the lander.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dalke 12y ago
  If Rosetta had an operations crew nearby - even just one person - the cost of the mission would have been, what, 100x greater? Surely enough more expensive to pay for multiple robotic probes. Total mission cost for Rosetta = 1.4 billion Euros. It costs something like $50,000/kg for GEO, so I'll use that as the baseline. The Orion capsule weighs 21 tons and the Deep Space Habitat at least 50 tons. Add one person and the 5 kg of consumables per day, for a mission of 300 days, gives another 2 tons. That's $3 billion already, or 2.4 billion Euros. Now add the development costs, support staff, communications, etc. and you'll see that it's a lot cheaper to send a small fleet of redundant probes than to send a single human. To double check, an Orion capture of an asteroid in an orbit close to Earth's is $2.6 billion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29#Exploration_of_a_near_Earth_asteroid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29#Explorat... ), again, excluding development costs. In any case, we have no way to put a human on the same orbit as a comet, much less return the human safely to Earth, so only a robot mission is possible.
  - lukeschlather 12y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest Rosetta should have been manned. I was giving concrete examples of how humans can save missions. Venus has a highly corrosive atmosphere, and surface probes die within a couple hours. I can't find figures on the cost of historical Venusian surface probes, but I think it's safe to say they're more expensive than Rosetta and tremendously harder to operate from a planet away. I also don't think it's a stretch to suggest that humans could make a 10 or even 100 time multiplier on their effectiveness.

by wtracy 12y ago

Pxtl 12y ago

Eva is an option in general, just not for that planned mission. The problem with Venus isnt the temperature and pressure, it's that the ground is too far down. At air ship altitude it's comfortable except for the acid.

thearn4 12y ago

My guess is the main advantage is feasibility - a manned airship-like laboratory in the upper atmosphere of Venus is something we could likely accomplish sooner than a manned mission to Mars, if we chose to make that a priority. Though the scientific benefit of such an effort would largely be secondary to other considerations. But that is fairly normal in the politics of human spaceflight.

aethertap 12y ago

It sounds like one of their main arguments is that it would be a less difficult and/or dangerous way to get some experience with medium to long-term human habitats on other planets, partially in preparation for a Mars trip. Also, while robots can do any specific experiment we devise before the trip, it's much harder to make one that can support improvisation or hacking together a follow-up experiment if an interesting result is found. The pace of iteration for experiments would probably be much higher with a human present.

gambiting 12y ago
I would argue that you could get that experience by establishing a colony on the bottom of the ocean. Conditions there are also deadly to human life without protection, and getting there and back is also not easy. Not as hard as getting to a different planet, but if we want to learn how to sustain human life in artificial habitats, then a colony 10km under water sounds like a way to start.
Amezarak 12y ago
> It sounds like one of their main arguments is that it would be a less difficult and/or dangerous way to get some experience with medium to long-term human habitats on other planets, partially in preparation for a Mars trip. I'm still not sure why we're interested in inhabiting Mars. Virtually no atmosphere and one-third of Earth's gravity means that humans will always have immense difficulty colonizing the planet. People who lived on Mars for any extended period of time, for example, would have huge difficulties in adjusting to Earth's gravity, if they could at all. People would always have to live in pressurized habitats. Meanwhile Venus has a thick atmosphere and a much more Earthlike gravity. There's certainly huge problems with Venus (most obviously: it's very hot) but I can at least imagine with time and technological advances we could terraform the planet to be suitable for Earth life - all the raw material is there. This is not to say, of course, that establishing some kind of manned scientific facility on Mars wouldn't be worthwhile. But long-term habitation? I just don't see it.
- aethertap 12y ago
  Yeah, I happen to agree about Mars, at least with our current state of technology. It may become feasible to establish something out there with some big advances in biotech though (engineering much more rugged species that would make the transition easier for us). I have to admit that I'm excited by the prospect of exploring our solar system though, regardless of whether or not it makes economic sense. Having people up there in a semi-permanent arrangement seems like it would really put innovation in overdrive for the development of colony-building technology. There's something important about being there that just makes things move faster.

javert 12y ago

> what exactly is this manned mission supposed to accomplish that an entirely robotic one can't? Honestly, to satisfy a bunch of people's personal science fetish using other people's money.

lukeschlather 12y ago

From the atmosphere, humans can control surface probes in near real-time, enabling them to carry out experiments that are nearly impossible when you have to wait minutes to see the results of every action. You look at the way the Rosetta/Philae mission went, there were a few things that went wrong with Philae that might have been addressed by a human crew if Rosetta had one. For example, Philae had to do a fully autonomous landing, but a crew on Rosetta could potentially have piloted the lander in real-time and made course corrections to avoid the crash. More concretely, a thruster designed to keep Philae from bouncing was damaged - a human crew could have repaired it before releasing the lander.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dalke 12y ago
If Rosetta had an operations crew nearby - even just one person - the cost of the mission would have been, what, 100x greater? Surely enough more expensive to pay for multiple robotic probes. Total mission cost for Rosetta = 1.4 billion Euros. It costs something like $50,000/kg for GEO, so I'll use that as the baseline. The Orion capsule weighs 21 tons and the Deep Space Habitat at least 50 tons. Add one person and the 5 kg of consumables per day, for a mission of 300 days, gives another 2 tons. That's $3 billion already, or 2.4 billion Euros. Now add the development costs, support staff, communications, etc. and you'll see that it's a lot cheaper to send a small fleet of redundant probes than to send a single human. To double check, an Orion capture of an asteroid in an orbit close to Earth's is $2.6 billion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29#Exploration_of_a_near_Earth_asteroid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29#Explorat... ), again, excluding development costs. In any case, we have no way to put a human on the same orbit as a comet, much less return the human safely to Earth, so only a robot mission is possible.
- lukeschlather 12y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest Rosetta should have been manned. I was giving concrete examples of how humans can save missions. Venus has a highly corrosive atmosphere, and surface probes die within a couple hours. I can't find figures on the cost of historical Venusian surface probes, but I think it's safe to say they're more expensive than Rosetta and tremendously harder to operate from a planet away. I also don't think it's a stretch to suggest that humans could make a 10 or even 100 time multiplier on their effectiveness.