From the link to Wiki above - " In March 2010, it was reported that the Mini-RF on board the ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 had discovered more than 40 permanently darkened craters near the Moon’s north pole which are hypothesized to contain an estimated 600 million metric tonnes (1.3 trillion pounds) of water-ice." There also water bound in the minerals, etc. Not a lot of density, but its there to use if/when possible, for fuel-making and whatnot.
It’s been lnown awhile now, but how to ‘extract’ in economic reality, it remains a big hurdle. Getting into the shadowed/steep-sided super-cold craters where H2O-concentrations are highest, is risky/impossible at best, currently. Otherwise, you gotta use much larger surface areas to get smaller return of effort in comparison to craters, so to speak. In a nutshell anyways.
Aldrin’s iconic status had nothing to do with it, and everything to do with his mental problems (to his credit he has spoken out about them). He had a hard time getting along with other astronauts (he was famous for talking about nothing but rendezvous), Grissom and Borman refused to have him on their crew, only Jim Lovell and Neil Armstrong were thought to be able to fly with him (as they did). Afte Apollo 11, under the normal rotation, he would have been backup CMP on A14, and prime CMP on A17, or more likely (given he had flown twice), backup CDR on A17 and CDR on A20 (which was cancelled or about to be after A11).
Other options were Skylab, which he could have commanded, but had no interest in and the Shuttle, whose early design he worked on.
Collins was promised a landing, which he declined to be with his family, and Armstrong wouldn’t have had any risky missions being the first guy on the moon. Thanks!
I’m a big fan of robots, and agree we can learn a lot by employing them.
That said, what we really want to know is how humans will handle the voyage, physically, psychologically, socially, etc. I’m not sure how to investigate that with robots.
Armstrong probably would not have had another mission regardless of whether he was first. The programme was winding down. Apollo commanders were told that they would not go back again, only Stafford flew two command missions on Apollo and that was due to special circumstance. ( Conrad also flew again, but Skylab was a different programme, like the STS would be).
Collins would have been Commander of Apollo 17, which Cernan got. Would have made a nice symmetry.
As for the robots versus humans question, can any robots say “its still orange”*
*Bonus points for getting the reference. And its significance to this debate.
Not convinced that this is what we “really” want to know. We understand weightless, ISS crews can give us everything we could reasonably ethically ask on that score. Psychologically, socially - we don’t need to spend 500 billion to find that out. Anything from a submarine crew to reality TV shows answers those questions. Working out how to stop the mission becoming like a reality TV show might be more challenging. But you need to work that out ahead of time.
In terms of “what we want to know” you get back to science goals. Science for the dollar. Essentially impossible to make a case for a manned mission on that basis alone.
NASA space funding is ultimately supported by 3 constituencies:[ol]
[li]Congressmen with NASA facilities or aerospace companies in their districts simply looking to support pork & jobs.[/li]
[li]DoD supporting research leading to applications useful to them.[/li]
[li]Rank and file public & media excited about space.[/li][/ol]They’re ranked above by fiscal importance, most to least. But the latter group demonstrates a clear preference for manned over unmanned. And keeping the latter group entertained is what provides the cover for group 1.
Bottom line: Assuming a fixed NASA budget, manned is un-cost-effective to a silly degree versus unmanned. So the smart plan for maximum science return is to go all unmanned. But absent manned, political support for NASA’s budget collapses pretty quickly. At which point you have neither manned nor unmanned.
That’s hindsight and could be said of anything and everything, from fire, the wheel, Columbus’s toy “ships,” and steamboats at risk of blowing up to the moon landings using computers with less power than that of a smart watch.
Using that philosophy, we’d never get anything done.
Nope it was real astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt who discover orange soil during Apollo 17. Schmitt was the only trained scientist to walk on the moon.
I recall his wanting to stop the vehicle and look at rocks quite often.
I thought there was more than one geologist. Did they train others unaware that the program would end prematurely?
I also thought it was a very bad idea to have crew that could not fly the spacecraft.
NASA’s astronaut group four was selected in 1965 and consisted of six scientists - two physicians, two physicists, an electrical engineer and a geologist. Schmitt was the only one to fly during Apollo. Three went on to fly during the Skylab program and two left NASA without flying in space.
As I recall it was quite a battle to get a geologist assigned to a moon landing - there were many in NASA who didn’t consider it a priority. But then there were many who didn’t think it was a priority to add the live camera equipment to Apollo 11. The folks back home can see the pictures when they get back, there’s no need to watch it on TV as it happens.
After Schmitt’s selection he spent a year training with the Air Force to become a jet pilot and after returning to NASA, trained extensively to become proficient in flying the lunar module as well. IIRC, Cernan was initially against Schmitt being added to the crew, but came around to the idea as he saw how hard the geologist worked to meet the job requirements.
Actually, yes they are. Machines can only do what they are designed to do, and there’d be a lot of redundancy - every probe would have to have its own power source, means of locomotion, etc. Humans can react, invent, and improvise. Humans can notice things: human eyes are better than robot cameras at pattern recognition.
Anyway, I think the way to a manned Mars mission is not one ship, but a fleet. This will not only ease launch problems but provide redundancy. You’ll want to send the return ship and supply ships first and only once they’re there send your astronauts.
There’s one technology we’ve really yet to demonstrate before we can send people: having a second lander safely land in close proximity to a first.
If there were an intra-solar-system ELE on the horizon, it would be far too late to start working now on a trip to Mars. That’s why it’s important to start now anyway. And if the ELE were extra-solar system - an approaching star, for example - setting up on Mars wouldn’t help.
They can be - indeed have been - designed to do some impressive things that are impossible to humans: for example, operate without support on the surface of Mars for months to years, subsisting only on a “diet” of sunlight. And they seem little troubled by the lack of any possible return trip.
Power requirements to support a human greatly exceed those required by a robotic probe.
To which the same-cost alternative is many hundreds to thousands of robotic probes.
Actually, for purposes of this question, it’s more like a factor of 4 or 5 difference. If you’re staying close to the surface, then all you care about is the surface gravitational field, but we’re not staying close to the surface; we’re trying to escape the planet. For that, you need the gravitational potential energy, not the gravitational field.
Put another way, not only does Mars pull harder on your ship, but it’ll also pull on it for longer.
