Got a cite for this? I don’t see why robots and sensors couldn’t do a perfectly adequate job of planting seeds or spores in Martian soil and transmitting observations of the results. Or analyzing soil and rocks so that Earth-based engineers could form an accurate estimate of their properties as building material.
As for finding out “the effects of Mars on the human body”, where’s the major scientific research objective there? We already know a lot about the basic physics and physiology of long-term exposure to low-gravity environments on the human body. Having a single experimental subject living long-term on Mars wouldn’t do much more than fill in a few details, even if said subject reliably followed all the exercise and monitoring procedures required for the experiment.
Well, you’re the one who started out this conversation asking “How could anyone choose otherwise?” You seemed at first to be arguing that the same motivations should affect everybody.
In any case, it isn’t that we don’t believe that you think you’d want to go on a one-way long-term mission to Mars, but rather that we think you’re overestimating your capacity to cope with it, based on perceptions of your own uniqueness or unusualness that are probably exaggerated.
That’s not a slam at you personally, but rather a recognition of a basic psychological fact. There are, as a rule, two different types of people who believe they have the ability to do some particular feat that is almost superhumanly impossible (like climbing Mt. Everest without oxygen, or staying sane and functional for decades of extraterrestrial isolation, etc.).
The first type is people who actually do have that almost superhuman ability, but they are incredibly rare. The second type is people who are perhaps rather idealistic and immature and are easily seduced into underestimating difficulties and obstacles by the romance of a grand achievement. That type of person, unlike the first type, is quite common.
So, statistically speaking, when you claim that you would be able to survive and function for decades of isolation on Mars and that the achievement would be worth the inconvenience in your estimation, the realistic conclusion to draw is that you’re kidding yourself. Yes, you conceivably might actually be the one-in-a-hundred-million type of person who really could achieve such a thing, but the odds against it are pretty long.
Robots and sensors could do an acceptable job, no doubt. The problem with using robots and sensors is the same problem you always have with robots and sensors… they lack adaptability.
I shouldn’t need a cite to tell you the obvious, that a person is capable of doing more varied work than a robot. Unfortunately, I don’t have one, either, because I’m far too lazy to go looking for one. I’m quite sure that there are a plethora of things that robots do better than men. But they do that one thing.
We know a lot about the effects of microgravity.
And, we know a lot about the effects of Earth gravity.
But, as far as I’m aware, we’ve had very limited chance to study the effects of long term, low gravity exposure to Earth native life – including humans.
Really? That’s what you took from that statement?
How could anyone choose otherwise? It boggles the mind. Yes, foregoing the ability to pass on my genetic material would be a real tragedy, I truly am a superior being, I know. But, there are plenty of people who are close enough related to me that I’m comfortable with not procreating if the pay off is high enough.
That entire paragraph is dripping with so much sarcasm you could quench the thirst of a small African nation.
What the odds are is entirely irrelevant. I know what I am and am not capable of. I am capable of long term, non-detrimental isolation and confinement. I simply am not a people person, and I lack the need to meander.
I read a National Geographic article a year ago or so that asked astronauts, “If a return trip was impossible would you go to mars anyway?” and a surprisingly large percentage of them said yes.
If they knew that ahead of time and were willing I’d say why not.
Picture a ship with the ability to fly 2-3 astronauts to Mars and bring them back. Now refit that ship to take just one person on a one-way trip and use all the extra capacity to take life support and science material. What time frame are we now talking about with current technology? A year? 10 years? Forever? How long could we keep someone there living usefully?
Humans aren’t exactly perfectly adaptable either, especially isolated within an extreme environment. Say the computer chip on your soil science probe goes out, what then? Wait a year for a replacement? How about a emergency repair that requires skilled welding & equipment? What happens if you break a leg or get pneumonia?
Robots are adaptable in that if something goes wrong, you can just send another robot (you can probably afford to send a couple of robots and still wind up paying less than a single manned mission). Robots are also getting more adaptable with every year that goes by, and will quickly close the gap in peformance. They already have in a few areas.
Exactly. Todderbob, you started out in this discussion by claiming that an isolated human researcher on Mars would be indispensable for certain kinds of research that would be extremely important scientifically. Now you seem to have fallen back on generic statements of superior human adaptability for very vaguely characterized research projects:
Your “most groundbreaking experiments of mankinds history” for an isolated Mars-based human observer seem to have dwindled into a general-utility lab assistant role. So far, you’ve provided absolutely zilch in the way of actual evidence that there are ANY major scientific open questions requiring the long-term presence of a human researcher on Mars.
There have certainly been such experiments involving low-gravity (not just zero or microgravity) environments on the space shuttle, such as this study of cichlid fish.
If we’re really interested in knowing the details of long-term low-gravity exposure on Earth life (which in itself is hardly a major research objective on the level of “the most groundbreaking experiments of mankinds history”), then we could just revive and expand the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Project:
AFAICT, there’s nothing about low-gravity exposure on the human body that we couldn’t learn just as well (or better, due to having more experimental subjects) in artificial low-gravity environments close to home than by sending a single individual on a one-way trip to Mars.
Really? It was certainly obvious that your statement “Yes, foregoing the ability to pass on my genetic material would be a real tragedy, I truly am a superior being, I know.” was meant to be sarcastic. However, it certainly wasn’t apparent that the rest of your statements in that paragraph were meant to be sarcastic, so it’s not unreasonable that other posters here should have taken your “How could anyone choose otherwise?” query seriously.
The reason I don’t believe you is not that I think you’re deliberately lying, but rather because, as I said before, so many people are apt to be self-deceived about their potential capabilities in extreme situations where they haven’t previously been tested.
When somebody with no significant high-altitude mountain-climbing experience says “I know I’d be capable of summitting Everest without supplementary oxygen”, I figure he’s probably kidding himself. When somebody with no significant distance cycling experience says “I know I’d be capable of winning the Tour de France”, I figure he’s probably kidding himself. And when somebody with no significant experience in long-term extreme isolation environments says “I know I’d be capable of surviving and functioning as an isolated researcher on Mars for the rest of my life”, I figure he’s probably kidding himself too.
It’s nothing against you personally. It’s simply that surviving and functioning for decades in extreme isolation and very hostile conditions would be an almost superhuman achievement. And there are very few people who have the capacity to perform any almost superhuman achievement. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are pretty good at kidding themselves about their impressive abilities.
A bit of a hijack, but exactly WHAT does Mars offer us? We might (after centuries of terraforming) wind up with a place that is slightly less hospitable than present-day Greenland. Why not move to Greenland instead? A heck of a lot closer, and less dangerous, to boot.
Okay, lets put it another way – robots are not nearly as adaptable as humans. Currently, there’s no substitute for humans on a long term mission, if the mission is meant to be adaptable on the fly.
Currently, there’s no reason to send a human to Mars. We don’t have any pressing questions that require human intervention.
This doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be benefits to sending a man to Mars, it just means that if I was in charge of the program, I wouldn’t spend the cash to do it. However, if someone else is in charge of the program and asked me if I wanted to go, and there was good science to be done (and presumably, if they were sending someone to Mars, there would be good science, no?), I would do it.
Yep, humans are the same as cichlid fish. Definitely.
Did you know that in microgravity, frogs will vomit up their entire stomach, and scrape the contents out? Going by that experiment, humans should do the same. But they don’t.
Different beings react to low gravity in different ways, so the (like I said,) limited experience we have with low gravity doesn’t necessarily apply to other forms of life.
No disagreement, however that still doesn’t address some of the issues that are more specific to Mars, like the ability to grow plants in Martian Soil.
I was under the impression that it was obvious, as the entire paragraph was separated from those around it for just that reason. I guess I’ll have to make it more clear in the future.
Oh, I’m quite certain I couldn’t win the tour de france, nor could I climb mount everest, much less do it without oxygen.
Carl Sagan said it best when he said that humanity shouldn’t have all of their eggs in one basket.
However, what you’re talking about can be expressed in a basic mathematical equation.
Cost to terraform mars divided by the overall usable land in a post-terraformed mars equals average cost per acre of land on Mars.
If the average cost of a usable acre of land on Mars is less than the average cost of a usable acre of land on Earth, it makes economic sense to terraform mars.
I’m not certain where you heard this but it absolutely isn’t true of of the American space program and I highly doubt it was seriously considered by the Soviets (especially given how hard they worked to conceal accidental deaths in their program). The safe return of astronauts and selenological samples constituted the major part of effort and hurdles of the American program.
This is shear nonsense. Astronaut training for the Lunar surface missions was to prepare and condition astronauts just to operate their own life support equipment and perform some basic tasks like collecting surface samples and operating the Lunar Roving Vehicle, and even at that they struggled with overexertion, fatigue, and contamination by the fine surface dust, all for about 160 astronaut-hours of EVA time of at best dubious scientific merit. So much effort is put into keeping the astronauts alive and figuring out how to perform basic functions in the bulky and highly constraining pressure suits–like kneeling or operating simple tools–that they don’t have a chance to get creative. And it isn’t as if an astronaut is going to jury rig some kind of new instrumentation from spare parts.
On the other hand, a solar powered semi-autonomous rover, like the Mars Exploration Rovers, can function continuously as long as it has sunlight and a functioning power system, can perform a wide variety delicate operations with its probes and manipulators, and carries a wide array of survey instrumentation which (with the limited assistance of mission controllers) it deploys with the expertise of a team of highly trained technicians. It also doesn’t get fatigued, suffer from negative emotions, act out in passive-aggressive resistance to authority, miss its family and social contact, or have to take a serious dump in the middle of an EVA. The Mars Science Laboratory will be able to outperform a team of expert technicians in terms of both capability and range of exploration. And both the rovers and unmanned space probes have been reprogrammed on the fly to work around damage or failure, and to utilize additional capabilities. Try fixing a sick or injured astronaut by uploading a firmware patch.
Most of the effort and cost in manned missions is in keeping the astronauts alive long enough to do anything at all, much less useful science and exploration. The only real reason to put people in space and on other celestial bodies is for the prestige of doing so and to get better at keeping people alive, not to take advantage of the supposed “adaptability” of an over-evolved ape that can’t tolerate even a few dozen seconds of vacuum or modest temperate excursions.
Fredrick Pohl presented the only reason for a one way mission in his novella, “The Gold at Starbow’s End”, and I mean that in only the most fatuous sense, as I doubt isolating a crew of astronauts–even ones of genius level intellect–is going to produce revolutionary new advances in science and epistemology.
The topic posed for debate isn’t worth the energy for debate. I’m always surprised when there is any serious talk about a manned mission to Mars during this time in our country.
This is why I always say that democracies don’t build pyramids. Anything that cannot be milked dry in 4 years and in time for reelection is not worth doing.
Space programs go in 20-year windows. What has happened to this country in 20 years? How has the economy gone? Up and down, as it always does. Crises come and go. Long term goals must be pursued no matter what the current situation is.
Good thing medicine is mostly out of the hands of people that have to run for office regularly.
Hmmm, this must be some more of your famous sarcasm. The reason I linked to the cichlid fish study is not because I think that the results for cichlid fish are the same as for humans, but rather in response to your original claim that our opportunities to study low-gravity exposure for “Earth native life” in general (not only human life) were “very limited”:
I was just pointing out that our chances for such studies may in fact be less limited than you’re aware of.
But we’ve already discussed whether the presence of human researchers would really be important for studies of growing plants on Mars. It’s been pointed out to you that human researchers have many huge disadvantages compared to remote-controlled robotic equipment. And you haven’t been able to come up with any significant compensating advantages of humans over robots, other than very vague claims about humans being more adaptable. So what? How does that general adaptability translate into any mission-specific benefits that would even come close to outweighing the immense liabilities of dealing with fragile and vulnerable meatware?
Your debating strategy on the issue of the usefulness of human researchers on Mars seems to be centered on presenting a moving target:
When you’re told that humans are much more expensive and vulnerable than robots and can’t perform any particular tasks significantly better than robots in specific research projects like studying plant growth on Mars, you switch to talking about needing human subjects to study the effects of Mars gravity on the human body.
Then when it’s pointed out to you that don’t actually need to send humans to Mars to study the effects of Mars-level gravity on the human body, you switch back to talking about the importance of research specific to the Martian environment, such as growing plants in Martian soil.
But none of this back-and-forthing actually constitutes a persuasive argument that there really would be any significant scientific “benefits to sending a man to Mars”, as you claim.
The founders knew going in that it wouldn’t be likely that the nation would spend decades of a big chunk of all labor to build gargantuan useless sealed tombs for our leaders. I guess every system has its flaws. Looking at Mt. Rushmore, the Hoover Dam, The Apollo Missions, and The Golden Gate Bridge, I can’t help but regret that we didn’t go with the whole Pharaoh thing.
There’s no pressing need to go to Mars right now, we can wait until it’s cheaper, safer, and easier. Our democracy is funding more 20+ year timeline research than anyone else in the world. Democracies don’t build pyramids: we build the LHC.
A decade or two easily. You gotta keep 3 of em alive for year or 3 on any realistic trip to mars and back. So, take that and multiply by a factor of 3. Only going there rather than there and back easily buys you another factor of 2 to 4 or even more.
That’s because in their entirety, my posts haven’t been about whether or not we should send people to Mars. They’ve been about whether I’d volunteer for a 1 way mission to Mars if the science potential was great enough.
I’m not sure why you want to turn this into a debate about whether or not a manned mission to Mars is the way to go – that’s not the topic. I don’t disagree on your points in general, in fact. I, however, do disagree with the assertion that there are no advantages to sending a manned mission to Mars, at least in general.
I’m of the opinion that sending not just a, but many, manned missions to Mars (in the long run) is the only way to go. We need to send dozens, if not hundreds of people to Mars, with a lot of equipment and a lot more expertise. And yes, I think it will require a manned mission before any of that happens… but all of that is extremely long term.
In the short term, I’d still volunteer for a manned mission (again, assuming there was valid science to be done), even if it meant never coming home again.
And having a man walk on Mars is good for us as a people her on Earth exactly how? The end game would not justify the expense and the lives…period. As i have stated, the energy that has been spent to debate this ‘topic’ is pointless.
They could do more exploration and discovery in the first week they are there than the robotic rovers have done in the years they’ve been there. They could probably make a pretty good determination whether or not there is or ever was life on Mars, and if so whether or not it’s related to life here on earth or is completely independent, which will tell us a lot about how life formed here and might have formed elsewhere. It may also reveal more about how Mars became as it is today, which could give us insights into our own climate situation.
Of course, all of this presumes that one feels that such things are good and interesting things that will benefit mankind. Personally, I think it’s pretty much a slam dunk…sending men to Mars will vastly increase our knowledge and understanding of the red planet, as well as be a huge achievement for whichever country does it. I get the feeling that some people think it would simply be a flags and foot prints mission, but the reality is that even the more risky ‘quick’ mission would have the astronauts on Mars for something like 2 months. The slow mission would have there there over a year. Which is a hell of a lot longer than any of the Apollo missions to the Moon lasted.
At any rate, if we ever do send men to the moon (or if some other country does, which looks to be more likely to me at this point), there is no way they are going to send them on a one way ride there. I don’t even think the Chinese would send their astronauts to Mars knowing that they would die there without any chance of getting back. Just isn’t going to happen.
Really? To quote Stranger on a Train’s excellent post at the bottom of the previous page:
Now, I completely agree that the best observational data is no use at all without human researchers to interpret it. However, I’ve seen no evidence or persuasive arguments from any of the manned-mission buffs here that the human researchers need or ought to be on Mars itself rather than in comfy labs back on Earth, analyzing the data that the robotic equipment sends us.
May not be as exciting or glamorous, but if it’s cheaper and does the job just as well or better, I’ll take it.
And if you or Todderbob or anybody else is going to go on insisting that robotic exploration doesn’t do the job just as well, and human researchers on Mars could somehow in some vague unspecified way make much more amazing breakthroughs…
…well, that’s when I’m going to have to put down my beer, slide off my barstool, roll up my sleeves, stride over to your end of the bar, and ask you for a cite.
Really. Even an untrained (in geology and science) human comes equipped with a much better set of sensors than the best rover. The human also moves a lot faster and is able to autonomously observe it’s environment much better than a rover. It takes days to plan a route for a rover to take, with hours of programming required and long delays between sending the commands to initiate an action and getting feed back from what the rover did and has observed. It’s like trying to do science in extreme slow motion.
A human in one of NASA’s new rover can house astronauts for weeks at a time, it has an uplink back to NASA and a lab on board, the suits are built into the rover itself and are easy to get in and out of (taking half an hour to suit up, instead of the hours it took for the Apollo era guys). The new suits are also much easier to wear and have reduced fatigue greatly over the first generation moon suits…and by the time we would actually be contemplating going I have no doubts they’d be even better.
One week long excursion could literally take in everything the rovers have covered since they landed on Mars…and then some. And these astronauts will be on planet for months or even a year. In addition, the same ‘team’ Stranger is talking about working the rover could certainly be collaborating with the self directed autonomous meat puppets we’d be sending out at least as well as they do with the rover with one key difference. The meat puppet is probably not going to just stand around with his thumb up his ass waiting for the next set of instructions from NASA, and instead is going to, well, look around. Hm…wonder what that green rock over there is? What’s that off to the left? Is that ice? What’s on the other side of this dune here? Etc etc.
And this leave out the possibility that NASA (or some other country) will in fact include experts on the mission who will be right there, on the spot. Even if all they actually do send is the same level of scientific expertise that they sent with Apollo, we are talking about having them on planet for a pretty long time, and given the equipment I’ve seen that’s currently being developed, I’d say that their time will be well spent.
Well, it all hinges on how quickly you want to get the data. We’ve had rovers on Mars for several years now, and they have gone well beyond their original specs and duration. And they have managed to survey an area no more than a couple of square miles. Even if we sent a LOT of new rovers, it will take centuries for us to really explore Mars and get the data that is really necessary and interesting. Is there life? If not, then that tells us something important, and it opens up a whole line of experimentation in possible transforming. If there is life, is it related to our own, or is it totally different. Either answer tells us something very important. And, of course, just the journey and exploration gives us invaluable experience and understanding of how to do missions like this. Personally, I’m a big advocate of robotic missions…but you have to see that they are just a tool, one of many, and they have some pretty severe limitations. Human exploration is also necessary, IMHO, to have a well rounded and intense understanding of a place like Mars…unless you are willing to wait a few centuries to find the answers.