What counts as "going to Mars"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by this thread. And by a passage in a John Varley novel.

Let’s say you’re put in charge of “sending a man to Mars”. Which of the following would you consider the lowest level that fulfills your mission?

  1. You send a manned expedition to fly by Mars.

  2. You send a manned expedition to go into orbit around Mars.

  3. You send a manned expedition to land on Mars but they do not leave their ship.

  4. You send a manned expedition to land on Mars and they leave the ship inside their suits.

  5. You send a manned expedition to land on Mars and you make arrangements so the crew can have direct physical contact with Mars - ie they touch the ground with their skin.

2

Having skin to ground contact seems a bit harsh. It’s a wee bit more plausible on Mars than the moon, but still I don’t think anyone said we didn’t go to the moon because there wasn’t skin to moon contact. My vote for walking on the planet in suits.

3

4. You send a manned expedition to land on Mars and they leave the ship inside their suits.

It’ll never happen though. There’s no point. Robots can do it all with zero risk to human life. Mars is way too far away and it’s a fucking desert anyway. A desert that we know all about from probes.

4

A desert which is poisonous to human life.

5

I agree. But this was the issue that was discussed in Varley’s book, Red Thunder. The basic idea of the book is a group of people building their own spaceship to go to Mars. And they realize that airlocks and spacesuits so they can leave the ship will be a significant increase in expense. So they briefly consider the possibility of going to Mars, landing, and then taking off back to Earth without ever leaving the ship. They decide this wouldn’t “count” but somebody asks what the difference is between being on Mars inside a space ship and being on Mars inside a space suit? Either way you never actually make direct physical contact with Mars.

6

We know all about it? :dubious:

7

I think landing on it should be good enough.

To play semantic games: I had a short layover in Las Vegas once. It was only an hour so I did not leave the airport, but I can’t say I’ve never been to Vegas. I did not experience Las Vegas, but it’s unquestioned that I’ve technically been there.

8

Does the man have to be alive when he’s launched? Does he need to return at all? Return alive? And land alive and be able to walk away from the landing?

I imagine it would be pretty cheap to fire a corpse at Mars. :stuck_out_tongue:

9

OK, so we’re getting to know all about it. How much more would we learn from stumbling around personally on the planet for months: not much.

10

I think that “landing in a ship, but never leaving it” would definitely fulfill the requirement of “going to Mars”.

That said, I think that there would be absolutely no point in going all that way, and *not *setting (spacesuit-clad) foot on the ground.

11

I’m sorry, but we’ve covered this before: You’ve never “been to Vegas”, because airport-only visits do not “count”.

Luckily, Mars does not (yet) have a Spaceport, so our future astronauts can get around this restriction on a technicality :slight_smile:

12

I’m sorry, but that is a complete load of horseshit. We’d learn more in one manned mission to Mars than in all of the unmanned missions for decades. Clearly, it’s not something you know much about if you seriously believe we wouldn’t learn much ‘stumbling around personally on a planet for months’…really, over a year, so there isn’t much point in exploring the subject with you. I’ll just point out that the few manned missions to the Moon, which consisted of people being on the surface for a few HOURS, is STILL bearing fruit and data, decades after we left the place.

13

I agree with Leaffan. The robotic landers we had back in the 60’s were inferior to man because they were stuck in one place. Now our probes can move and stay operational for years. Mission planners on the ground get data from the probe, decide which rocks look most interesting, and can direct the probe to that rock to study it. Robotic performance on Mars is very close to what man can do at this point. Any technology we use to send man to Mars will benefit robots as well, and robots will always be the cheaper option. Man will never go to Mars for purposes of science and exploration.

14

McCarran International is located in an unicorporated part of Paradise, NV. No, you have not been to Las Vegas yet. Put it back on the bucket list. :smiley:

Landing and geting out would be going to Mars.

15

If you agree with him then you are simply wrong. He’s saying that we’d get ‘nothing much’ out of going and presumably learn ‘nothing much’. That’s a load of bull. Certainly it would cost a lot more to send a human crew, but that’s not what’s at issue here. Let me ask you something…how long will it take to send a probe to Mars that can drill down, oh, say 10 feet to see what’s down there? A human could do that on the first day. How long has it taken our probes to explore on the surface within 10 miles of the landing site? Answer…they haven’t done so yet and will never with the current generation of explorers. You seriously believe that humans on Mars with over a year to spend won’t be able to do that??

Probes on Mars are no where close to being able to do what a human can do and it’s ridiculous to even suggest it. What they CAN do is actually go there now on the current budget, and do so in a risk free way. That’s very different, however, to saying that they have comparable performance. If all you can have is a low voltage electric cart that can do 2 miles per hour it’s certainly better than nothing, but it’s not as good as a Corvette and never will be.

16

There is one point: the time lag. It takes something like three minutes for a rover to be able to respond to something via human control - 90 seconds for the signal requiring attention to reach Earth, and 90 seconds for the response.

17

No, man will go to Mars because it is there, and because we can.

18

NASA is not going to send an astronaut to Mars with a shovel and tell him to dig a 10 foot deep hole while wearing a pressure suit. If the mission required a deep core sample they’d send a drill to dig down 10 feet. That same drill could be deployed remotely from Earth and the data attained could be analyzed on Earth. No human required.

Our current probes are sticking close to their landing site because we’ve gotten good at having them land close to what we want them to study. For the time being your question is irrelevant - we aren’t going that far out because there’s plenty to explore closer in.

Everything you’ve listed as human advantage is because humans are generalists. We can use a variety of different tools and when required can use those same tools in inventive ways. So far our probes on Mars can’t do that but there’s still plenty to learn with the specialized probes we have.

Robots that can use hand tools and walk on 2 feet are not very far away. I stand by my statement - robots will remain ahead of man as far as planetary exploration. They’re ahead of us now by simple virtue that they can go to Mars and we can’t. By the time the technology exists to send men to Mars then robotic technology will likely have advanced to the point that they can far exceed our physical capabilities. The only advantage I see humans having over robots in the near and mid future is intelligence - but with remote viewing and control from Earth that’s not an issue for robots functioning on Mars.

19

Why would the rover need human control? Long before we could get a manned mission to Mars the AI will have improved to the point that real time human control will be superfluous.

20

[QUOTE=Frazzled]
NASA is not going to send an astronaut to Mars with a shovel and tell him to dig a 10 foot deep hole while wearing a pressure suit. If the mission required a deep core sample they’d send a drill to dig down 10 feet. That same drill could be deployed remotely from Earth and the data attained could be analyzed on Earth. No human required.
[/QUOTE]

Except it can’t really, since we don’t have such a probe and won’t have one to deploy for quite a while. If we send a human there, however, including such a drill would be easy, since, you know, we have already done this in our manned missions to the Moon. And the human could, you know, pick the drill up and move it 5 feet to the right if s/he saw something interesting over there that might warrant a second (or third, or 20th or 500th) core sample. You know, since they will be there a year and all. Good luck doing all that with your probe. Hope it doesn’t get stuck in the sand.

Uhuh. They are sticking close because it takes hours or even days to program them to move and execute the movement orders…and because trying to traverse a long way via remote link can lead to disaster for the probe. Something a human would just walk across can spell the end to the current and past generations of probes. So, the question is NOT irrelevant…in fact, it demonstrates simply one of the ways a human on site is superior to a probe. Another is the ability to turn your head, see something interesting and amble on over to take a look, then maybe see something else a bit further and do the same. It’s simply ridiculous to even try and compare the two. The only thing the probe has going for it is it’s cheaper to get there (and something is better than nothing…the nothing that folks like you have relegated us to until the Chinese or Indians catch up and can do it for us) and it’s risk free. If we lose a probe, well, it sucks for the folks working the project but we’ll just send another one in a few years or a decade or so to replace it.

Sure there is plenty to learn with probes. I’m a big fan of the things, especially since, as I noted, it’s all we have. Something is better than nothing. That wasn’t what I was responding to, nor what you were agreeing with Leaffan over, however. Again, it’s ridiculous to even attempt to compare the capabilities of the two, and it’s especially ridiculous to say that humans on Mars FOR A FUCKING YEAR wouldn’t learn much or do much, or that the sheer amount of data collected and brought back wouldn’t dwarf everything and anything a probe could do. The only down side is the cost would dwarf what all those probes could or would do as well, and I freely acknowledge that.

We DON’T…that’s quite different from ‘we can’t’. Humans have all of the advantages over probes…there is, simply put, nothing a probe can do that a human couldn’t, and myriad things a human can do that a probe can’t…except the critical thing, which is gain funding to actually send humans to Mars (or anywhere else except low earth orbit). THAT is the one thing probes can do better.