NASA: Planetary Exploration, Or Better Coffee

6EQUJ5 writes: "I sighed bitterly when I read the headline at MSNBC_SpaceNews_Front: "NASA voices 2020 vision for Mars" (OK, let's hope I live that long!) Bitterness gave way to sheer comedy when I read the next headline: NASA craft to watch coffee crop. Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission -- in the meantime NASA picks up odd jobs like watching coffee grow." While these stories make a funny contrast, a) I'm sure there's a lot to learn (and plan) before sending a mission to Mars and b) if NASA's going to test cool new tech, like that solar wing, perhaps giving it a practical earthside purpose is a good idea.

Comments

Manned missions

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with manned missions is that they can, in the case of an accident, be a huge PR loss for NASA. And bad PR means further cuts in funding (the US public will ask itself, why spend millions to send people to their deaths when it could be spent looking for cures for our heart conditions?).

In light of this, I can understand the careful planning. But I'm not sure that sending people to Mars is at all a good solution - it is expensive, dangerous (both in the human life and the PR senses) and takes more time.

Developing and sending better remote-controlled and semiautomated equipment would be a better investment, since a) it's cheaper and b) developments in robotics and AI will have added positive side-effects.

--
Hans Petter

Re:Why Mars?

[Robotech_Master]

What failures have we had so far with a space probe using nuclear power? We did it for decades before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl--with no accidents yet. Slashdot recently ran a story on how scientists had been able to contact one of the Pioneer space probes which is out far beyond the range of Pluto, where the sun is just another star and solar panels would be of no use. Think that would be possible without nuclear power?

Think there's anything in the world without risk?

Here are some excerpts from A Scientist's Notebook: Risk and Realities by Gregory Benford, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sep 2000, Vol. 99 Issue 3, p112, 12p., retrieved from EBSCOhost via my public library's website. (Much as I'd like to, I can't paste the whole thing without stepping far outside the limits of Fair Use, so to obtain it with all context intact, go to your local library or equivalent website.)

Still, such questions arise constantly in our technological world. In my last column I dealt with the Mars probe failures, but the element of risk appends to every human activity.

We often forget this, demanding that something be "safe" when nothing ever truly is. As you sit reading this, probably indoors, radon gas accumulates in the room with you. In many homes it probably yields a higher level of radioactivity than if you were sitting right on top of a nuclear waste storage facility.

. . .

Lawyers argue their cases as though the world should rightly guarantee us all a life free of any chance of accident -- and if something bad happens, it must be somebody else's fault.

That attitude arises because juries welcome it. Their perceptions of risk color courtroom judgments and public policy alike, but seldom very rationally (i.e., seldom with any quantitative sense).

. . .

Nuclear power provides a need that will be met somehow, after all. In North America it has lost the battle for public opinion. In Europe there is a regional schizophrenia. The French generate most of their electricity in nuclear plants, and have never had any big, risky events. Yet most of the rest of the western Europeans are trying to shut down the reactors they have. In Eastern Europe, reactors get a better perception. Even the Russians continue on with their extensive program, probably because they have so much invested.

Burning oil and coal, on the other hand, kills about 10,000 people per year in the U.S.A. from increased lung cancer and emphysema. This number has been known from careful NIH studies for decades. Nobody gets excited about those deaths, ever...except the relatives, of course.

The article also goes into why airline travel is perceived as more dangerous than automobile travel when air travel has a far lower death-per-miles-travelled rate than automobiles, why nuclear power is perceived as more dangerous than coal when coal kills far more people, and why you can find cancer-causing agents in almost everything, including peanut butter.

Risk is always present. We can confine it to within acceptible levels and move forward, or we can try to make everything completely "safe" and stay frozen right where we are--because no matter what, someone is going to object to any attempt to introduce bold new techniques or technologies (ion or nuclear propulsion, anyone?) as too unsafe to try out, even under carefully restricted study and implementation. We can't just stagnate, or we'll never get humanity off this rock and safely ensconced on other planets before someone finally goes nuts and pushes The Button.
--

Take the time to do it right.

[marcsiry]

We rushed to the Moon for political purposes, and all we have to show for it now is some grainy footage and a bunch of lucite encased rocks.

Our trips to Mars should serve as the beginning to the eventual human expansion into space, and not some cheap theatrical stunt. They should be accomplished in a considered and sustainable manner.

All us dot-bombers know what happens when you throw together a grand plan in too little time. Think IBM, not eLaundryBasket.com.

Mars by 1977

[Animats]

In the late 1960s, NASA made serious plans for manned flybys (not landings) of Mars and Venus in 1977. Mission lengths were two to three years. The astronauts probably would not have survived that long in zero G. The zero-G record is 438 days in Mir, and that cosmonaut had lost bone mass, lost blood volume, and sustained other injuries.

If this is ever tried, it either has to be a faster trip (which would require something other than chemical rockets) or a big spacecraft that rotates to provide gravity. Nuclear propulsion would work, but the political problems are tough.

Og: Travel to Neighboring Valley Waste of Time

[reallocate]

We don't need to risk lives travelling to the next valley, We are doing just fine here in this valley. Besides, the young males would try to overthrow Chief Wug if he sent a team to go to the next valley and they were killed by the Giant Fire-Breathing Invisible Ape that lives just beyond our valley.

Yes, we have everything we need here in Olduvai, so we don't need to do anything like explore what's over the horizon.

Well, look at it this way....

[Dark Nexus]

Better coffee (be it better tasting, just a bit cheaper because of larger crops, or something else) could lead to the NASA Engineers being able to pull more all nighters and get us to Mars sooner!

The road to Mars is paved with double cream, double sugar!

Dark Nexus

Re:Earthside practicality

[number one duck]

Seriously though. You don't get advances by pumping money into something specific (better microprocessors), you get advances by pumping money into a *goal* (reaching mars), and then solving the new problems that arise. The former just gets you refinements of existing things, the latter tends to get you things that are completely new.
My mention of war was because war is often the other great instigator of technology. The amount of technical development we've had from the two world wars alone is staggering, simply because the necessity arose.
I'd rather set a goal, then reach for it, than depend on market forces or the coming of some dire necessity.

Gezundheit.