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NASA Plans On Bringing Back Martian Rocks

Posted by timothy on from the what's-a-couple-of-billion-for-some-rocks dept.

FortKnox writes: "In this Y! article, NASA is planning on sending a robotic mission to Mars in an attempt to bring back Martian stuff (rocks, soil, etc...). Looks like its a tough mission to plan for; they are calling it 'Apollo without the astronauts.'" I would like to go to Mars in person, but if they're spending my money already, I'd like them to please use robots for a while.

2 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Smaller, Cheaper, Better by astroboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What can we do by inspecting the rocks in person we can't do remotely? We should be able to do everything except touch it.

    There's a limit to how much experimental equipment you can shove onto a Mars probe. Some amazingly cool things have been done, but once you get the rocks back to Earth, you can unleash everything you've got in the lab on 'em.

    What other benefits do we get out of the mission?
    Anything which pushes the boundaries of the engineering -- getting the unmanned probe to launch itself back to Earth -- will have great impact on both the Space program and terrestrial spin-offs. And that's quite apart from the science.
  2. Re:Motto by ivan256 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People today don't have the stomach for what it would take to set up a sustainable colony on Mars with today's technology. In the 1700's when europeans crossed the Atlantic they lost numerous colonists and expiditions before one took. And that was going to a place on the same planet where they know had to potential to sustain life. Without further information do you really think we could make a perminantly sustainable Mars colony with todays technology, and not loose a single person? Imagine how fast people of today would can the project after they saw the deaths of the colonists on TV a few hours later.