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Going Back to the Moon and Mars
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting three-part interview with author Dr. Andrew Chaikin discusses whether humans or machines could best explore the moon or Mars and even whether a crew could get along with each other for three years on an extended mission. His Mars planning draws on Apollo mission transcripts, and he cites mishaps with the Apollo 15 lunar rover almost sliding catastrophically down a mountain, an astronaut argument as to who took the most famous earthrise picture and what after 14 months in space, the Russian record-holder uses to recover his land legs: 'One vodka, one sauna'."
Bringing humans into space is just PR, humans are fragile, require massive resources (living quarters, food, oxygen, water etc), and are error-prone. Humans in space is just pure national-ego and PR.
:)
Of course remote-controlling stuff is very slow, but it still requires less resources and time than to put actual people into space.
I think our best bet at exploring other planets "from the ground" is still machines, even more so if we can improve their AI:s and self-sustainability and adaptability in different conditions.
But then again, who wouldnt love going into space anyway?
One vodka?
So is that one shot of vodka, or a 750ml/1000ml bottle?
Being russian, I'd only hope it were the 2nd or 3rd. Not a hell of a lot that a vodka shot is going to do for a man.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The primary goal at this point regarding manned spaceflight should be developing new better safer more efficient ways of getting into orbit, rather than blow massive resources on something with little payoff. We will never be able to colonize space with out a major advancement in this area.
I suggest that the pool of astronauts considered for a trip to Mars be limited to those who have successfully parented difficult children. It is an experience that teaches one incredible patience in working out solutions when one's emotional forebearance is stretched beyond what one would consider possible. This common shared experience of such a team would provide a bond that would likely transcend the difficulties of the mission. Additionally, such candidates would be very happy to get off this planet.
WTF do they have to do with colonisation of space?
Space is there to be taken, the way America was taken; land, money, resources, power, independance, freedom.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm glad we didn't have governments a million years ago, we'd all still be up in a tree in Africa somewhere deciding whether or not it was safe enough, or practical enough to go down to the ground.
But you'd think people on a trip to Mars would all be nerds.
I'm all for exploration of the moon, and mars - but I guess I wonder if they've done a pros/cons list on this one ... "billions" is quite a bit to spend, isn't it ?
I really don't know much about the benefits of this kind of research, but with so many other issues at hand, what does the investment net us in the end ?
Erm, space is mostly large areas of emptiness sprinkled with very large fusion reactors and a few balls of gas and rock. Any radiation mankind could pump out wouldn't even be noticed against the normal amounts kicked out by a star,
We've done enough damage here on earth. I don't think it would be right to fill space with the radiative effects of nuclear reactions.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
Rank Presidents by th
If it takes 3 years, great! Imagine the ratings for each episode as they get closer to Mars, and the ratings for the finale? WOW!
The value of a man stepping on to the surface of another planet being measured in television ratings makes me want to drop to one knee and weep openly.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I don't think it would be right to fill space with the radiative effects of nuclear reactions.
Well, without them the sun would go out.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Of course, those were the plans. Plans and reality do have a way of disagreeing.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
If you want to send humans into space, you will need to dedicate a huge amount of the budget on comforts to keep them alive. With robotic missions you can spend the money on science. People treat human exploration as a given since they tacitly assume humans must explore the cosmos. Yet most of these people understand little about space science what is already known about the deleterious affects space has on our bodies. We are already in our perfect environment, there is no natural impetus to leave.
Hasn't this been, like, achieved a zillion times before? polar, oceanic, military exploration has seen similar challenges all the time.
Sure, humans are expensive and fragile. And sure, robots are improving, are cheaper, able to go p[laces humans can't, and they're of course expendible. But humans are much more adaptible and flexible, they can improvise, and they can think for themselves. Robots are DUMB. Take Mars as an example: cool as the robots are, they are lucky if they can move 100 meters in a day. And that's assuming they don't get confused by loose ground. Or have a flash formatting problem and just sit there for weeks...
But above all, humans are essential not so much because of what they can do as because what they represent: the future. The whole idea of space exploration is that ultimately we want humanity to settle the stars. Not to relieve population pressure, and not because we want our vacations on Mars. But because that is what life itself does. In the end, if space exploration is just a question of going a few places, taking some pictures, and maybe doing some science, then sooner or later it will die out. People won't keep spending $G for blue-sky science indefitiely. If you don't believe me, ask a particle physicist how much public support they're getting these days. However, people do largely understand at a deep level that space is about the next frontier, and that is why NASA enjoys even the level of support it does.
My colleages (I'm a scientist) have a tendency to forget the human side of the equation. They get carried away by their science (that what it takes to BE a scientist), and forget just how reliant they are on public support. It's easy to think "imagine what we could do if we spent 5 $G on robots", when the truth is that there would never be the same level of resources available for robots. And for good reason - if space exploration is merely a science, then it should compete on a level playing field with other, equally important sciences, like biology. Or particle theory. Or agricultural sciences, or medicine. Or mathematics. But of course, NASA gets a disproportionately large share of the "science" budget.
That being said, I think that NASA's human spaceflight is a total clusterfsck. They need to actually accomplish something! Even something simple like figuring out how to -- or if it's possible -- to avoide bone loss in long-duration spaceflight.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I think one of the false dichotomies that winds up being used is: if you're in favor of space exploration, then you must support NASA and everything it does.
The problem is, I look at NASA's human spaceflight "program" and see failure. They have not built successively better capabilities towards a goal. In fact, it's hard to state with any seriousness that there has been a goal. "Permanent manned presense in space" is not a goal, it's... not even a tactic. What is it? I don't really see a whole lot of "the vision thing" in the current Moon-Mars proposal. Is there a goal? Why will the next 10-20 Congresses continue funding it, if there is not a tangible benefit?
Contrast this with the JPL-led Mars exploration program. Unlike the manned "program", JPL really does have a program worthy of the name. They keep building on past successes. They exploit current assets to increase capability and reduce cost and risk (e.g. they use orbiting probes to relay telemetry from landers, just one example). Each time they go, they don't throw away what they learned last time.
It's really hard for me to see how NASA will succeed in going to the Moon when they can't even find a way to take the risks needed to service Hubble. There has been a loss of technical competence, programmatic vision, and boldness (appropriately tempered by realistic assessment) that makes it hard to see this succeeding.
But blah blah blah... why do I bother writing these things. No one pays any attention anyway.
Arguing about whether humans or machines do science in space better is missing the point.
Human space travel is just that: h-u-m-a-n space travel. It's about going from Here to There.
Space travel offers a wonderful venue to pursue science. Likewise, much science needs to be done to support human space travel. But those are secondary motivations.
We didn't populate the Earth because we wanted to "do" science. Ditto the rest of the place.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Having experienced free-floating as they departed the Earth's gravity, the moonwalkers had to adjust to the moon's one-sixth value compared to terrestrial gravity.
Every science writer who makes this mistake should be made to leave Earth's gravity.
The latest Slashdot meme.
First, nobody said anything about interstellar travel. Or did you think the Moon and Mars were stars?
Second, crossing the ocean with the technology of the 1500s was just as dangerous -- maybe moreso -- than crossing interplanetary space with current technology. Hell, in those days they had no idea where they were going or even where they were (no good way to measure longitude). They knew very little about using the sea to keep them alive, certainly not how to get fresh water from it, and the incidence of scurvey and other diseases of malnourishment was frightening.
-- Alastair
The only "stupidity" in the analogy is your involvement. Read some books for a change.
... but that 1/r^2 sure is a bitch). Just like ocean crossing, finding an island every so often was a god-send ... similarly so with space travel, provided you have the skills and equipment to make use of the materials on the asteroids or comets you happen across. And the wise man doesn't leave such encounters to chance ... he AIMS for the next convenient port-of-call.
For the purposes of this article, I'm limiting my points to intrasolar space, probably out into the inner Oort.
The ocean is a desert, which anyone with a basic oceanographic education could tell you. It took considerable skill and resources to cross it alive, and even more such in health. And the loss of your ship meant the loss of your life almost as surely as if you were in space.
You can survive space transits by being as skilled in the enterprise. In space , you have direct access to sunlight, which provides power (even propulsion if you choose the solar-sail option
Crossing the oceans proved to be an exercise in ENGINEERING. So it is with space travel. It's just that the Western civilization is resoundingly spoiled with a very mature transportation infrastructure, and no longer commonly understands that before you can go anywhere, you must build some sort of road. This includes fuel and repair depots. Just because these are not in space right now, doesn't mean that they cannot be there.
The ocean-crossing analogy has salient points that apply. Just because you can open your sailboat hatch and not decompress, doesn't make for a bad analogy.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
There are two ideas here that are seemingly in conflict. Firstly that robots are cheaper and easier to get 'out there'. Secondly that humans need to get off this planet because we need multiple home worlds for reasons of risk-abatement.
I agree with both of those views because they only conflict in the immediate short term.
If you want to get people to Mars in large enough quantities to be meaningful, then you need to do the science on the planet first. If robots can achieve that Mars mission more effectively - then in the short term we should use robots in order to hasten the time when understand enough about the planet to go and live there.
In the very long term, I predict we'll have either machines which are truely as intelligent as us - or a way to put our own thoughts and emotions into robotic bodies (after one generation, it matters very little which of those it is). Either way, sending them to colonise Mars will be just as valid as sending our 'bags of mostly water'. Beings whose thoughts are essentially just software can travel at low cost and at the speed of light with no inconveniences of any kind.
www.sjbaker.org
It's really hard to have a meaningful conversation about future space exploration, when the key participants have hidden agendas, political considerations, and egotistical motives. There are only a few significant issues that should color the choices we make;
1. Earth is a dangerous place, and the human race barely escaped extinction once already. We need to get life all over the place, and at the top of that list, human life. By spreading us all over, we preclude the largest list of possible extinction scenarios. That and the earth is only going to be a happy home for a finite time anyway... we should get our behinds out into the void and start having the kind of fun you can only get as a space faring race.
We must move into space... it is our destiny.
2. Making space habitable is very hard, and extremely expensive. We need to build smart machines that can build sustainable habitats on the moon, mars, a whole bunch of asteroids chock full of useful resources (including water), and the jovian moons. Once there are fully operational facillities in these places, supporting a growing and healthy population of people in space will be cake. The skyhook will reduce the cost of moving resources, and the development of smart self learning robots will have fantastic applications here on earth.
We must move into space... it is our destiny, but we should do so thoughfully, and make sure that each new foothold supports the next. We must avoid stupid and pointless excess for the sole purpose of flaunting our egos, or controling the masses.
3. Keep the military out of space, whatever you do. The only way we can afford to place weapons in space is if they're pointed away from the planet, designed to protect us from an external threat. Literally make them impossible to point at Earth. Any other scenario has one nation lording space based weapons over others and world politics dictate that this nation will be hated and despised. We want to protect ourselves from the small and fearful minds of angry men with little or no vision.
The short term benefit for humanity is; wealth of resources, new technology, protection from potential extinction. The medium term benefit is abundant new housing off planet for a burgeoning population to move... the human adventure of space pioneering. The long term benefit is that life from our world has been preserved, we are allowed to evolve fully into whatever we will become, and the planet is preserved so that it remains a garden, allowing new and interesting life to evolve, mayhaps even joining us as we travel into space.
In short, we must make our homes among the stars, and we need to do so, such that the entire race see's benefit, value, and is part of the process. If we can do this... our future will indeed be bright and boundless.
Genda
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw