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Spirit Rover is One Year Old
dolphin558 writes "The little rover that could, did. The Spirit Rover marks its one year aniversary after an expected lifetime of just 3 months. It has traversed more than 2 miles of Martian landscape and sent back thousands of pictures and reams of data. There is no indication that it will die anytime soon as it climbs the Columbia Hills."
If the spirit rover can last for a year on Mars, why do we need to send astronauts (naughts?)? Wouldn't the money be better spent on more robots?
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Tires on a car don't last a year on a smooth road for example.
Tires can last much longer than a year. I know people who have had the same set for three years.
But relating to why the tires on the rovers last (and will continue to), it has to do with friction. Tires on car get very hot when driving at highway speeds, and abrasion occurs (when small pieces of it comes off and stick to the road). The rovers tires move at such slow speeds that the heat generated by friction is negligible and abrasion forces are very small.
This is something that the USA just does so much better than anything else - well done guys.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Every time they pat themselves on the back for the rovers lasting so long I cringe. It feels like "Your car was warrentied for 36k miles and you're at 80k... High Five!"
Plus, come on, did you have to mention Star Trek?
Well the rovers have been on Mars for one EARTH year, but not quite yet 1/2 a MARTIAN year. Mars DOES have seasons, so if the rovers landed in the summer, it's now winter there. If they make it a full Martian year, that would really be something!
Please forgive the AC, this is my first post - trying it out....
/. so many posts usually accompany articles about ST, Firefly, etc. - yet fewer accompany real space activity. Further, there's often significant opposition/skepticism directed towards real manned space activity.
I find it interesting how on
Now I don't think NASA these days does a good job of manned space activity and hope private enterprise opens the real gates to space for more normal people. Regardless, I suspect this combination of reduced interest/increased skepticism in real manned space activity vs. the pretend kind is a reflection of the increased physical lethargy and risk aversion prevalent in (U.S.) society today. That this might be reflected too in the so-called Nerd community is distressing.
My apologies if it comes across as offensive to anyone.
Paraphrasing here, but Scotty said it best (to Geordi during 'Relics'):
"Och, lad! Why'd ye tell him the real time you think it'd take? Double the time and ye'll be a miracle worker!"
So halve (quarter?) the life expectancy and get the same?
20 robots over 4 years are going to do more science than a couple of humans can in a month. And, cover a wider variety of territory.
And maybe we don't want to wait 4 years for something that can be in a month, as for territory: nuke powered mobile labs. Plus it takes less people to manage a couple astronauhts than 20 bots.
I don't know about that. Some of those spectrometer readings take several hours to perform even if a human is there. With more money, some of that would happen a lot faster. But power on Mars is going to cost money regardless of whether it is produced for humans or robots.
Spectrometers are a lot cheaper and easier to build when you don't have to attach them to a robot, imagine this scenario: mars-o-naughts walking around up to five miles around their traveling base station, anytime they see a rock they want to test the base station computer records their position (because they push a 'mark-location-button'), they take a picture of the rock insitu then take it back to the base station later and put in an assembly-automated-spectrometer which can do the readings anytime, such as when the crew is sleeping)
I am sorry, but the accounting favors robots. They can cover more territory per dollar.
If they have the ships to take me there, I will pay for it with my own money.
For the same cost as astronauts, we can have 20 or more robots with higher
bandwidth at 20 different locations. And, they can stay there a long time,
unlike astronauts (unless we build a very expensive base). The Tortus wins
this race in the end.
You assume a "big expensive base". Yet it has been shown that this is not
needed. Robots have other shortcomings I'll deal with below. But one to
address here is cost.Robots are very task oriented. If you discover something
unexpected, or think of something you didn't several years ago when the
project got started you now have another several year period to go back and
retry something a bit differently. This problem is going to persist until we
have full human form robots and a pretty darned good AI.
20 robots over 4 years are going to do more science than a couple of humans
can in a month. And, cover a wider variety of territory.
First, you misuse the term "science". Collecting data and doing chemical
analysis is not science. It is data gathering and performing chemical
analysis. Science requires rational thought and the testing and re-evaluation
of hypotheses. No robot without these capabilities can do "science". Therefore
a million robots over a decade would do less science than a single human on
Mars for a month. Robots are simple creations for specific, simple tasks.
Nothing more.
That said, what are the scientific implications of humans on Mars as opposed
to robots? Here, humans win hands down. The limitations of robots even in data
mining are too costly for long term operations. Let us say for instance one of
the rovers found a fossil. What can it it about it? Unless it was designed for
fossil study, all it can do is take a picture. A human on site, however can
examine the area for additional ones, assess the layout of the area visually,
compare the layout of the fossile in relation and determine additinal courses
of action and so on.
He or she could also communicate with a paleontologist back on Earth, for
example, on the fossil and carry out additional studies on it with only a half
hour delay as opposed to several years to design, build, and transport a new
bot designed to do limited data gathering regarding the fossil.
And no, as someone who has had to deal with pictures as intel, pictures do not
give you the layout and feel of the land that a human observer does.
On the "covered ground", sorry again you are incorrect. The cost of your 20
roborovers operating for 4 years is more, and covers less ground than a set of
humans with rovers when you compare teh scientific return.
Look at the speed of the rovers. Double it. Now compare
that with a set of humans using in situ fuel production to power a land based
rover capable of covering over a hundred Km in a day. The two current roborovers
can cover 100 meters in a full day. Compare that to a single human rover
carrying a pair of scientists that can cover 100-150 kilometers per day. Your
20 roborovers (assuming they are no more costly than the current two) will cost
you over 8 billion dollars. Each roborover can cover 100 meters distance in a
day, making it a maximum of 36.5 kilometers in a year, or a maximum of 146Km over 4 years
(assuming no losses of roborovers fo course) that's a maximum distance of
Multiplied by 20 that's a maximum distance covered of about 2920 Km for your 8 billion.
Compare this to humans on planet for six months (the current reference mission of Mars
Direct). Each day they have a maximum distance they can cover of 150Km.
Assume further that only a single team goes out at a time. That comes out to
4500Km/month (30 days). Over the mission stay of six months that 4 person team
can cover a maximum of 27,000Km. All this in a short six month period. The
cost per mission of Mars Direct? About 5.2-7 billion.
So let us figure that out in dollars per Km covered as you claim is in favor
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.