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One Year Until Phoenix Mars Mission Launch
pipcorona writes "The principal investigator of the Phoenix Mars Lander Mission released an article yesterday describing how the mission is progressing, talking about landing sites and informing the public that they are officially one year away from launch." From the article: "In parallel with the assembly of the spacecraft, our Payload Interoperability Testbed (PIT) in the Tucson Science Operations Center has been integrating engineering models of all the science instruments. Besides validating the integration procedures for the instruments, this facility will be used to verify that all our instruments work as a team-important since they were developed individually. In particular, the digging of soils and delivery of samples to instruments will be thoroughly tested."
"Some opponents of human space exploration set science as the major interest, and go on to say that much more science can be done by robots, *costs being equal*."
;-)
;-)"
;-) But, at the end, I think it's necessary to go ahead with human exploration, and that is so expensive that, aside from space-tourism, the real 'exploration' can only be done by space-agencies. I mean, no company is ever going to waste money for mere exploration; they only will do anything, if they can see a profit (which is what companies do). Thus, *they* only see the economic incentive; something we both seem to agree should not be the case. It's not logical to leave everything up to them, then.
And thus, it IS a matter of economics, because no one is seriously going to claim humans are less versatile and able to do in situ research then whatever robot we can create these days, if costs do not matter. Robots do not do a better job then humans; they only do a better job per buck that is being put in (exept for human-biological spaceresearch, of course). With this I agree, as I said.
The argument about 'let's do it when it becomes affordable' is, indeed, also very much heard, but I think this is a bit of false argument. I mean by that, that it can be used all of the time, for everything. For instance, let's imagine in a hundred years technology has become so cheap one can send humans to Mars for a tenth of the price of today. Well, then, if technology has become so cheap, it has become equally cheap for robotic missions, so it STILL will be 1000 times cheaper to send probes and robots then humans. and this will *always* be true: it will always be far more expensive to send humans then robots, nomatter how cheap things get. So, one no distinction for a treshold with this argument since the relative price-difference will always exist, and thus, it becomes rather arbitrary to decide what costs are worth it. I think it's worth the costs now, you may think it's not, but purely base on this 'argument' one can never reach a logical consensus, since the argument merely boils down to an opinion.
Thus, I leave that economic argument for what it is, and, as said earlier, I argue from other reasons beside the purely economical.
"After all, Columbus would not have been granted all the funding necessary for a huge research effort into creating shipbuilding technology; he was given a couple of standard-technology ships. "
Yes, but if they had made that huge research effort&funding, instead of 'waiting' for standard, more affordable ships (in analogy with what you claim), they could have discovered America 100 years sooner!
"Now, add to the mix that the massive investment of NASA credits into making expensive launchers is an economic deterrent for the development of cheaper launchers, and you can well conclude that supporting space exploration implies opposing existing space agencies...
Well, let's be honest; if it had been up to NASA, the spaceshuttle would never have been made in the first place. That expensive piece of 'launchvehicle' was the result of political compromise. And I'm not counter-arguing that politicians often squander huge amounts of money.
And, as said, if you argument that not only companies (or the economic viewpoint) should matter, then we're back at the starting point: it will always be cheaper to send probes than to send humans, and thus, always that much more science can be done by robots, costs being equal.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Of course you can't imagine it. Because it hasn't happened. Contrary to popular belief and decades of NASA propoganda - the technology transfer from space to other fields has been essentially nil.
Historically various providers of space rated components have been conservative in the extreme - they tend to use and reuse the same materials again and again. Partly because it's expensive and difficult to qualify new materials, partly because the costs of a mistake are so high. Overall, they (the space industry) wait until a new material has been thoroughly proven in another application before trying it themselves. (Kapton for example has been used for insulation (both electrical and thermal) since the mid 60's.)
Not really. Medical monitoring systems at use in a typical hospital are better than that used by the astronauts by orders of magnitude or more. The systems used by the medical industry are a seperate (and much more advanced) evolutionary path.
And generally ones not needed elsewhere because spacecraft need combinations of lightness, strength, and extreme enviroments not found anywhere else.
Both developed prior to and seperate from the space program.
Based on history to date - no, there won't be.