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The Case For Going To Phobos Before Going To Mars
MarkWhittington writes: The current NASA thinking concerning the Journey to Mars program envisions a visit to the Martian moon Phobos in the early 2030s before attempting a landing on the Martian surface in the late 2030s, as Popular Mechanics noted. The idea of a practice run that takes astronauts almost but not quite to Mars is similar to what the space agency did during the 1960s Apollo program. Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 each orbited the moon but did not land on it before the Apollo 11 mission went all the way to the lunar surface, fulfilling President John. F. Kennedy's challenge.
So why would we send people?
Because it'd be cool as fuck. Mind you, I ain't going.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
We can't build a sustainable habitat in Antarctica or in the middle of a desert, why bother with the Moon? :)
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
WE haven't been to Mars. We've sent tools there. Huge difference.
So why would we send people?
Lots of reasons. We'd learn a ton by doing it. We'd develop a lot of amazing technology. The economic benefits would be enormous. It would advance our knowledge faster than almost anything else we could do including sending more probes. It would be the greatest exploration in human history. It would inspire generations of scientists and engineers.
Need I go on?
The real question is why wouldn't we go there? The only answer to that is because we lack vision or courage or political will. The likely benefits of going greatly outweigh the likely benefits of staying on Earth.
Can't or won't? I would have thought that it would be possible to create a habitat in either that would require nothing incoming.
So far we cannot. We've tried several times and haven't cracked the problem yet. That's not to say we won't figure it out or that the problem is intractable but so far we haven't even figured it out on Earth much less in zero-G. I have some confidence that with enough resources applied we can solve the problem but to date that hasn't happened.
Mod it to -1 if you like, people will never *be* on Mars. The closest they'll get is to see it through a visor or a monitor.
And if that's the case, a monitor on a different planet is more convenient.
You are obviously not a geologist. A person, even in a suit, and wielding a rock hammer, and equipped with a rather small lab can do more geology in one day than all of the Mars probes ever sent have done, combined.
Not to mention the fricking communications latency of using RPVs, or depending on the cleverness of remotely targeted semi-autonomous robots.
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
Yes. And I've been to Paris, because one time I saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
If a person is going to live in a new land, he must first have some idea how he's going to live. For example, you don't just pack up your family's day sailer and go to Antarctica without any idea where you're going to get food or warmth...or anything. That's the problem with Mars now. The moon is a good place to figure out such things...and magnitudes cheaper.