Come on!. It’ll be fun!
It’s not only the scope which is limited, but the autonomy. Most of these tend to be semi-autonomus, and are continuously monitored and updated from Earth. Consider the recent landing of Philae - it had multiple CPUs programmed in Forth which allowed the code to be modified while the unit was operating. But the delay involved between human observations and commands still cost them much of the analysis they hoped to perform. Also, it is much easier to afford autonomy on a body such as Mars which has been studied and mapped for decades, than for more distant exploration.
New York is much more a known quantity than extraterrestrial exploration! I have navigated the streets of NYC myself, yet I am not qualified as an astronaut.
Being aware of hazards is not the same as doing research. The research of the effects of space and other environments upon humans and other Earth life are part of the science which is being done.
Not necessarily. Anything beyond Earth’s orbit may well be a one-way trip, but this needn’t make such endeavors unproductive. There are many volunteers willing to undertake a one-way Mars mission. Choosing to live and die in an interesting way, a singular experience, which greatly expands the boundaries of human knowledge is not without its appeal.
Is there any reason to assume that these are mutually exclusive options? People can colonize Mars, although I am not sure how practical it may be to do so. I’d prefer to have an atmosphere, myself, to keep the rads and rocks away. As far as what I “believe”, I believe that life itself will probably be drastically re-defined over this century, that molecular computers and biological life will be interchangeable enough to make the humans versus robots debate irrelevant.
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Until you can cut the time requirements, you’re left with the choice between very long flyby and test missions before landing, or no test missions before landing.
And the lander would face much tougher challenges than the moon lander, and a much longer stay on the surface.
I see a lot of thinking behind the responses to my proposition that sending humans to Mars is not the way to do serious science with a good ROI.
But no one has proposed a situation where a human could out-perform state of the art robotics when researching the atmosphere and terrain of Mars. All I see is generalities about computers not being autonomous (enough?) and man being able to resolve an unspecified crisis/problem situation that a robot couldn’t cope with (remember, they are often re-programmed to make adjustments to changing situations during extended space missions). How about some specific examples??
[quote=“Chip_Cogswelle, post:24, topic:47467”]
But no one has proposed a situation where a human could out-perform state of the art robotics when researching the atmosphere and terrain of Mars.[/quote]
How about specific examples of what this question even means? What does out-performing a robot entail? Computers are merely tools. I am not sure that asking whether it is the tools or the people who use them as the way forward is ultimately a meaningful question. The tool and its user comprise a system.
I lack expertise and don’t intend to speculate at length about such matters.
Those generalities are not all that I wrote about. The most interesting thing about humans on Mars is measuring the effects upon the humans of existing on another planet. It has never been done before, and I think can yield data about some of the fundaments of why all of life on this planet originated and proliferated the way it has done. Living things in space do not grow the way they do on Earth, and it is likely to be different on Mars as well.
As for specifics about long-range operation of/communication with autonomous research equipment - the resources needed for electronics are much simpler and lighter than those needed for biological agents, but this does not mean that “anything goes”. Most electronics do not fare well in space. The rad-hard embedded systems used in space tend to be more old-school than the 64-bit, sub 50 nanometer processors used in home computers. The most powerful computers we might take for granted are very delicate.
The AI behind the analysis tends to be based upon pattern recognition, that is, already knowing what you are looking for. Refining this method might require constant human interaction especially when dealing with unknown locations and phenomenon. There is no reason to assume that making autonomous systems is always easy or even possible. You only know once you can test it. It’s not trivial to test such things here, and less so when millions of miles of distance are involved. Deploying these things while close enough for immediate feedback is more ideal.
For a person who self-declares “I lack expertise”, you sure go on and on. My question is quite simple:
Name one (hypothetical) situation that would require an on-board human to resolve, so that good science is done. For such a mission, there would be a stack of experiments and analysis that would be on the “wish list” for a successful mission. The accuracy and reproducibility of these is what good science is all about.
Considering the accomplishments of the rovers already on Mars, and the many planetary and deep space probes (esp. Voyager, launched in the 1970s!) that continue to deliver data refute most of your argument about things that computer/electronically controlled robots cannot do! For decades, engineers have designed electronics that have been successfully “ruggedized” for space.
Over and out!
So I “go on and on”, yet you are again goading me for a different answer to another version of the same question?
I already did refer to a whole category of them, several times. As I told you, I think biological experiments are more interesting. But since this doesn’t support the argument you are making, you appear to be disinterested in considering it.
That’s good methodology. But, at the risk of sounding pedantic, what it’s about is the subject of study.
I never said that there was anything they could not do. What I said was that it is extremely difficult to get them to do what they have been doing. Such systems have, like anything else, certain limitations.
Here’s one solution:
Take both humans and a large fleet of robots to one of Mars’s moons. The humans then land the robots on Mars, and control them from their comparatively low latency position. This avoids the problem escaping Mars’s gravity well.
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