Humans Will Never Colonize Mars

Mine asteroids with robots.. that makes wealth!

 

"If they want to jump into a volcano, then why should anyone else care?"

Oh, I don't know, a little thing called empathy. And it's particularly unempathetic (to a psychopathic degree) to encourage someone to jump into that volcano to boost your own sense of patriotism.

 

True, but my row boat reference was really just a size/mass comparison. Current 'manned' space craft designs are tiny, designed to hold a small number of crew (6 or so max) and short ranged. Serious long term missions to Mars or anywhere else with larger crews require larger and more complex vessels. You could send manned missions to Mars in current SpaceX sized designs but after allowing for all the extra equipment and supplies required crew size is still limited.

Bigger long term missions = bigger, more complex ships.

 

Looks like Elon Musk is getting ready to go regardless...

SpaceX's Mars-Colonizing 'Starship' Prototype Coming Together in Texas


The finished, 100-passenger version of Starship will sport six Raptors. Super Heavy, the giant rocket that will launch Starship off Earth's surface, will have 35 of these next-generation engines, Musk said recently.

 

They haven't gotten certified to carry a human to the ISS yet.

What Musk has done with rocketry is really amazing.

But, he's a long way from having a perfect record on time frames for that stuff - which doesn't exist yet.

And, there is capitalist competition going on between the private space corporations.

We should at least see what they actually build before hosing one winner with tax dollars.

 

Well I admit I've been amazed at what Musk (and others) have accomplished space-wise. I still don't think there is going to be a Musk Mars colony though.

 

Why the automatic assumption that "unmanned robot missions are cheaper and get more science done for the money than manned missions"?

Let's look at the 1960s-1970s exploration of the moon by the way of example.

The Soviets did sample return missions of lunar soil.

A few OUNZES

The 6 U.S. manned missions collected more than 800 lbs. of lunar soil and rock samples.

Now, I know those 6 manned missions cost a lot more than the Soviet unmanned ones.

But I doubt they cost 800 times more when all is said and done.

Apply that to a manned Mars program.

A sample return of a tiny bit of Mars soil would probably require an unmanned mission of 500 million dollars at least.

800 times that would be FOUR HUNDRED BILLION dollars!!! More than enough to fund several manned missions by any known government accounting. In fact I've seen the most likely NASA manned mission plans cost analyzed (including 50% cost overruns) and the total for development, testing, and flying the first three missions totals only about 75 billion dollars.

Remember that's three manned missions, a U.S. only program, over the course of 15 years. And with 50% cost overruns. Meaning 5 billion dollars a year.

Easily affordable by the U.S. even in the current federal budget climate.

 

Yes, that's what was chosen to be done a HALF CENTURY ago.

Today it's perfectly reasonable to have unmanned missions to retrive samples from moons, planets and asteroids.

Again, I don't know of an actual justification for landing a human on some such space body.

 

There have still been more successful manned missions to the moon than there have been successful sample return missions.

Simply saying it could be done now doesn't mean its necessarily doable.

 

Justification is not required any more than for someone summiting Everest.

 

I was going to say.... " a ship assembled in space" .... Kinda like a mother ship .... With food, water, fuel, or any other thing needed to supply a mission. That way most of the weight would stay in space. But I could be wrong...You know.....everyone knows....that if life is discovered on Mars we are going.

 

Firstly robotic technology has advanced in leaps and bounds since the seventies, making robotic landers vastly more flexible, efficient and cost effective per unit of mass (which is currently the critical factor when it comes to launching space missions. No-one back in the 60's could have built a fully automated moon lander that could move around and collect the same amount of samples as a manned mission, then return those samples to Earth. We didn't even have the technology to assemble a car using robotics let alone automate a complex space mission. However now if we wanted to send an unmanned mission to the moon and collect 800 pnds of lunar samples we could do it.

Also a lander back then might have been able to do some very basic analysis of the samples in situ but the complex stuff would still have had to be done in labs back on Earth. These days you can miniaturize and send vastly more complex and sensitive instruments into space.

Then there's the distance and time involved. Any manned mission to Mars will currently require a year or more to complete and involve lifting hundreds of tons off mass into Earth orbit. Even then the crew would only be able to perform a relatively small amount of useful 'work' before they had to return home. Robots can and have stayed in place on Mars for years doing useful stuff. And they are only going to get better as time goes on.

Lastly there is a of basic reconnaissance work (or prospecting if you like ) that has to be done before we send someone and build a base. We can only decide about where best to land & set up a base after extensive sampling and surveying has been completed. We need to make decisions about things like where the best deposits of water ice are located vs other useful minerals or elements vs the locations of greatest scientific interest vs other critical factors before actually setting up a base.

 

Easier to just build everything on Earth and build large enough of a booster to get it there. In space assembly you have virtually no quality control possible.

 

The same technological advances that have increased the capability of unmanned missions have also done the same for manned missions. And a four man crew that stays a year and a half on Mars can do one hell of a lot of exploring and work before returning. More than a whole fleet of unmanned missions.

And you don't need to sent "hundreds of tons of mass" to Mars. Fifty or sixty tons using on site resource utilization will do quite nicely.

 

But you have so much more room. Build modules and hook em together.

 

Making a spacecraft "roomy" should be a minimal priority.

 

There have been NO manned missions to Mars, though there have been a good number of successfu robotic missions.

A mission to pick up rocks from the Moon would face no new feats of engineering, such as a manned mission would.

And, manned missions are fabulously more expensive.


Here's another idea. The moon rocks gathered by the Apollo mission are just being tested this year - 50 years after gathering them.

So, I really don't believe scientists see moon rocks as a critical element in studying space.

And, there is a planned Mars mission to gather carefully selected rock samples and prepart them for a retrieval mission - no humans required.

 

You can't seriously think this "planned unmanned Mars mission" will accomplish remotely as much scientifically as a single manned mission.

 

I don't agree with this..

The two are not similar in that Everest missions are not done on the public tax dollar and they are trivially expensive. So, the justification can be whatever those involved want it to be - a fun vacation? A proof of human capability?

There is every reason for requiring cost justification for such large expenditures of tax dollars at a time when we have several significant problems in America.

 

I don't know what a human could do that today's robots can't do for a fraction of the cost.

 

There is no existing or proposed robotic system than can conduct exploration as thoroughly or detailed as a human.

 

I'm not so sure. Robots for collecting samples will have precise analytical equipment to identify what samples to bring back along with equipment for welding samples into canisters for return.

Rovers have been traversing the Lunar and Martian landscapes, able to stay and work for far longer than any imaginable human mission based on today's capabilities.

The Martian rover Opportunity operated on the Martian surface for 15 years.

And, there is still the cost factor.

 

And yet the estimates are that a four man mission on the Mars surface that stays 18 months would traverse roughly 12,000 miles in total of the Martian surface.

An amount thousands of times more than all the unmanned rovers combined.

 

They have housekeeping and maintenance duties to perform as well as having to sleep 8 hours a day. Even simple things like putting on pressure suits to work outside will eat into productivity. And before we can use on-site resources to supplement or replace stores we take with us we have to experiment & make sure things like locally resourced fuel production modules actually work as well in the field as they do back in the lab back on Earth. Which probably means sending a remote robotic module first to test out the equipment under field conditions.

 

If cost was the important motivator, This country would not exist, we would all use whale oil and ride horses, and Polio would have probably paralyzed you in your youth