Anyone want to work for NASA?

[UngainlyTitan]

The only reason that a tiny part of me is in favour of the mission is the vain hope that the information returned (likely a colossal failure) will go a long way toward changing the collective political will here on earth.

Or to put it more bluntly: Maybe if everyone dies, people on earth will notice that maybe we should put our house in order before venturing out. Stupid way to learn it, IMO, but maybe necessary?

Elon Musk aside, I am not sure that any actors with the resources to likely make it actually happen are quite ready to put boots on the ground on Mars. On the other hand, I do not see it making all that big a difference to "putting our house in order" here on Earth.

Getting our stuff together here on Earth requires us developing some cultural maturity or die trying, I guess and I do not think we can carry this farther due to site rules.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Mars has some stuff the moon does not. The native gravity is much higher, for one, and it has an atmosphere (if a thin one) that itself can be mined. As a terrestrial world with a former wet, warm period, it is also a much better place to learn about life in the broader solar system.

Yes. The political will to fund such development requires there be a sexy goal. "First people on Mars" is really, really sexy.



While we cannot say with any certainty what we might learn in either environment, it is clear that there are more potential opportunities for learning on the surface of Mars than there are in local space - what with local space being basically empty while on Mars there is an entire planet.

And robotic probes are orders of magnitude cheaper and likely to return more in scientific terms. Heck even a sample return mission is likely to be much cheaper than a manned mission.

 

[Reynard]

And robotic probes are orders of magnitude cheaper

Yes,

and likely to return more in scientific terms.

Absolutely not. There is no algorithm that can conduct the kind of inquiry the human mind does naturally starting literally at birth. Robot exploration is good for extremely narrow research. The primary benefit is that you don't have to pack air and water.

 

[Umbran]

I would think that moon is a better location to learn how to do this stuff and the asteroids may be better source of raw materials for a space station than going to Mars.

I have not argued that we go direct to Mars without doing any work on the Moon first. There are reasonable arguments on both sides of that point, and determining the best course there really depends on information we don't have at hand, nor do we have the expertise to interpret. Even as a physicist myself, I'll leave that to more expert people than I.

Mars, at its closest, is 34 million miles away. The near edge of the Asteroid Belt is about 180 million miles away. The asteroids are a microgravity environment that seriously limits our ability to stay there.

 

[dragoner]

Elon Musk aside, I am not sure that any actors with the resources to likely make it actually happen are quite ready to put boots on the ground on Mars.

Space X works out of the same pool of people as NASA, there just isn't a large enough group of aerospace engineers. Budget wise, it also sort of feeds off of the same pool as well. They are able to do things cheaper in house, with the same people, because they aren't saddled with requirements to use Boeing or Lockheed as subs. The tech also all flows from the same source too.

 

[Umbran]

And robotic probes are orders of magnitude cheaper and likely to return more in scientific terms. Heck even a sample return mission is likely to be much cheaper than a manned mission.

Of course a robotic mission is cheaper. Nobody is arguing that.

But, while I stated it up thread, you seem to have missed how the space program generates value. The more technology we have to develop for a mission, the more value spins off from the space program to humanity at large.

Doing the cheapest thing is the way to get the least overall value out of the mission.

 

[Umbran]

.... I am not sure that any actors with the resources to likely make it actually happen are quite ready to put boots on the ground on Mars.

Are you (generic, any of us), today, at this moment, ready to jump in the front of a truck and drive all your worldly possessions to a new life across the continent? Probably not. You don't have all you possessions packed in boxes, a moving company lined up, or anything. And you will not ever become ready until you start the process of actually trying to be ready.

"We are not ready," is not an argument against going. It is self-fulfilling prophecy until we dedicate ourselves to going.

 

[Clint_L]

I am gonna to quibble here. One does not have to have the ability to terraform Mars to place a sustainable colony on Mars. It is just that a sustainable colony on Mars is so similar to a sustainable colony in space that I really do not see why we would put it on Mars initially as distinct to somewhere more accessible.
To be honest we have in my opinion the ability to fix the issues we are causing here on Earth but not the collective political will to actually do it.

I agree. The expense in creating sustainable colonies anywhere else in our solar system would be so vast that it makes way more sense to invest in the planet we have. An undersea colony on Earth would be ridiculously impracticable, but child's play and dirt cheap compared to a colony on Mars.

If we have future technology that could automate terraforming, then it's another conversation. But to get to that point we need to focus on stabilizing our planet in terms of both environmental and social sustainability. Then, millennia from now when the machines are done their job, we could build a colony on Mars, or wherever. Assuming the machines want us there. But that's so sci-fi that we might as well be talking about Star Trek.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Absolutely not. There is no algorithm that can conduct the kind of inquiry the human mind does naturally starting literally at birth. Robot exploration is good for extremely narrow research. The primary benefit is that you don't have to pack air and water.

This is irrelevant, no likely manned expedition to mars will have the local resources to spare to make the difference between the human mind locally or the human mind on Mars matter but the manned mission could fund a hell of a lot of rovers.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Of course a robotic mission is cheaper. Nobody is arguing that.

But, while I stated it up thread, you seem to have missed how the space program generates value. The more technology we have to develop for a mission, the more value spins off from the space program to humanity at large.

Doing the cheapest thing is the way to get the least overall value out of the mission.

I understand how blue sky research and bleeding edge engineering can generate value to society but you nor Reynard have said anything to convince me Mars has more merit over alternative manned programs in the near to medium term. Nor do I really expect to change you mind on this, so I am going to stop now.