NASA aims for first manned SpaceX mission in first-quarter 2020
reuters.com
reuters.com
- politics surrounding it
- regulations
- money dependent on jobs (think SLS program)
- ever changing goals (bush, obama, now trump)
Should now just be a research only facility and fully give the mechanics of space exploration to private facilities such as Space X, rockets and Bigelow for the habitats for example.
To clarify this more. Nasa should be given monies by the tax payer for various projects.
Invest in such projects that require 100 years to come to-fruition to projects that can be achieved within 10-25 years and absolutely no government interventions! Just leave them alone and let them to their glorious work.
They should be projects that the private sector can't invest in because it's too costly. That said however, they should also act in a VC capacity. That researcher that wrote a paper about newer modes of transport? Throw $10m at him, put a team around him consisting of nasa scientists and engineers and see what comes out of this. Do this for 10 or 100 ideas and we'll get a lot of inventions.
Finally for gods sake, the current budget is 0.49% of the total spend. Increase that to 5%. If all the current engineers dedicated to the failed SLS program and moon base machinations were reassigned on separate projects like :-
- vasmir ion engines
- portable space nuclear reactors
- simulating gravity without needing a spinning chassis
- solving the galaxic cosmic rays problem with space ships
(and I could go on...!)
Would be a total game changer.
At the Starship even a couple weeks ago Elon quipped when it comes to schedules, "Long is wrong, tight is right." The point is that humans respond well to aggressive but achievable goals with big payoff in the short-term. It focuses the effort on what is actually needed to achieve mission success.
To put it more succinctly, necessity is the mother of innovation.
Musk can.
Even if he had the ability to wipe out cities, which he doesn't, by definition being the only private citizen capable of doing so would make the suspect list pretty short.
Sure he could definitely DO that, but I don't think he could do it anonymously.
Once Starship is up and running, his ability to cause destruction def. goes up, but he would have even less anonymity.
Fans (and I'm sure govts) closely monitor all of SpaceX launches/development/etc. Also, once you got a bunch of rods or rockets or whatever you were going to drop, they don't exactly hide in space, they are pretty easily tracked, and publicly tracked even.
Since they are backlogged with rocket orders, it would cost a LOT to do and lead to to economic decline, if not financial ruin of the SpaceX business.
So could he do it? sure, easily? Not really, but certainly WAY easier than Bezos or anyone else. But anonymously? I really doubt it. Plus who else even has the single handed capabilities? The US Air Force, Russia, India and China. That's pretty much it. Bezos maybe in a few years.
"We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"
The total expenditure in the 2018 United States budget was $4.109 trillion[2] or %0.34 of yearly expenditures. Budgets do not follow inflationary trends even remotely, the 1961 expenditure[3] was $181.588 billion (wow that's pretty crazy). For the year that makes the Apollo program %1.2 of the federal expenditure.
Another useful point of reference, the entire NASA organization in 2018 had an operating budget of $19.2 billion and this has to cover all of the mandated projects such as the SLS. They're also responsible for maintaining and monitoring a lot of infrastructure for other agencies (the weather service, DSN, etc) which wasn't the case during the Apollo mission. NASA itself is kind of left with scraps.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud...
[3]: https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_...
Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this purpose, as you point out.
In any case, thanks for digging up more numbers.
I stand by my claim that money (and enough assurance of continued money to bet everything on one large project) is key.
The CPI is composed of much more than that: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf
No it's not. Maybe normalize to the median income if you don't like bread and milk, but how much the government spends on education, health care, interest, military fleets, farm subsidies... that's not relevant to NASA's budget.
We just haven't made it an objective to terraform Mars. We've even been quite cautious about avoiding even the possibility of transporting microbes there and "contaminating" it.
But the basic mechanics of how to terraform are known. Elon Musk mentioned nuking the poles of Mars as an option. Changing the gas composition could be done, albeit slowly, with enough resources and motivation. You can send robots in advance of human settlers to prepare things.
Self-replicating robots would be more ideal, and that is not a solved problem, but you could likely build partially self-replicating robots that are replenished with "vitamins" much like how the RepRap project does.
Various NASA theorists have written about such things
In the same fashion, I would get the same or MORE work done in less than an 8 hour work day, because I would just not have time to be on HackerNews.
Smaller, achievable goals are more productive.
That's exactly what NASA is and always has been. NASA does the research and development that is worthwhile but not sufficiently obvious/commercially viable for private industry to do themselves. Space was at one time categorically that. Now, LEO is largely a solved problem as far as launches go, which is precisely why SLS is focused on missions beyond Earth orbit. With the progress SpaceX is making, it's likely that SLS will be the last NASA rocket program.
> Just leave them alone and let them to their glorious work.
Believe it or not, this does largely happen on the micro scale.
He <<commissioned the grand reconstruction of Paris. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the French railway system and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize. The first women students were admitted at the Sorbonne, and women's education greatly expanded as did the list of required subjects in public schools. >>
But then, he was Emperor of the French (the last one) and had absolute power... What you propose we do with NASA is something similar in long term vision, but then again, we live in a (?flawed) democracy where any long term investment is hotly contested and annihilated. I wish we could find a better way, a new age of enlightenment so we could finally do great things again.
What how? Do you have links or literature on this?
You accelerate toward your target at 1g. Ship is built with the floors toward the engines. Halfway there, you flip the ship around and decelerate at 1g until you reach your target.
The point being, also according to Musk; “The best part is no part. The best system is no system.”
A couple years ago I wanted to just create a proper multi-national politics-free space organization (I know, it would never happen with the way things are).
At the time if we took 1% of the GDP (presumably via a tax) of the top 5 nations you would have created a 408 billion a year budget. Staffed by academics, create a board that has heads of industry, experts in various fields (various types of engineers, test pilot, medical doctor, etc) and scientists in relevant field and set a max term they can serve with the initial ones picked in varying intervals (3 year, 5 year, 7 years) so that you are only replacing a percentage of your people at any given time so you can stay more focused on long-term goals. Also try and keep relatively equal numbers of representatives from each financially contributing country on the board.
Also allow other countries to contribute 1% of their GDP unless they are an economically disadvantaged country then allow them to contribute at a much lower scale with scaled benefits.
As far as the 'benefits' allow every country contributing 1% of their GDP to have 100% royalty free access to any technologies/discoveries/data that is a result of this agency. Countries that were sliding-scale members, pay 1/10th of the royalty/fee that non-contributing companies would and still keep the non-contributing country fee relatively low (even 1% fee on something that might result in a profit of 100 million a year globally could extend a given mission a year or more).
It's a massively unrealistic dream but it's probably the closest we could get to something like Starfleet.
That's not really my root cause objection. It's the "politics free" part. It's not in my mind that that isn't achievable I have doubts as to wether it's desirable. Politics in my mind is about who or what gets hurt and who or what gets helped in any endevour.
Trying to get rid of politics seems to me like trying to get rid of pain. It's feedback. Try running any system without that - it won't work. I know a lot of the time the feedback is inaccurate but the fix is more inputs not less.
"A bit of a contrarian opinion. But nasa, whilst lauded for their achievements thus far. Due to the issues like:"
And I'm not sure sunk cost fallacy applies, especially in the context of SpaceX / Dragon. Although it could definitely apply to SLS.
If you wanted to argue that extending the life beyond 2024 or whatever it is, then I would agree with you, sunk cost is irrelevant.
I tend to only apply the term to something incomplete with run-away costs to finish. Or if something changes (demand-side) that renders said product to become obsolete before completion. I'd argue neither applies to the space station. Political whimsy shouldn't be a factor.
All things that are needed for future exploration/colonization.
The setup isn't trivial, but in the long run I think it is best for everyone.
The rocket equation says that if you want to do anything besides sitting in one place, it's super expensive. Moving mass around requires throwing huge amounts of mass away.
Throwing rockets' worth of water away seems wasteful, but if we have it then it isn't that expensive.
And NASA has what the team will work on specifically: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/exp-61-...
It's not an organizational problem, it's a money problem and a lack of goal problem. Sending people up is vastly more expensive than unmanned probes and as technology improves there's not a whole lot a human can do that can't be achieved remotely with those probes.
It's a bit sad but at the same time it makes complete scientific sense not to send squishy humans when a robot would be vastly more efficient overall.
Our best chance to get humans in space again is another propaganda war starting a new space race. Maybe between USA and China this time around, to find out who gets to Mars first?
that is an organization problem, but anyway I disagree with;
> Sending people up is vastly more expensive than unmanned probes and as technology improves there's not a whole lot a human can do that can't be achieved remotely with those probes.
It's not incorrect, but the Apollo astronauts would have covered the entire curiosity rover distance in 7 years in about an hour.
The rate at which humans on site would accomplish things is not to be scoffed at. Whether it's worth the other costs getting them there is still up for debate. But robots are not hands down better.
How so? I guess I misunderstand what is meant by "organizational problem". For me it's "we want to do X but due to bureaucratic inertia and lack of organization it's impractical to do it". Like "we need to buy a new blackboard but in order to do it we have to go through a 29step process and 5 commissions so nobody bothers".
My point is that we're lacking the 'X' to begin with for space exploration. What's the big end goal currently? Putting humans on Mars? Some talk about it but nobody seems to be in a hurry and it seems more about propaganda and boasting rights than hard science.
>The rate at which humans on site would accomplish things is not to be scoffed at. Whether it's worth the other costs getting them there is still up for debate. But robots are not hands down better.
There's a trade-off of course but I would be very surprised if it wasn't in the robot's favor. For one thing to this day it's still unclear how we could send humans to Mars while maintaining them in good health. What do we do with them after the mission? They settle on an inhospitable planet or we find a way to retrieve them back to Earth?
Curiosity weighs 899kg, I doubt that humans + habitat + supplies + power + experiments + all the safety-related overhead of having live humans involved will probably amount to several time that mass (which as we know is a big problem with rockets, since more mass means more fuel which means more mass which means more fuel...). Let's not even talk about the trip back.
Sure Curiosity is slow, but once it's landed I suspect that the ongoing operating costs aren't insanely high.
That's all back-of-the-enveloppe calculations of course but I would be very surprised if sending humans to do Curiosity's work wasn't at least an order of magnitude more expensive, even if you factor the shorter total mission time.
Of course they could move faster but Curiosity isn't just travelling it's also taking a lot of measurements and doing experiments while it's moving. Additionally they're very careful with it because one the the main limiting factors for Curiosity is the lifetime of its wheels. It could move faster but there's no need and maintaining resources like wheels is more important than moving quickly.
But, 194X to 1961 is a shorter time frame than 196X -> 2019.
--
It's a little frustrating that there's so little understanding of this, though. I blame lack of education.
For those unaware of the backstory there Musk recently had a major reveal of SpaceX's StarShip program. Bridenstine made a pretty direct jab the night before saying "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. It's time to deliver." [2]
That was generally not so well received, since SpaceX is engaged in Commercial Crew (the program to get astronauts to the ISS on commercial launches) but so is Boeing. And SpaceX is substantially far ahead of Boeing on this front. So it felt like a partisan and biased sleight since Boeing, who went unmentioned, has substantially more political influence and clout.
In the Q/A Bridenstine acknowledged he was not really correct on his assumption, which makes me like this guy even more (as he does genuinely seem heavily driven to get the American space program back on track) - even if I think he should have figured this out before racing to publicly Tweet. Looks like he genuinely wants to get Commercial Crew going ASAP and was worried that SpaceX was putting it on the backburner since StarShip is also a really big and extremely ambitious program being done at the same that as Commercial Crew.
[1] - https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb
[2] - https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/117771110630074777...
Why would it be cool / unexpected? Isn't most of SpaceX's funding public money funneled through NASA?
And this is a big deal because he is not only the most ambitious administrator NASA has had quite a long time but also the most politically capable. And that leaves me highly optimistic for the future of NASA. Bolden (the previous administrator) was everything you want on paper, but in practice he lacked both ambition and political skill. I've no doubt he very much had a love for space and technology, but he simply didn't have the toolkit to make it matter. As a result of this NASA ended up achieving little more than inertial progress for 8 years.
> “From a SpaceX resource standpoint, our resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon. Let’s be clear, it was really quite a small percentage of SpaceX that did Starship,”
His estimate was that 5% of SpaceX's effort is focused on Starship.
It's an interesting read to be sure.
Except if you mean T-1000 or something...
And because they eventually want go to Mars, have a little scientific colony, etc?
Considering the limitations causing a person harm would put on a mission, and the complexity of bringing them back to Earth again, I'd have thought it'd be more flexible to send a bunch of robots.
Launches are rare, which means you want to pack as much value generators into your payload as possible, which now means your payload is an expensive one-off workpiece (vs. a mass-produced item), which means extra risk, which means more safety requirements around integration and launch, which means more expensive launches, which means launching less often, ...
So if you're thinking of sending something to Mars for Science, people look attractive (mass produced, can do a lot per dollar spent on getting them qualified for mission), but life support requirements make this too expensive, so sophisticated one-off robots fly from time to time instead. Now if we could increase launch cadence and payload capacity, which is what SpaceX is working on, we could start sending people... or we could load the Starship with multiple cubesat launchers and a payload bay full of remote-operated or semi-automated rovers and drones. In few missions, we could blanket most areas of immediate scientific interest with robots. In this reality, higher payload capacity and launch cadence would drive demand, which means both the scientific robots could be mass-produced, and there would be more iterating on design, increasing the amount of missions that could be done by machines.
The way I see it, right now what SpaceX is doing to enable manned missions is pretty much aligned with what's needed to enable proper robotic missions.
Getting people out of Earth's gravity well and setting up a base somewhere that could grow by itself is super useful though. Imagine it like climbing out of a deep valley onto a plain (it's not literally a plain but the requirements regarding delta-v are so much lower when not going into a well at a planet). There are other valleys (or rather pits) in this plain (i.e. the gas giants, which have gravity wells that we wouldn't get out of again with current technology) but it's a lot easier to do useful stuff 'up there' once you don't have to climb out of Earth's gravity well each and everytime you want to do something out there.
Edit: Here's a graphic I just found: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057669320
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1ktjfi/deltav_map_of...
AIUI this takes in the cost of both climbing gravity wells, and changing orbital speed and inclination.
You might really like Isaac Arthur on YouTube if you don't know him already. "Orbital rings" [1] in his "Upward Bound" series might be just right your alley. Of course, there's so much more he produced, it's even hard to keep up. I personally dream of some "Megastructures" he suggests...
Actually already began myself to think of a Dyson Swarm around Earth (for starters) which could then serve as a positional basis for future orbital rings. He really inspired me to think bigger, now.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&list=PLIIOUpOge0...
Personally I hope so, but I also doubt it will happen.
If our (very) long-term goal is to stake humanity's claim on other planets/asteroids/etc., then it makes sense to work on improving and expanding Life Support capabilities in harsh environments. I see it as an investment in the future -- it may not seem to have immediate benefits, but these are key milestones and steps for reaching the ultimate goal.
This doesn't seem realistic without revolutionary advances in Physics.
Sending humans to outside the solar system doesn't mean they have to be the same humans that departed.
This is probably going to be nearly as big a problem as the engineering one.
You can just abandon a robot on Mars. But if you want to send people to the Moon or Mars you will need to send them with a spacecraft and fuel that will allow them to return. The tyranny of the rocket equation then forces you to build extra large rockets like Saturn V, SLS or Super Heavy Starship. You need exponentially more fuel as you increase payload mass in order to have the same capability.
SpaceX solves that with refueling in low Earth orbit, that allows to scale rocket fuel needs linearly with regard to payload instead of exponentially. And with refueling at the destination in case of Mars. But the need to bring fuel with you is still a big limitation for the Moon missions.
I don't think that's the case. The rocket equation has the delta-v under exponent, not the mass ratio. Fuel mass scales linearly with payload in any case.
I don't think orbital refueling changes any scaling laws. It just means you can launch several small rockets instead of one huge one. Total mass launched stays approximately the same.
> But if you want to send people to the Moon or Mars you
> will need to send them with a spacecraft and fuel that
> will allow them to return.
I'd even go if the mission was to see which of the radiation, CO2, microgravity, nutrition, heat, or isolation kills me first, to improve that for the next bunch. I feel that the goal is that important. Lots of others feel as I do.
For a good example, consider that the Moon Landing was a global, civilization-wide event, whereas even the most famous robotic mission has never been anything more than a popular news item of the week.
That is, less of a... show?
What lasting effects of the moon landing(s) are there, to your mind?
Ask around at NASA labs how people got into the industry. Among those who were born up until 1970ish, almost every single one will tell you that he was inspired by the moon landings. The trend goes on even outside NASA, when asking people in STEM industries.
Furthermore, I would argue - though I have not seen a study on it - that these are the most enthusiastic people, those who love their work.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Pretty apt for space travel, as well. The Moon Landing and Sci-Fi have probably done more for getting people into in science than a million textbooks and outreach programs.
Numbers at population scale are hard to think in.
Maybe not quite as interested as when things were first getting going, but that's human nature "meh I've seen it before".
But even so, watching the shuttle and SpaceX go up is definitely exciting to those who can actually see it.
Here's a wikipedia page listing NASA spinoff technologies:
From Steven Squyres, NASA Mars Rover Principal investigator:
> What Spirit and Opportunity typically achieve in a day, a human explorer could do in less than a minute. The Opportunity rover has traversed about 17 km in its five and a half year lifetime; this is less than the distance covered by two astronauts in their Lunar Roving Vehicle in a single EVA on Apollo 17.
Self sustaining colonization is a worthwhile goal. Having people wander around on the surface of the Moon or Mars does not get you there anymore than learning to jump really high can teach you to fly.
> it’s the instruments you’re sending that collect data
There were countless examples from the Lunar missions. Just as an example that comes to mind, we sent no colour cameras to the lunar surface as "there was nothing of colour to photograph". Despite that, I believe on the last lunar landing Schmidt (or Cernan?) noticed that the regolith was actually orange in some places.
You could argue that instead of a black and white camera, a colour camera could have been sent. But that is a different instrument package, and just as likely a million other sensor packages could have been sent. That is one human advantage - we have an extremely extensive array of sensors that come with us. In addition to those sensors, humans have processing and reasoning skills, dexterous hands, mobile legs, random-access memory, and are preprogrammed to solve problems, take interest in anomilies, and make connections between seemingly-disparate events.
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1...
As are those color photos of the lunar flag:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Flag_Assembly#targetText...
If it had been for the science team, Juno would've gone without it. It was added as a late-time PR addition, based on hardware from a previous mission (the descent imager of the Curiosity rover). And yet, it has given some of the most astounding images from Jupiter we've ever seen.
What robots lack as of yet are the motor skills.
Edit: I'm talking of course about non-autonomous missions.
But sending humans to Mars too early, they won't get any science or infrastructure development done, it's just going to be super expensive trying to stay alive, maybe plant a flag for political purposes. A mission probably could retire engineering risk and proof operational practices etc.
Even Apollo, with a very limited time run, had significant evolution of the missions.
With Mars the launch opportunity gap problem is significant, hurting iteration speed.
Anyway, for more than tiny scale space faring, we probably need to get our resources from asteroids. Asteroid resources are the key to space.
> There is a widely held view in the astronomical community that unmanned robotic space vehicles are, and always will be, more efficient explorers of planetary surfaces than astronauts (e.g. Coates 2001, Clements 2009, Rees 2011). Partly this comes from a common assumption that robotic exploration is cheaper than human exploration (although this isn't necessarily true if like is compared with like) and partly from the expectation that developments in technology will relentlessly increase the capability and reduce the size and cost of robotic missions to the point that human exploration will not be able to compete. I argue below that the experience of human exploration during the Apollo missions, more recent field analogue studies and trends in robotic space exploration all point to exactly the opposite conclusion.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/53/2/2.22/212515
MSL is "vastly more expensive" than what? Not Apollo, and not a human mission to Mars, which are the benchmarks that matter in this context.
I am not opposed to manned missions, but the case for their utility is thin, to say the least.
Where humans excel is on the spot decision making: looking around and saying "that looks interesting, I'm going to ignore the mission plan and go over there instead". That is where great breakthroughs are found, but it is also where mission control gets mad because the important things everyone was interested in don't get studied for something pretty but otherwise uninteresting.
We know from earth that there are some interesting geographical features that are only a couple meters wide: such features on mars would not be visible from earth. Thus whatever is on mars needs to recognize interesting things and find it. Humans intuitively recognize interesting things (and do better with just a little training). Teaching computers to recognize such features is a hard, partially unsolved problem.
On the moon you can do remote control of robots from earth and get the same level of power from a robot if you want it. (do not read can as we should - there are reasons to not do remote control) You can't do that on mars unless you are working at a speed of meters/day, so whatever is on mars needs to have local control to decide how to get around and what samples to get.
Robots generally do best for solved problems. A factory can replace 100 humans with saws with two robots and get more accuracy, but the shapes being cut out of a flat sheet of steel of a standard size. When you only need one part it is often faster to have a human with a saw cut it out (this is less and less true as the design to part chain gets better).
The truth is there are advantages to both.
At the current state of technology humans can do more than robots. However robots are enough cheaper that we use them anyway: we still don't have the ability to get anything back from mars. Ethically we will not send humans on a one way trip with enough supplies to live on mars for two weeks and then die, so humans are not an option yet.
The time pressure of a manned mission is significant - this ability to make decisions quickly is only necessary because of the time constraints of a manned mission and the need to be careful enough to get back. This time pressure can be a factor in making mistakes and irrepairably damaging the instruments or hardware you brought. In one instance, Apollo crew has destroyed a camera they brought by accidentally pointing it into the sun for example.
The flexibility of humans does not give any significant benefit if those humans don't have the time to use it. When every minute is planned for something, with some buffers to make mistakes, your ability to improvise only comes in to remedy your mistakes. And some are not fixable. The operation is exciting and all rests on the ability of 2-3 people and the preparation of dozens and their skill under time pressure.
A robotic mission has months to remedy some fuckups and come up with workarounds. Some things are not fixable either. But a robotic mission has all the knowledge of a team of experts and is not put on the spot - they don't need to be as superhuman. The operation is comparatively boring and rests on the ability of dozens of scientists and engineers. They don't have to prepare for contingencies as much, they can analyze a situation, compare plans, simulate consequences (such as software patches, hardware operation) and act on them.
Take for example the lunar rover fender that broke, and they patched together a solution on the spot. And compare that to the Insight Lander mole, which found a particularly hard-to-drill rock and can't move from the spot (after all, it's a lander, not a rover). Now they are trying to push it with the landers arm, but there's only so much that can be done.
This is where the real advantage is. Intuitive curiosity is not something AI is anywhere near being able to replicate in a useful way. Plus being able to explain why something is interesting and worth investigating. Look at image recognition- even where it's extremely accurate, in the instances where it screws up, we topically have no idea why. (Like confusing a leopard with a hair brush.) Which in the context of exploration is not very useful. If we don't know why the AI finds a feature interesting, then how are we (or the AI itself) supposed to know what to do about it? How to further study it?
Every other comparison between humans and robots is somewhat debatable depending on context and mission.
Secondary is certainly reaction time, especially in the context of timely investigation. As someone mentioned elsewhere with large scale drilling, many types of equipment still require a human operator with near-realtime feedback to be used effectively and efficiently in a non-specialized manor.
If a rover on Mars rolls around a boulder and spots a little green man, or a pink Martian rabbit, they're probably not going to hang around and wait to be studied. More likely, it might dig a hole, uncovering water or some other unknown material that's evaporated or sublimated before it gets instructions on how to react. Of course if it's a pink martian rabbit, we'll have to wait 8-12 years to develop and delete a new rover with trapping capabilities. :-)
Yes, and the Rover costs 1/150th the price. We could send up literally a hundred rovers for the cost of the Apollo program and still have billions of dollars left to burn. We could build a giant Nolan Joker style money pyramid and roast marshmallows.
More-over all modern Mars missions are done on a relatively shoe-string budget using robots NASA knows are much less capable than they feasibly could construct. Basically Opportunity only went 34.4 km in 8 years because it was built by the NASA equivalent of 2 guys in a shed for beer money. Since the humiliating loss of Mars Climate Orbiter NASA has focused only on sending things to Mars they're not quite so afraid to lose, which means rather drastically reduced rover capabilities and lessened scientific payloads.
>Greatly increased efficiency in sample collection and sample return capacity. Compare the 382 kg of samples returned by Apollo with the 0.32 kg from the Russian robotic sample return missions Lunas 16, 20 and 24, and the zero kg returned so far by any robotic mission to Mars.
This is comparing apples to oranges. One of the great benefits of robots is they don't have to come back, which massively saves on the budget. Manned missions by necessity do need to bring about 3 x 75 pounds of dead weight (aka 3 man crew) back home, so you may as well have them line their pockets with rocks if you're just burning money anyway.
>Increased potential for large-scale exploratory activities (e.g. drilling) and the deployment and maintenance of complex equipment.
This I do agree with. Large scale drilling in the asteroid built would actually benefit from human presence, as it's far enough from Earth that light speed lag is non-trivial and mining in space will likely be a very complex, novel situation that will benefit from human level intelligence.
But just walking around on Mars, doing sample collecting? The case seems extremely thin. Especially as, even by the article's own admission, robots are improving to the point a human is only "1-2x better" than modern AI-assisted drones. Rather than the 1500x human-robot performance disparity the author highlights for earlier robots. Given the relative costs of people and robots, it's very much still tilted in favor of drones.
Stephen Hawkins agreed: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/05/stephen-hawking-human-extinc...
If the purpose is purely functional, then to some extent I'd agree - there are a lot of tasks we can achieve faster and better with robots.
But we can't be there via robots in any meaningful way. Even if we manage to some day achieve perfect telepresence, the delay in response will make it continue to feel artificial.
And so there will always be at least some people with a drive to actually go there before we even start thinking about things like longevity of the species etc.
(another answer might be just because it's there)
Exploration of the solar system could be the greatest human endeavour of the next hundred or thousand years. Both manned and unmanned missions will be needed.
This is mostly a historic development of NASA and how politics influnces it.
So the problem is not fundamentally with Humans but rather with NASA organisations.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8750114 - 2014
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4314781 - 2012
Put the effort into developing advanced robotics to explore space:
“In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe."”
I applaud what SpaceX does because it extends our capability to do things in space and industrialize it. You need an industrial base to permanently house people.
This is mostly just opinion and dreaming but: I don't think we'll have people driving mining rigs on the moon, drinking a beer in their moon bar and missing home. I don't know whether human maintenance can even be a thing because regolith is so vicious to anything operating on the moon - you'd need so many people fixing the robots. That's why the real challenge is coming up with more robust automated systems.
I think new approaches to industrial operations can come from this (and maybe even post-scarcity approaches for Earth, if we see it's possible) if we have to plan and realize a remotely operated (or even automated) factory/mining site. Other than on Earth, there are no space constraints, everything is almost the same material, environmental effects on the moon are not a problem (yet). Any industrial site does not have to have the form factor of a terrestial one, it can be the size of ten airports and mostly consist of flat surface, where a few robots are driving around, moving tools and parts and goods.
But just as with human spaceflight, we have to find the business case for it.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/space/
Pure science isn't the only reason for NASA's existence. The ultimate goal is always humans further afield than anyone has ever gone before. "boldly expand frontiers in air and space" etc.