Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrating Radar Discovery
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The radar sounder design and the numerical studies are flawed due to the used simulation methods. Numerical simulations are computationally expensive (in time and in space). Therefore many approximations are made (e.g. no real antenna pattern, no influence of the rover, thin slices of ground that is being simulated and than put together, ...)
Reading such radargrams is like reading tea leaves. I am pretty sure that most of the echos in the radargram are surface clutter from bigger rocks or hilly areas in the distance. In one of our simulation works for a very similar project we have actually shown that this has a heavy influence on the radargram and is never considered in any of the works analyzing the results from Mars (or any other space object).
These projects are extremely political even though they shouldn't be. Groups that have had instruments on previous missions will be part of the next mission, too, because they have flown instruments already. So, any study or inclination that the instrument as it is does not work is buried quickly and often unknown to many of the people in the science teams, too.
I know, it's quite cynic but it's my experience and I know that I am not the only one feeling that way. So, while the rover and the measurements themselves are impressive, the analysis is wonky at best.
I think the main problem of the current setup is that the science teams are not balanced enough.
The radar sounding science team is mostly geophysicists because the interpretations are geophysical in nature, but there are not enough people who are experts in radar sounding, radar system and radio frequency wave propagation in general. The reason for that is, that this is not considered science and is looked down upon as mere "engineering".
Privatized exploration would initially solve some of these problems for sure, but once a group of people and its structure has manifested I believe they would eventually suffer from the same problem.
Anyway, this is a pretty complex topic which covers many aspects such as research funding, incentives in academia, vain egos, etc.
Besides, the radar isn't the only instrument on the rover. There aren't many companies/groups in the world who have the know-how and financial means to do what NASA does here.
For example there are cases I can point to of poor competition and high costs in NASA picking private companies to do big cost-plus development contracts, and cases where they did fixed-price contract bidding among a larger pool of competitors and got much better results.
NASA can do some fancy signal processing to get some useful data but until its properly calibrated, any interpretation of that data especially visual should be taken with a Phobos sized grain of salt.
The useful signal is extremely weak anyway and the clutter from the surface hides the useful signal in many cases unless you habe really strong scatterers (large and highly reflective) buried in the ground.
Once humans are living there for weeks (months?) it would be very hard to enforce a no-contamination policy.
You all are focusing on labeling the time to humans in Mars. But how about the time to completely discard that life exists now in Mars? How much time would it take to design, build and send a mission of this nature?
It's the ratio of the two times that matters.
What would you have thought the odds of that in 2011? And all of these things are the sort of stuff that is happening in just a decade. The world is changing extremely quickly (even if it often doesn't feel like it), and space tech is one of the fastest advancing industries right now. I think the best window into the future is the past. Look at the trajectory we're on, not necessarily just the US - but the whole world. It's a good one, at least as far as space goes.
> The country is now due to launch Tiangong-1, the first module of its own space station, possibly before the end of September this year. This will dock with an unmanned spaceship, Shenzhou-8, in China's first ever in-orbit docking attempt. Next year, two or three astronauts will be sent into space for the first manned docking.
> Beijing hopes to put a rover on the moon by 2013, and then a man on the moon, as well as opening its own space station by around 2020. But its ambitions could be greater still than those being publicly announced.
> "What we have seen again in reporting, as opposed to official documents, seems to be a group of Skylab-type Tiangong stations to be followed by a Chinese version of the International Space Station, which would suggest that China is aiming for a long-term human presence in [inner] Earth orbit," says Dean Cheng, an expert in China's space program at the Heritage Foundation. "Given past Chinese history — which is that their missions always last longer, weigh more, achieve more [than U.S. missions] — it is quite likely that the Chinese would try to set up some kind of longer-term presence on the moon, measured in weeks or maybe months."
https://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137815962/china-seeks-to-carv...
Sending humans to Mars is completely doable with chemical rockets. Just a matter of investing enough money. If SpaceX is successful with further development of Starship they can very likely send people to Mars by 2040.
And even if you have doubts about private industry, then there's China. They have all the motivation, capability, risk tolerance, funding, and more necessary. They have the stated goal of putting astronauts on the Moon by 2030, and there's no reason to think they won't succeed. They've been nailing their space goals in both terms of success and timeline. And if we look a bit more optimistically there are all sorts of third parties that would like to get back in the game, or newcomers looking to find their own place in it.
I think we'll see what amounts to McMurdo on the Moon long before we see humans on Mars, and it really makes the most sense because the Moon is only a few days away vs. months away. If something goes wrong on the Moon supplies can be sent or people can come home quickly, whereas on Mars a major failure or health problem equals almost certain death with no hope of rescue or return in time.
The Moon makes more sense economically too. It's close enough for mining and/or tourism to at least offset the cost a little.
Elon's fixation on Mars or bust is kind of irrational and monomaniacal.
I'm more of a Moon fan really, but I wouldn't bet against him reaching Mars in the next twenty years or so. The man is persistent.
Shorter-term, it is unclear if Starship is the right rocket for any purpose due to being spec'ed for such a wide range of purposes, and incompletely spec'ed due to faith in an iterative development process that may be totally inappropriate for developing large complex systems.
It is conceivable that a Moon station could be built and manned for a relatively small multiple of the cost of the ISS. It is conceivable such a station could be evacuated in the event of a serious failure. It is conceivable that humanity will learn interesting things about the Moon and perhaps do astronomy that would be otherwise impractical.
Landing humans on Mars and not killing them would be the highest accomplishment of sending humans to Mars. Some things will have to wait for post-humans to be created, if that ever turns out to be a good idea.
Would humans there be more efficient than robots to solve this question? not very likely: humans would need more tools to perform the same research.
They could probably easily load up enough supplies and equipment for longer mission durations, depending on fuel requirements and boil off.
Aren't they basically the same systems, that also sustain them in space? Like on the ISS?
So you need to land such a module and have enough fuel, oxygen and supplies?
Not saying, that it is easy, but you make it sound like it is a completely different and harder challenge than living in space?
The only increased problem I can think of, might be the microdust.
Distance Earth to ISS: 250 miles. Distance Earth to mars: about 140 million miles
It's like camping in your own back yard vs. camping 2000 miles away from home. But sure, otherwise it's basically the same.
And if your health isn't coping with it, the quickest way back to Earth likely involves 6 months of zero-g.
Sure, once humans are there we should check every alien life discovery with unprecedented rigour, but there could be evidence which can't be explained with "humans brought it with them" type of reasoning.
I know the travel and radiation probably makes it unlikely but also seems plausible to me a few specks of mold spores or DNA fragments could survive and be preserved in the cold of space/mars. Is it possible that in billions of years, when the sun has warmed and/or pulled mars closer, this seeds another earth-like evolution of life? It all seems improbable but nothing surprises me in space.
Probes intended to land on other planets are sterilized, I believe, to try to avoid such contamination. It's a long shot that such contamination is possible, and the sterilization probably isn't perfect, but there's a general consensus that it's probably not impossible, and hey, it'd be pretty dumb to at least not like wipe down the probe before shooting it into space.
I ask because there's a minor conspiracy theory that's made the rounds that NASA either has these things on board secretly or deliberately does not include them because they don't want to actually find evidence of life. I find that pretty unlikely and figure it's probably a lot harder to build such an instrument and get useful results than you'd think.
Using a drill as a human with hands is easy.
Using a drill on another planet where any jam or failure is permanent is staggeringly hard.
A robot can't just chuck up a bit, or wipe down dust and dirt which is stopping something from working. Or quickly regrease a bearing.
Ultimately one of the best arguments on favor of manned exploration is that despite our robotics, a human in a space suit with a shovel would get an incredible amount done in a few hours.
EDIT: drills have flown, but they are limited in capability.
They don't have microscopes, but they do collect the samples for potential future recovery.
[1]: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8314/curiosity-tests-a-new-way-to...
IMO, the idea of NASA sandbagging on finding life is silly. It's like Pharma hiding the cure for cancer. there are real people in those organizations and that type of insanity wouldn't stay secret for long. (note to anyone replying I will not discuss/argue this stuff on this board, as it won't go anywhere productively.)