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Comment by angelgonzales | Hacker News Reader

This mission is representative of what JPL has become. Leadership there increased the cost of the program to $11B and would not bring the samples back until 2040, they also designed the mission around legacy rockets like Ariane 64 instead of working to lower costs and increase capacity by working with industry and designing around Starship or New Glenn. The moon missions brought back 842 pounds of rocks and MSL would bring back 1.1 pounds. It’s directionally better to wait for manned missions to Mars so we can bring back tons of rocks or even do the research on Mars itself. It seems like the JPL mission is maximized to provide jobs to researchers and maximized for mission complexity rather than just buying rocks from a contractor with quoted price and lead time.

I’d be interested in working there to help accelerate the program but I’m not if I would get support internally.

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> It’s directionally better to wait for manned missions to Mars so we can bring back tons of rocks or even do the research on Mars itself.

I'm worried it's arguments like this that doomed MSR [0]. Why spend 11 billion to get a couple rocks back in 2040 when Starship will be sending astronauts in 2030? But now it seems the near term goals of the Starship program are changing. At this point, who knows when we'll send people to Mars?

> buying rocks from a contractor with quoted price and lead time

I don't know about you but I'm not hearing anyone say they've reserved Starship mass-to-Mars-and-back. You're right that we should rely on private industry more. The CLPS program is the most comparable example (although time will tell whether it's a good one). But for a mission with the risk tolerance of MSR, the CLPS model doesn't work, IMO.

And meanwhile the Chinese are planning on launching their sample return in 2028. They're gonna beat us by a decade.

[0] My thoughts here are partially from this great blog post: https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/who-is-the-villain-in-mars...

Portugal was the first to find a direct sea route to India and had a 100 year head start with the trade route but they still got mogged by the Dutch East India Co in terms of cargo tonnage shipped.

We should aim for the long game. An insanely expensive one-time mission using disposable rockets to analyze rocks that we've already analyzed with rovers is probably not the best path.

Pretty good odds we’ll all be dead in 100 years, and whatever guess we make about what the long game entails will be wrong.

But it is a very Chinese path. Shock and awe and fake it till you make it by building quickly and at scale.

Can you elaborate what you mean by Chinese path?

Not sure I get the comparison.

It’s totally feasible that starship wouldn’t need to rely on humans to get the rock - a scouting mission to mars with starship could likely use robotics to grab a few rocks, sent years ahead of humans. The only really technical hurdle between then and now is proving starship orbital capability (this month), recovery and relaunch from mars, refueling, some robots.

I think everyday astronaut did a video explaining how a refueled starship can make it to Mars.

So you are missing the fuel for the return trajectory, which they plan to make there IIRC. So add in situ resource utilization to your list.

The refueling part alone is still unproven and might take multiple years of trying in orbit before it actually works

Yall, we're not putting humans on Mars anytime soon.

Okay, okay, rather we're not getting humans back off of Mars anytime soon.

Landing is by far the easy part. MSR was partly a mission to see how hard it really is to get anything back into space from the Martian surface. If you can manage a pound, you can probably then manage 3 or so 180 pound humans and all their safety support.

Like, think of it. You somehow have to land a fully fueled rocket on freaking Mars. No site prep, near vacuum and no aero breaking, very expensive and nearly impossible second chance.

Fine fine, you just land the shell and then refuel on Mars with some form of automated fuel refinery on Mars. Like, if you have robots that can do that, you've ended capitalism already and have no need for humans in the first place.

Im not saying a human return mission is impossible, but it is just so very much harder than a Trillion dollar Apollo program lets us believe.

You just send a few unmanned missions first with fuel and supplies?

"Supplies" as in, self-assembling landing and launch pads?

People have successfully dropped autonomous robots onto Mars before. Wouldn't be out of the question to do so again, except that instead of rovers, the robots could be programmed to open up crates (dropped at the same time, or by a previous or future mission) and assemble what's inside into a landing or launch pad.

Would take a lot of prep missions, and might not be worth the cost, but in theory it's doable. Curiosity massed 900 kg and Perseverance massed 1025 kg according to Wikipedia, so dropping a metric ton of supplies for the robot to assemble would, again in theory, be feasible. (In practice the equipment for landing the supply crates safely would take up a good chunk of the mass budget, but there should be something left over in the mass budget for the crates to contain).

It would possibly be more practical to store the return trip fuel in orbit around Mars.

Mass-wise, yes, but long term fuel storage and transfer in a vacuum is all completely theoretical at this point

I doubt it would be practical to pump fuel to another rocket. The obvious thing to do is store the fuel in orbit with its own rocket engine. Then you only have to dock with it and turn on the engine.

Solid-state boosters are potentially even better. No boil-off of fuel to worry about

Good idea! Although solid fuel rockets cannot be throttled or turned off.

You still have to land all the fuel to get the people off of Mars

Yes, but that's a lot less fuel than a return trip from Mars.

If you have robots like this, why send humans in the first place then? You've already got the bots that can do pretty much everything a human could want to do and you don't have to get them back off Mars.

Robots specialized in assembling one machine are not general-purpose robots. I doubt they would be able to "do pretty much everything a human could want to do".

Now, if someone does perfect a general-purpose, AI-driven robot, then yes, sending that robot on the Mars mission instead of a human would make a lot of sense. That's kind of, kind of, what we've done already with the rovers. But until such a general-purpose robot is actually created, human beings are still the most versatile, adaptable entities that could go to Mars.

> meanwhile the Chinese are planning on launching their sample return in 2028. They're gonna beat us by a decade.

So what advantage, in the realm of all possibilities, would this give China that we should be seriously concerned about?

We have such bigger existential threats right now that my emotional response to the quoted text is an aggressive lack of concern.

That's a valid response, and I think it gets at the core of why we do planetary science. There are no military or economic applications of knowing what Martian soil is made out of, or why it lost its atmosphere, or whether life evolved there too. So why do both the US and China fund these missions at all? And does it matter if China returns samples first? First, I would say that in the process of answering these questions, we develop technologies that often have military or economic benefits (technology transfer). There's something about trying to solve problems humanity has not faced before that causes this. We talk a lot about solution spaces, but problem spaces are maybe more important! Second, there are intangible benefits to answering these questions, which accrue to those who answer them, but also to all of humanity. Prestige, soft power, research expertise, for the one who answers them. And for all of humanity, we gain perspective, awe, wonder, togetherness, curiosity, joy, a whole suite of feelings. If China discovers life on Mars first, which is absolutely a possibility, would we even bother with being second? I think it's too optimistic to assume it's inevitable that we will do a Mars sample return mission. And if we don't, we'd miss out on all the technology transfer benefits. Being in a race is very motivating.

Definitely haven't made a complete argument here, but those are my thoughts. I know there are more concrete, pressing issues out there. But we don't all have to save the world. We just have to do our part and be decent human beings.

> There are no military or economic applications of knowing what Martian soil is made out of, or why it lost its atmosphere, or whether life evolved there too.

That should start with, "There is no _known_..."

Unknown unknowns are why people who care about economics and power (governments) care about science.

You can always say "there could be unknown useful applications!", no matter how improbable. That's not a strong argument.

It's worse than weak. It is an argument that works better the stupider you are.

Seriously.

The stupider you are, the more likely it is that there is something valuable that you don't know about.

But sophistry on that level doesn't actually change the minimal economic value of putting people on Mars.

Why did the British put Darwin on the Beagle? Who the hell cares what turtles are?

Well it turned out to be the start of something very important.

Think of all of the science that goes into firing and controlling a precision guided missile. How much of that technology was created for military purposes.

One huge benefit that can't be overstated is the perception that we can still do great things as a society. Contrary to what many might think the program to put a man on the Moon wasn't particularly popular in the 60s. Yet when we landed on the Moon very near to 100% of households were watching the broadcast of it on television, and that achievement set the stage for what was possible - which was anything. And generally it's going to make you proud to be an American.

China in the current era is doing sample returns from the Moon, building horizontal skyscrapers, hosting a 'robotic olympics' where they're breaking all sorts of human records in quite impressive looking ways [1], and much more. And now just casually blowing by the US in space capability? To say nothing of it coming scarcely more than a decade after we banned them from the ISS [2] for fear they'd still all our super secret space sauce? That's going to do crazy good things for the morale, mindset, and broader unity of a society.

Basically a good reason to do cool things is to do cool things. I think one quantifiable result of this sort of stuff is that now we live in a society where most American kids want to be YouTubers, while most Chinese kids want to be astronauts. [3] It's not hard to see how that sort of upbringing is going to shape the future generations of a society.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJyktujxO7I

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

[3] - https://www.businessinsider.com/american-kids-dream-of-being...

Exploring outer space is not necessarily about gaining some kind of “advantage” over others on Earth.

That is literally the only reason anyone has invested in outer space. Even scientific missions are done with a dual national defense purpose. Think of it like PR whitewashing of the military and geopolitical reasons that motivate funding.

Notice how the US space interest rapidly dried up with the death of the Soviet Union. I’m not sure if China really motivates the same thing because it’s an authoritarian semi-capitalist society - it’s the communist “people owning the means of production” that gets capitalists really worried.

Not that I have a solution, but isn’t that kind of disappointing? Why don’t we just do it directly, rather than only as a side effect of needless conflicts?

Yea that’s why I said it’s not necessarily about gaining advantage. It shouldn’t be.

> it’s the communist “people owning the means of production” that gets capitalists really worried.

Everyone suffered under people owning the means of production, not just the capitalists.

People suffered under the totalitarian regime and corruption. The central planning was also a problem in terms of making sure that goods production could meet what people needed. China’s semi-capitalist system with the authoritarian government stepping in when the companies don’t cooperate is an attempt to adapt to retaining communism while letting go of central planning. And this system is acceptable by western capitalists. This is a criticism of the West and its adherence to capitalism rather than liberal ideas, not an endorsement of “communism”*

* most people use communism as short hand for central planning which IMHO was the major economic problem that caused economically slow growth and lack of goods. combined with the authoritarian repression that caused a different kind of suffering. But neither of those is required by a communist political movement.

There have been 20,000 voluntary communes in the US. They all failed. Communism doesn't work, whether it is forcible or voluntary. No commune or centrally planned economy has ever managed to feed itself. Hence the suffering.

In Israel about 74/270 are still communal with the rest having privatized, but they’re still communal living arrangements.

It’s important to remember that most movements and experiments fail, same reason countries and companies also fail. A lot of them failed due to mismanagement, idealogical disputes, children not sticking around (ie no new members) etc. building sustainable communities is hard and not a unique problem for communes.

btw these are all the same reasons open source projects fail yet we wouldn’t call open source a failure despite it having all the same problems and looking more like communism than capitalism.

Also you’re overstating the failure rate. Amana Society, Inc is a cooperative structure that evolved from a commune. REI is also a cooperative corporate structure although not quite like a commune. So clearly there’s a path to evolve to that’s sustainable and does work and looks quite a bit different from capitalism. And there’s a difference between communal living and cooperative commercial entity which is good to separate.

The Israeli Kibbutzes communes are subsidized by the state, as they cannot make it on their own.

REI is not a commune at all. Neither is the Amana Society.

Communes have a 100% failure rate.

Not sure where this claim comes from. AFAIK Kibbutzes are financially independent from the state. Are you perhaps confusing the early days when they were getting set up vs the situation today? Or are you talking about the contentious settlements?

Twin Oaks Community in Virginia has been running for 60 years now and does income sharing between the residents.

The Bruderhof Communities have been running for a century now.

And my point regarding REI and Amana is not that they’re communes but that they’re non-capitalist organizations. If those models took any kind of serious hold at a government level, they’d be fought tooth and nail just like communes.

When the Kibbutzim lost their government subsidies, they became capitalists.

The Twin Oaks community has a population of 100 and annual turnover of 20%. That's pretty high. I suspect Twin Oaks' only success is being able to constantly recruit new members and get them to turn over their assets to the commune. Then they get disenchanted with communism and leave.

The Bruderhof communities average around 120 people. I couldn't find any statistics on how long people stay in them.

Congratulations, 2 communes out of 20,000 have survived! It still rounds to a 100% failure rate.

All the sources I’ve found say most became privatized. Can’t find a single source claiming all. Where are you getting this claim? The numbers I’ve found are that 10-15% are still communal.

Your twin oaks assessment is also off. New members don’t turn over their assets - you keep your preexisting assets. You are forbidden from spending those preexisting assets while a member. So I don’t think it’s fair to claim it’s sustained by constantly tricking new members into turning over assets.

So where are these 20,000 communes that are not privatized? Do you think that 100 people in a commune with massive turnover shows that communism works in a country of 350,000,000?

> So I don’t think it’s fair to claim it’s sustained by constantly tricking new members into turning over assets.

Thanks for the correction.

Small business ventures have a 65% failure rate after 10 years. Tech startups and mining are up at around 75%. I wouldn’t say that capitalist companies do all that much better.

NGOs and non-profits have only a 30% failure rate at 10 years supposedly.

So by the mark of survival rate you’re using we should be actually looking to NGOs and non-profits.

Obviously that would be silly and I’m not arguing that communism where everyone earns the same is a workable system at scale. It’s not for obvious reasons.

But the only options aren’t wild extremes. You could imagine a market economy with a strong social safety net. You could imagine strong unions and worker protections. You could imagine the responsibility of the company executives being the employees and customers over the shareholders. You could imagine that businesses over a certain size get government inspectors and ombudsman automatically assigned to check if there’s any malfeasance going on. There could be stricter laws around private market funds entering the political system. You could imagine national wealth funds for tech like Norway has for natural resources. Etc etc etc. our current capitalist system in the US is a choice and there’s no reason it needs to be set up the way it is from a sustainability perspective. Indeed, by every conceivable evidence the country is treating itself apart.

And bringing us back on topic, you could imagine scientists creating the priorities and funding allocations for science projects without having to justify it to the politicians and military industrial complex.

You're trying to compare 2 tiny communes to 36 million businesses.

You could envision all kinds of things. That doesn't mean they'll work.

The free market US has done much better environmentally than socialist countries.

Anyone wanting research funding is going to have to justify it, regardless of the system that is set up. Just imagine you set aside $1 billion and opened it up to anybody with a research idea and no vetting of their ideas. The money will disappear in a moment, and you'll get zero research results.

Whatever gets the humans to work harder I guess.

Starship hasn't even reached orbit, why are you putting it on a list as a viable solution for a mars mission?

Ariane 6 is legacy? lol

Wasn't it considered a kind of failed project because it's so incredibly expensive to launch with Ariane 6?

Also cringed at this

There will not be l'année mission to Mars lmao

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