Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

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This is just stupid. What is the point? This will be extremely expensive, it will gut a lot of useful science programs.

Send robots! They are thousands of times cheaper and they get the job done. And when they die it is not a national tragedy.

Robots have been doing an excellent job of planetary exploration over the past 20 years or so. There is no reason to stop this. And this will mostly stop if nasa decides to seriously pursue a human mars mission, because such a mission will soak up most NASA resources.

The only reason to send humans is to satisfy the science fiction fantasies of a bunch of stupid fan boys. And everyone knows that these fantasies can just as easily be satisfied by a cheesy movie or TV show.

Now I have to emphasize the word stupid, in "stupid science fiction fanboys." If you were a smart science fiction fanboy or girl you would know that continued robotic exploration will make the science fiction fantasy of mars tourism much closer than a human mission.

If we keep sending robotic missions we can study the mars soil and perhaps move on to having the robots build stuff on mars. If the robots can build a base with solar based energy gathering, oxygen generation and even perhaps rocket fuel generation, then mars travel may become a regular if expensive thing.

Otherwise we will have a single mission that with great fan fare sends one or two people to stomp around on mars for an hour or two and quickly return. (Or even worse, perhaps die there). After the mission the whole thing will be scrapped and only the newspaper clippings and tv documentaries will remain. This is what happened with Apolo. It was great but it did not really lead anywhere in terms of moon exploration.

I think the ultimate goal with space travel is to reduce the risk of human extinction, which is a distinct possibility when we are confined to a single planet or planetary system.

Transporting and then returning humans to a "distant" destination will be a worthy milestone that will teach us a lot. We have to start somewhere.

Perhaps you're right: maybe we can more quickly achieve distribution of humanity by solely focusing on robotic exploration. But I just wanted to point out that satisfying science fiction fanboys isn't the only reason to travel to Mars.

It seems incredibly arrogant and short-sited to assume that humans would be able to somehow survive outside of their original environment. There isn't a grocery list of things we need to bring into space or to another planet. Everything on this planet is interrelated and inseparable in largely unknown ways.

You don't need that much to just survive - food/water, atmosphere, low enough radiation, manageable temperature.

All of these problems can be solved with our current level of technology on Mars. After you establish the base near a water source, you can grow your own food, you can make oxygen, you can mine for whatever elements you need.

Nobody says it's easy, but it's doable.

(replying to pond_lilly, who appears to be shadow/hellbanned)

> pond_lilly 4 hours ago | link [dead]

> Exactly, like bacteria in our guts that gets replenished by consuming foods grown in Earth soil. On Mars this stuff will die out right away, and to replicate it you will need to create another Earth.Gut bacteria is just a tiny example, there is other stuff like bone problems, vision problems, etc. I am appalled that instead of fixing mess here on earth, the only known planet to support life, we waste brains, time and resources on these idiotic fantasies

Well there's one thing, if we can manage to build a survivable habitat on a planet like Mars--relatively mild as it may be, compared to other space places--surviving on a planet on the verge of some global climate catastrophe is going to seem like a piece of cake ;-)

I get the sense we're going to need to do some heavy genetic engineering before we're able to survive long-term on other planets. Probably more than anyone from this generation will be comfortable with. This of course will raise the question, have we really saved ourselves from extinction if what we save isn't exactly human?

Given how far away other earth-like planets are likely to be, the more immediate challenge is long-term survival off earth, either in a spacecraft or on mars.

Once we learn how to survive "on our own" then one could envisage making the journey to some Earth II.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your perspective, but what do you think about the potential in-direct value that could come from a mission like this? Such as inspiring young people to pursue STEM, or the general population getting behind and funding other exploratory missions involving robots? You say that most NASA resources will be soaked up. That's possible, but what do you think about the potential in-direct benefits of getting the human race excited about space exploration?

This is a very very expensive way to do advertising. You will be able to do a lot more advertising to shape people's perceptions with just a small portion of the costs.

Furthermore, government space exploration is essentially a business of elites. It is only a few scientists and engineers that are involved with the space program. It is only a couple of the most elite astronauts that will get to actually fly the rockets. The vast majority of americans will have to be inspired by watching it all on tv.

This all worked out in the 60s with Apolo, but the world is changing and America is changing. Americans are watching less and less TV and are more willing to do things.

If you want to inspire people to go into STEM, it will probably be better to spend money on new and interesting educational programs to get kids interested in science and engineering. Furthermore, spending money on adult education programs would probably also help.

We can already send robots to Mars. The challenge is sending living human beings. Thats where the innovations will come from, that goal will motivate and push progress.

"And when [robots] die it is not a national tragedy."

Exactly. No one, apart from a few invested souls, really cares. For this reason progress slows and innovation reverts to incremental steps rather than leaps.

So if a meteor wipes our earth, we'll still have robots on Mars. Now isn't that something to strive for?

Are you trying to be sarcastic? Because with the current technology, even if we do have manned mission to mars, if a meteor wipes out earth there will be no living humans on mars either. With the current technology any human mission to mars can only be on mars for a very limited time and will rely on earth for all of their resources. Thus, if a meteor wipes out earth, any mission to mars will die too.

If you want to build a sustainable mars presence, a manned mission to mars is not going to do it. We have to find a way to use resources on mars to sustain a human presence. That will require a lot of research into mars resources, a lot of engineering to build mars factories etc. I am not sure if this is possible at all but if it is, it is best done by starting with robotic missions. A robot can spend a year on mars looking for materials that can be used to make bricks (for example). A human, even if we can get him on mars, will probably have to go back in hours.

> I am not sure if this is possible at all but if it is, it is best done by starting with robotic missions.

It is very hard to imagine a self-sustaining Mars colony. You face two huge hurdles: a very thin atmosphere (average surface pressure 0.6% of Earth's) and low gravity, which sounds great until you consider the correlated long-term health problems.

Even if we could somehow import massive amounts of air and water to Mars, it would rapidly evaporate away and be lost to space. We may be able to establish science stations on Mars in some kind of pressurized air-tight dome habitats, but colonization, particularly independent colonization, is practically inconceivable for the foreseeable future. Mars is simply not suited at all to human life, and the problems with Mars are not something that can be fixed with any terraforming that doesn't involve somehow adding 2/3rds of Earth's mass to the planet and somehow recreating a magnetosphere.

How much did Avatar cost to make? How much will it cost to go to Mars?

$237 million to make and advertise Avatar. [1]

The Space Review estimated in 2010 the cost of Apollo from 1959 to 1973 as $20.4 billion, or $109 billion in 2010 dollars, averaged over the six landings as $18 billion each. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost

True. But how much will going to Mars bring back?

It needs a human touch.

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