Joe and others, Some comments on a manned Mars mission 1. I believe that the first few manned missions will end in failure. We will have to do many manned missions until we solve all the problems involved if we do at all. This will up the cost tremendously. 2. After one successful mission the cost of the next mission probably will still be too great to repeat so that we would not be able settle Mars with a permanent base. 3. Going to Mars with a manned mission does not entail solving one or a few engineering challenges but rather a vast slew of them so analogies to other challenges may not be relevant. On a brighter note check out this website www.windows.ucar.edu It has a neat space information including about Mars. Sincerely, Gary Vardon see my website www.wealthbuilder.wwdb.biz use gary1234 as the id -----Original Message----- From: Joe Bauman Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2008 2:28 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Happy New Year (belated) Good point, and you are right about Mars having a varied terrain. But A geology alone doesn't add up to interesting or justify the cost, as far as I'm concerned. You could argue tat the moon has fascinating geology, with mountains, rilles, basins and volcanoes. And Antarctica is even more interesting. But let's face it, Mars probably never had substantial life. If it was as expensive to visit Antarctica, and we already knew what it's like because of robotic exploration, would there be a good cost-benefit reason for going? On the other hand, we may be able to find signs of life on exoplanets within a few years, by analyzing the atmosphere. I'm just saying we may be better off thinking about astronomical research rather than going to Mars, because the payoff for the former could be much better and less expensive. -- Joe On Jan 2, 2008, at 1:08 PM, Chuck Hards wrote:
Joe, I'm stumped. Are you talking about the same Mars as the rest of us?
I find Mars fascinating- hardly the world you describe. Robots have shown Mars to be a dynamic, diverse world, with an ancient natural history just crying for human explorers to go and discover. And I think you've read far too much into the exo-planet stories. All seem pretty bleak from the mostly surmised conditions posited on some of them. Mars isn't earthlike in many respects, but it's a heck of a lot closer than any exoplanets in the current inventory, and infinitely more accessable. It will be centuries, literally, to thousands of years, before humans ever actually think of those planets as "places"- if we ever do. They will remain mere data until long after our culture has crumbled to dust.
I think it likely that Mars will be terraformed long, long before any exo-planets are ever even imaged with resolution greater than a spectrographic smear.
Mars and other solar-system bodies are right here, practically in our own back-yard. We would be derelict in our duty to our species if we didn't go there and explore them in person. It is our nature. Well, most of our natures.
I also don't place much credence in the stance that robot explorers are better than humans. The reasons are numerous and go beyond just the risk argument- which is utter nonsense when you take into account that we send our best young people off to be killed in foreign lands by the thousands, right here on earth. I guarantee you that even with odds weighted against them, you'd have thousands of scientists and engineers lining-up to volunteer to crew a Mars mission. That is part of being an American. We love challenges. But the mere presence of a human crew is what ups the odds of success. We can repair, jury-rig, replace, engineer solutions right on the spot. A profound, total failure can occur, of course, but that can and does happes even with the robotic probes. Mars does not have a good success record with robot probes. I believe the historical failure rate is over 1/3 of all missions launched. I think manned missions stand a much better chance because of our ability to improvise and change plans.
I could go on, but lunch is over and I have to get back to work.
Viva Marte!
On Jan 2, 2008 12:43 PM, Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
Yes indeed, Happy New Year to all our friends!
My predictions about a crewed Mars expedition are:
1, it will happen pretty soon because we have discovered a cheap new transportation system;
OR
2, it will never happen because robots are proving Mars isn't that interesting.
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