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Old 08-21-2022, 07:14 AM
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Default Spam in a can...

Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?
Issues in Science and Technology
VOL. XX, NO. 4, SUMMER 2004
BY JAMES A. VAN ALLEN

https://issues.org/p_van_allen/

Risk is high, cost is enormous, science is insignificant. Does anyone have a good rationale for sending humans into space?

My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?

Almost all of the space program’s important advances in scientific knowledge have been accomplished by hundreds of robotic spacecraft in orbit about Earth and on missions to the distant planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Robotic exploration of the planets and their satellites as well as of comets and asteroids has truly revolutionized our knowledge of the solar system. Observations of the Sun are providing fresh understanding of the physical dynamics of our star, the ultimate sustainer of life on Earth. And the great astronomical observatories are yielding unprecedented contributions to cosmology. All of these advances serve basic human curiosity and an appreciation of our place in the universe. I believe that such undertakings will continue to enjoy public enthusiasm and support. Current evidence for this belief is the widespread interest in the images and inferences from the Hubble Space Telescope, from the new Spitzer Space Telescope, and from the intrepid Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

In our daily lives, we enjoy the pervasive benefits of long-lived robotic spacecraft that provide high-capacity worldwide telecommunications; reconnaissance of Earth’s solid surface and oceans, with far-reaching cultural and environmental implications; much-improved weather and climatic forecasts; improved knowledge about the terrestrial effects of the Sun’s radiations; a revolutionary new global navigational system for all manner of aircraft and many other uses both civil and military; and the science of Earth itself as a sustainable abode of life. These robotic programs, both commercial and governmental, are and will continue to be the hard core of our national commitment to the application of space technology to modern life and to our national security.

Nonetheless, advocates of human spaceflight defy reality and struggle to recapture the level of public support that was induced temporarily by the Cold War. The push for Mars exploration began in the early 1950s with lavishly illustrated articles in popular magazines and a detailed engineering study by renowned rocket scientist Werner von Braun. What was missing then, and is still missing today, is a compelling rationale for such an undertaking.

In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. (and the spread of the human race as an "insurance policy" against its extinction, an important effort which could IMO be better served by planetary impact defense until it is decided that enough sterilized robotic exploration of Mars has occurred to make the contamination of Mars by humans acceptable. However, this means that the only spaceflight that absolutely requires humans are colonization related efforts. - W). But only a tiny number of Earth’s six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. (and I don't care if the images I'm seeing are taken by a robot instead of a human. - W) At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent (and limited funds! - W) to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.


Research in space: in search of meaning
Life science research aboard the International Space Station has come under scrutiny for its costs and apparent lack of returns
Aug 2016

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4967952/

In 2015 alone, NASA dedicated about US$3 billion, or one-sixth of its total $18 billion annual budget, to the ISS. In a recent post, mathematician and blogger Robert Walker claimed that, with its total cost of US$ 150 billion, ISS could well be the “most expensive single human artefact ever” (http://www.science20.com/robert_inv...r_built-156922). “I don't think those costs can be justified by the research alone, because we could have built it as a telerobotic facility operated from the ground, and done nearly all the same research for far less cost except the research into human effects of weightlessness”, Walker wrote. “I don't know of any comparison study, but without the need to send humans there every few months, wouldn't be surprised if that would have cost an order of magnitude less”.

This view is shared by other, more authoritative figures. “It's certainly not worth doing for any practical purpose, because the case for sending people into space is getting weaker with advances in automation and robotics, and the future of all practical travel in space will be by robots”, Lord Rees of Ludlow, former president of the Royal Society and renowned astronomer, told The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/scien...cle4444221.ece).

“The high costs of the ISS are leading the international scientific community to envisage the use of other means, such as nanosatellites. At least, this is going on in the astrobiology field. These tools do not consent recovery of samples and then will give a tremendous boost to the automation of the analytical procedures”, Onofri said. “However, for the time being, ISS provides an extraordinary facility for a range of research activities, including measuring the extent of human adaptation to the space conditions”.

Research in space thus needs to evolve to focus more on what science needs.

ISS (cost)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter...ce_Station#Cost

Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two- to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million...

http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/For...TML/000590.html

NASA announced the selected Mars 2020 rover instruments Thursday at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Managers made the selections out of 58 proposals received in January from researchers and engineers worldwide. Proposals received were twice the usual number submitted for instrument competitions in the recent past. This is an indicator of the extraordinary interest by the science community in the exploration of the Mars. The selected proposals have a total value of approximately $130 million for development of the instruments.

I've read somewhere else that the total cost of the instrument package was $200 million. Let's use that. What's more valuable scientifically? The instrument package on the Mars 2020 rover or 26.7 man-days on the ISS?
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Old 08-21-2022, 07:20 AM
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The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration Hardcover – April 1, 2022

https://www.amazon.com/End-Astronau...n/dp/0674257723

Reader review of it:

Manned spaceflight is -SO- 1960s, but this book merely outlines the many reasons why manned spaceflight should be replaced with robotics. I possess a large collection of papers in PDF format strongly supporting that position and wish I could find a way to contact the authors so they might greatly increase their book's somewhat anemic bibliography. Therefore, I give it five stars only because I enthusiastically agree with its premise. Note that I read a library copy of this book.

Years ago I saw a planetary mission lead scientist say in a TV documentary that the very best way to determine the scientific value of a space mission was to count the number of papers written based upon its findings. He said that his robotic mission had already produced many times the number of papers than had the long-existing white elephant (my term, not his) looking for a mission called the International Space Station. Blasphemy!

Just supporting that horrible cost to benefit ratio orbiting national prestige show costs NASA one 3 billion dollar Curiosity or Perseverance Mars mission every year. I submit that its real, practical non-value will be conclusively proved by the inevitable failure of NASA's unrealistic dream of getting private funding for it... beyond useless joy rides to it by billionaires.

Low latency telepresence for robotic assembly and servicing of large probes and other spacecraft while in low Earth orbit, spacecraft designed for assembly and/or maintenance using that method, could and should have been perfected long ago, eliminating the "need" for a $22+ billion (thus far), $4.1 billion per flight(!), Space Transportation System (Space Shuttle) jobs continuation program using Shuttle hardware designed to be reused many times, but in this case used in expendable mode, producing a launch vehicle that to this date can't even manage to load propellant.

However, since monetary interests and -not- logic usually direct what the available money is spent on, we're stuck with the Space Launch System (aka, Senate Launch System), another white elephant manned system searching for a mission.

There are so many hazards involved with sending humans on long flights outside of the Earth's protective magnetic field. Robots don't have that problem and therefore don't need massive shielding or methods to counter the biological effects of long-term zero-G, nor do they need food, water, oxygen or 23 million dollar zero-G toilets. Unlike space toilets, the artificial intelligence and robotic technologies used in robotic exploration have many valuable applications here on Earth and unlike the loss of human life, the loss of a robot isn't a great tragedy.

Web sites following NASA robotic missions get record site hits because of what they offer - HD views of the surface of Mars, for instance, or asteroid or comet close-ups. So, the claim that only manned spaceflight inspires kids is pure baloney. Many people have become bored with routine manned spaceflight, just as they did with the Apollo lunar missions. The first view of another world via a robot's eyes is an entirely different matter.

And, finally, there's this, but since there's SO much money in it, it persists.:

Colonizing Mars means contaminating Mars – and never knowing for sure if it had its own native life - November 6, 2018

Given that the exploration of Mars has so far been limited to [sterilized] unmanned vehicles, the planet likely remains free from terrestrial contamination. But when Earth sends astronauts to Mars, they’ll travel with life support and energy supply systems, habitats, 3D printers, food and tools. None of these materials can be sterilized in the same ways systems associated with robotic spacecraft can. Human colonists will produce waste, try to grow food and use machines to extract water from the ground and atmosphere. Simply by living on Mars, human colonists will contaminate Mars.

Astrobiology Vol. 17, No. 10
Searching for Life on Mars Before It Is Too Late
1 Oct 2017

Planetary Protection policies as we conceive them today will no longer be valid as human arrival will inevitably increase the introduction of terrestrial and organic contaminants and that could jeopardize the identification of indigenous Martian life.
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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan
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Old 10-09-2022, 05:59 PM
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Absolutely correct... this has basically been said since the start of the space age. While there was SOME validity to the argument that we simply didn't have complex enough robotic capabilities in the early space age, making manned spaceflight *required* particularly for exploration, the same cannot be said today or particularly into the future. When you see some of these autonomous robots they're experimenting with for the battlefield, of all places, you'll see what I mean. If they can maneuver around and shoot a gun, they can maneuver around and collect rocks or set up sensors to conduct experiments. If they can get up after being kicked over, they can get up after stumbling on a rock on Mars...

ISS is a sh!t show of it's own, always has been. You want to get an idea of how it went and the reality of it, read "ISS-capades" by Donald A. Beattie. He was an engineer/manager on the project for many years, and tells the whole sordid tale of this political football of a project. Basically SLS is a retread of the same old story. Even the astronauts deride it as "peeing in jars, looking at stars", which is the main reason for ISS's continued existence. Despite all the talk, NASA won't be returning to the Moon in any meaningful way so long as ISS is soaking up most of the budget, particularly for manned flight. Now they've developed THE most expensive rocket ever conceived in SLS (which NASA's own Inspector General's office testified before Congress will cost upwards of FOUR BILLION DOLLARS per launch-- four times what the final figures for shuttle showed its per-flight launch costs were, which was more than Saturn V even). This is for a FULLY EXPENDABLE rocket, and these cost figures are ONLY for the rocket-- NOT mission costs, such as habs/modules/equipment, training, testing, development, etc. JUST for the rocket launch! Oh, they'll probably perform a few "stunt" missions sending Orion out there looping around the Moon in some lopsided highly elliptical orbit (which is all it's capable of-- insufficient propulsion capability to go into LLO). It's all SUCH a waste...

AND basically their research is showing that there are potentially insurmountable problems with humans in zero gee long term, like changes to the shape of the eye and its parts, changes to the brain and circulatory system, etc, that even exercise and drugs are unable to combat. Of course they're doing NO research on artificial gravity via centrifugal force, to find out how well this works at ameliorating some of these conditions, what level is required, how much is required (either in the % of gravity or exposure time-- for instance, will a few minutes a day in artificial gravity be sufficient or is it necessary 100% of the time, is 1/4 gravity sufficient or does it need to be a full one gee, etc). NONE of this is being researched or planned to be researched. At this point radiation from solar particles and cosmic radiation is better understood and has better plans to deal with it, than these simple gravity issues...

NASA's biggest job, as a gubmint agency, is to disperse gubmint pork to the correct lobbying industries and contractors, funnel it to the correct congressional districts and senator's home states, "bring home the bacon" so to speak. "Not About Space Anymore" is actually a pretty accurate miscronym... LOL SLS is living proof of that.

At any rate, things are unlikely to change, at least anytime soon, or barring a complete upset of the applecart, which we may be in the opening phases of. Until DC is FORCED to do business in a better way, there's nothing wrong with the pork distribution services NASA provides as-is. Too many contractors are making too much money off it to allow the golden goose to be redirected, changed, or done away with.

Later! OL J R
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Old 10-11-2022, 06:39 AM
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The Ingenuity helicopter technology demonstrator doesn't just test what is involved in successfully operating a helicopter on Mars, it also demonstrates the successful use of vastly more powerful commercial off-the-shelf electronics there which will enable far more sophisticated AI in the future.

The avionics design is required to have low mass, low power and adequate radiation tolerance. A set of candidate parts to meet these requirements have been incorporated into the design which is now described.

The Snapdragon processor from Intrinsyc with a Linux operating system performs high-level functions on the helicopter. The Snapdragon processor has a 2.26 GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor with 2 GB Random Access Memory (RAM), 32 GB Flash memory, a Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART), a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), General Purpose Input/Ouput (GPIO), a 4000 pixel color camera, and a Video Graphics Array (VGA) black-and-white camera. This processor mplements visual navigation via a velocity estimate derived from features tracked in the VGA amera, filter propagation for use in flight control, data management, command processing, telemetry generation, and radio communication.

The Snapdragon processor is connected to two flight-control (FC) Microcontroller Units (MCU) via a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART). These MCU processor units operate redundantly, receiving and processing identical sensor data to perform the flight-control functions necessary to keep the vehicle flying in the air. At any given time, one of the MCU is active with the other waiting to be hot-swapped in case of a fault. The MCU from Texas Instruments is a TMS570LC43x high-reliability automotive processor operating at 300 MHz, with 512 K RAM, 4 MB flash memory, UART, SPI, GPIO.

The Snapdragon 801 is 2014 tech. Image:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-medi...l5bkibn0jpg.jpg

Is it Wise to Fly Automotive Grade Electronic Parts in Space?
Are They an Affordable and Effective Option?
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NEPP EEE Parts for Small Missions Workshop September 11, 2014


https://nepp.nasa.gov/workshops/eee...r onics_v4.pdf

The automotive grade electronics, vastly more powerful than 1997 technology radiation hardened parts and, therefore, real-time AI capable are proving to be far more robust on Mars than expected:

Mars Ingenuity Helicopter in its First Proper Long Flight After 100 Freezing Nights of Waiting
10 sep 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOKMLr4KR70

-----------------

Perseverance rover

Processor:

Radiation-hardened central processor with PowerPC 750 Architecture: a BAE RAD 750

Operates at up to 200 megahertz speed, 10 times the speed in Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity's computers


That's 1997 tech because it's radiation hardened which, among other measures, requires much greater feature size.

Memory:

2 gigabytes of flash memory (~8 times as much as Spirit or Opportunity)
256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory
256 kilobytes of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory
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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan
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Old 10-11-2022, 06:45 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luke strawwalker
ISS is a sh!t show of it's own, always has been. You want to get an idea of how it went and the reality of it, read "ISS-capades" by Donald A. Beattie.
Thanks for that highly informative reply. It gives me even more factual support for my NON-mainstream position about Spam in a can. I would love to read "ISS-capades," but searches don't turn it up. Got a link?
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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan
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Old 10-11-2022, 08:09 AM
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The answer: neither. Commenter Richard Brezinski agrees. A GREAT website, BTW.

I'm glad to see the Chinese wasting money on a manned space station. It's just that much less they can spend on anything productive.

Commercial space stations: labs or hotels?
by Jeff Foust
Monday, October 10, 2022


https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4462/1
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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan
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Old 11-16-2022, 02:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Winston2021
Thanks for that highly informative reply. It gives me even more factual support for my NON-mainstream position about Spam in a can. I would love to read "ISS-capades," but searches don't turn it up. Got a link?

Here ya go...

https://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/ISScapades.html

Local library may have it, or bookstore. It's been out awhile, I got my copy from my periodic scavenging of the Half Price Books science department... Love hitting the ones over by NASA in Clear Lake, when I get the chance... Got me a book that was signed by Brainerd Holmes, who was a big cheese back in the Apollo days! Lots of guys get lots of books working at NASA, and usually unload them for a little quick cash when they switch jobs or move...

Later! OL J R
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Old 11-16-2022, 02:35 PM
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I say we need the exact opposite of No Bucks=No Buck Rogers.

No Buck Rogers=NO BUCKS.
I am FAR more interested in MANNED space exploration than any ROBUT unmanned nonsense.
REAL human experiencing locations. Not some remote roboTIX.
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Old 11-16-2022, 02:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Winston2021
The answer: neither. Commenter Richard Brezinski agrees. A GREAT website, BTW.

I'm glad to see the Chinese wasting money on a manned space station. It's just that much less they can spend on anything productive.

Commercial space stations: labs or hotels?
by Jeff Foust
Monday, October 10, 2022


https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4462/1


The Chinese have taken a terribly pragmatic view on how to conduct a space program. Instead of series of entire "programs" repeating the same missions over and over to gain proficiency and expand their experience base, they conduct each mission "in turn" to develop a limited set of capabilities and experience. Thus each flight is a "stand alone" sort of "program" which seeks to perform specific tasks or develop specific capabilities AS NEEDED, and once performed and understood, they move on to the next goal. Thus their first flight was basically all of the Mercury program in ONE FLIGHT, then they moved on to a second and third flight which basically achieved all of what was done in Project Gemini, now they've moved on to their version of "Apollo" but doing the Skylab/ISS thing. Their first stage was roughly analgous to "Skylab" and then was replaced by their current, basically, clone of Mir/ISS.

They don't fly anywhere near the same number of flights as the US and USSR did back in the 60's, or even in the 70's and 80's, but each flight is steadily building on the skills and capabilities developed on previous flights... that's how they've basically managed to catch up to us in 10-15 years to about roughly the same level that we're at now, the US and Russia. They've done it over a relative handful of flights and don't "fly in space for the sake of flying in space" but take a much more gradualist, steady, deliberate approach to spaceflight. When the time comes they choose to go to the Moon, they'll develop the technology and perform a few missions to demonstrate their understanding and proficiency with their developed technology, then they'll go.

The US, OTOH, is a hot mess... Artemis I launched overnight, but at $4.1 billion per flight, its 8 minute 3 second burn to orbit cost $8,488,612.84 PER SECOND of flight time of the SLS! That's ridiculous... All that was visible was a few seconds from the pad and tower cams and the blinding fiery trail of the SRB's, and a bright trail of sparks of spent alumina from the burned out SRB's after separation on their way coasting up to apogee as the core stage disappeared as a blue-white dot of its RS-25 former SSME rocket engines on it's way to orbit, with the entire thing crashing back down into the ocean and settling to the bottom in millions of pieces after at most a half-hour (for the core, the boosters shattered and sank long before that). All that to put an unmanned Orion and ICPS stage into low Earth orbit, perform a perigee raise burn halfway through the first orbit, then perform an 18 minute TLI burn of the ICPS upper stage powered by a single RL-10, separating the Orion off shortly thereafter, which performed a short burn of its SM engine to gain separation distance from the spent stage. The spent ICPS will eject four cubesats which will perform experiments in the vicinity of the Moon, and perform a "disposal burn" which will send the stage looping around the Moon, to be thrown out into a solar disposal orbit. The Orion will get to the Moon in a couple days, performing an orbit insertion burn to put it into a weird looping highly elliptical lunar orbit with a perilune of about 80 miles and apolune of about 75,000 miles IIRC, which is the only orbit that the Orion has sufficient propulsion to get in and out of (it can't get into a Low Lunar Orbit like Apollo and have sufficient fuel to return to Earth through the TLI burn, so it has to settle for this huge looping orbit which is useless for exploration basically, unless you have a Gateway station or a lander capable of matching the orbit and doing MOST of the propulsion work on the way down and back up again from the Moon's surface). It's a d@mned expensive stunt IMHO... Hope we get good HD TV pics from the Orion cameras, Lord knows we've spent enough for them!!

The "Artemis Program" doesn't even have a lunar lander, which kinda makes landing on the Moon rather difficult I would think LOL Oh, NASA let a contract to SpaceX for a "lunar Starship" to be the landing vehicle, BUT that's predicated on 2 things-- 1) A successful Starship program, capable of successfully flying a Starship vehicle into orbit, and 2) that successful Starship being modified to be capable of landing and lifting off from the Moon. Now, IF we have a successful Starship, WTF do we need a mega-rocket super-sized overpriced shuttle-derived fully-expendable DINOSAUR of a rocket that costs $4.1 billion dollars a launch for?? Starship is supposed to be FULLY reusable and fly for a TINY FRACTION of the cost of SLS... and IF Starship fails, then the Artemis program isn't going ANYWHERE and SLS and Orion are useless because they can't get down onto the Moon. If Starship fails, I doubt Congress will be willing to fund any "commercial competitor" lander, and if NASA builds their own, it'll take them BILLIONS of dollars and at least a decade to do it... again by which point SOMETHING should have come along and make SLS look like the complete expensive joke that it is...

The whole thing is, as Spock would say, "highly illogical"... makes NO sense whatsoever, unless the main purpose is to distribute gubmint funds to various space-state and traditional big lobbying space contractors with long standing ties to NASA, and give NASA a reason to exist... such as it is...

OH well...

Later! OL J R
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Old 11-16-2022, 02:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
I say we need the exact opposite of No Bucks=No Buck Rogers.

No Buck Rogers=NO BUCKS.
I am FAR more interested in MANNED space exploration than any ROBUT unmanned nonsense.
REAL human experiencing locations. Not some remote roboTIX.


There's certainly appeal to that way of thinking, BUT "flags and footprints" are about all we're capable of or can afford, at least the way NASA is doing business. In terms of "Bang for the Buck", I don't think it's worth it IMHO.

Unmanned spacecraft, like it or not, have achieved probably 95%+ of all space exploration and discoveries. They're also FAR more cost efficient, and more and more capable all the time, as our computer and automation expertise increases over time. Eventually we'll be able to launch something like these "Boston Robotics" things to Mars, with on-board AI capable of assessing the terrain and making its own decisions about how to proceed, rather than beaming back pictures from "nav-cams" and having a committee of scientists on Earth plotting directions and a course, and then radioing up instructions for the rover to carry out... a process that limits one to movements of maybe a few meters a day at best, and is EXTREMELY restrictive of where it can go and what it can do. Imagine a version of "C3PO" on Mars, capable of getting itself to various locations to perform experiments or gather samples, then coupling itself to a 4-wheeler like rover that would carry it autonomously to the next area designated to be explored or sampled... we could do exponentially more than the current rovers, or even manned expeditions...

Rovers and robots, unlike the "meatbags", don't need constant supply of oxygen and maintained temperature in a narrow band, pressurization and removal of carbon dioxide, food and water and means of waste disposal, tons of supplies, etc. They don't have to be returned to Earth, kept safe from radiation, etc. They can stay and perform the missions far beyond their original design lifetimes, so long as the hardware and basic elements of the mission hold up and are functional. If they fail or explode or fall off a cliff or whatever, while sad and a letdown, it's a lot better than dead astronauts...

Later! OL J R
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