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SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.
The first Starship that might be able to return anything wouldn't be able to launch before 2026 either, so...
Why don’t they just give the money to spacex? This is such typical French/eu behaviour. Let’s build something that already exists, for 10x the price, 10 years late, so that we can create jobs and have our own... Except the market viability is close to 0. how about using that money for something that’s actually innovative? Or perhaps charge less tax so people can decide on their own what’s worthwhile.
Question for the experts: what are the tests and analysis that we cannot do via a rover-based lab and hence need to send the samples to Earth? Asking out of curiosity (pun not intended!).
Biological wxperiments is a big one. There is kind of outstanding question of perclorates in martian soil and its toxicity to earth organisms, plants, etc.
> "This is not just twice as difficult as any typical Mars mission; it's twice squared" So, four times as difficult?
Or maybe (2n) 2 as difficult?
2+2 = 2×2 = 2² = … = 4
At least, unless I messed up my proof. My highest qualification is two A-levels in maths and half of brilliant.org…
https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2020/07/27/hᵤ2-2-4-for...
Question for the experts: what are the tests and analysis that we cannot do via a rover-based lab and hence need to send the samples to Earth? Asking out of curiosity (pun not intended!).
Want to burn 20kg of soil to see if there's any trace of specific elements? You'll need a furnace. Those are both heavy and high-energy. You could do a smaller scale test on a rover of 2g perhaps, but what if the traces are very, very small? Plus, whatever analysis tools you would use now have to also be extremely small and light, which means less capabilities.
Also, rovers have limited size: we can only do a small number of tests per rover because the rover's utility belt of tools is only so large. If your experiment is really easy to do but it's not a high enough priority, it won't happen.
Lastly, rovers die. You might spend 5 years building a tool, 2 years sending it on the next rover to Mars, only to have it crash or die before it's time to run your experiment.
But if we sent 300kg of soil back from Mars, we could do every test we can think of, carefully, with the best tools humanity can make and as much energy as we need.
Edit: +1 to what Something1234 said too! You can't clean out apparatuses easily after an experiment!
10 years to implement? Aren’t we supposed to have a starship in orbit of Mars by that time?
Secondly, there is need to independant access to space free of US technology export rules and foreign policy and sanctions.
US administration has forbidden NASA collaboration with China, and as a result they built a separate space station, and are having a separate moon-capable rocket. And i would bet my house that they will get to the moon, CCP seems to plan in 20 years+ horizons, not elevtuom cycles. Perks of being a dictatorship and all that.
SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.
Keep in mind that the first Starship cannot return anything to Earth, due to the lack of fuel. The first Starship that might be able to return anything wouldn't be able to launch before 2026 either, so...
SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.
Marketing materials aren't plans. Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as "vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his companies have delivered is impressive, but you never know what they're going to actually deliver until there are at least working prototypes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe (2n) 2 as difficult?
Fun fact I realised only recently: 2 ∘ 2 = 4 for any operator ∘ in the Ackermann sequence other than the zeroth (successor) operator. 2+2 = 2×2 = 2² = … = 4 At least, unless I messed up my proof. My highest qualification is two A-levels in maths and half of brilliant.org… https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2020/07/27/hᵤ2-2-4-for...