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Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#51

Post by mkr-hn »

MichaelAO wrote: post #37
worldsayshi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach." - [Bruce Sterling]( http://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/sterling-ill-believe.html ) I don't see how people can believe in a long time prospect of Mars colonization as long as we shun deserts and polar regio…

That quote is pretty spot on. However, the whole point is to "back up the biosphere" in order to protect human consciousness from an earth shattering event (pun intended). At some point in the future, we're going to have to get off this planet.

It's easier to build a sustainable bubble city on Earth than to build a simple survivable habitat on Mars.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#52

Post by khuey »

tocomment wrote: post #33
e03179 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "humanoid" robots? Why not just "robots" that can do a job no matter what they look like?

If nothing else, PR value. And to inspire new engineers.

If you want PR value, send flesh and blood humans. Otherwise send the tool that's best for the job.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#53

Post by tambourine_man »

rpm4321 wrote: post #23

Jesus, I'm all for sending out as many missions as Congress will pay for, but another Mars rover? Can't they throw a little bit of money towards sending a melt-bot to Europa or Enceladus, or a boat-bot to Titan already? It'll be 2015 before we even know what Ceres really looks like. Mars is certainly critically important, but the solar system is a massive place, and with such limited budgets why wouldn't you spend at…

I'd love to see us getting to Europa too, there must be something alive down that salty ocean, but melting several kilometers of ice is hard even on Earth.

Enceladus seems a lot easier, just fly through the volcano plumes and/or land on one of the tiger stripes. I mean, we've got water, heat and organic compounds. What are we waiting for?

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#54

Post by gojomo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #30
prawks wrote: post #21

It is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was supposed to be like the rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they need? It seems like there must be something else to do aside from.... rove. Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards that? Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on whether life has or has not existe…

>how much of the surface have they covered Oh, right about 0%. And that was with rovers not properly equipped to find microscopic life.

I'm a fan of all the missions so far, but when I hear that none of the rovers have been "properly equipped to find microscopic life", I fear that some of the mission planning may be trying to "preserve the mystery", trickling out plot revelations to keep the viewers/funders hooked.

Couldn't Curiousity have had some agar plates and just dragged them through the dust, for subsequent observation over weeks? (Even if any organisms detected were eventually suspected to be earth-originated contaminants, their growth details would be new info, right?)

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#55

Post by nkoren »

prawks wrote: post #21

It is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was supposed to be like the rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they need? It seems like there must be something else to do aside from.... rove. Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards that? Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on whether life has or has not existe…

> How much of the surface have they covered with rovers?

They've landed four successful rovers on the surface. One the size of a microwave oven, two the size of small golf carts, and one the size of a BMW Mini.

Meanwhile, Mars has approximately the same land area as all the continents of earth put together. It's a big place.

Feel free to do the math to answer your question, but there'll be an awful lot of zeros after the decimal place.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#56

Post by gojomo »

danielweber wrote: post #46
prawks wrote: post #21

It is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was supposed to be like the rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they need? It seems like there must be something else to do aside from.... rove. Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards that? Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on whether life has or has not existe…

Mars has as much land area as Earth. So 1) we are nowhere near done searching it with robots, and 2) we will never search it completely with robots. We really need to have humans on Mars to search for life.

How are humans better at searching for life than robots?

Humans seem to require much more onsite support infrastructure, including for activities (eating, sleeping, remaining social and sane) that are tangential to most exploration and life-detection experiments. Such an infrastructure also increases the magnitude of Earth-contamination of the Martian environment.

I'm all for having humans on Mars so we're a two-planet species... but I don't see boots-on-the-ground as offering a faster/better/more-complete search for life than the same resources sent as robots.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#57

Post by Dylan16807 »

gojomo wrote: post #54
Dylan16807 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how much of the surface have they covered Oh, right about 0%. And that was with rovers not properly equipped to find microscopic life.

I'm a fan of all the missions so far, but when I hear that none of the rovers have been "properly equipped to find microscopic life", I fear that some of the mission planning may be trying to "preserve the mystery", trickling out plot revelations to keep the viewers/funders hooked. Couldn't Curiousity have had some agar plates and just dragged them through the dust, for subsequent observation over weeks? (Even if any…

The problem with relying on that method is that finding life on mars could be like finding life at geothermal vents; deep down in hard-to-reach volcanic pockets. If you don't poke around some of those areas before bringing masses of earth contaminants to the surface, you could easily screw up future searching.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#58

Post by Dylan16807 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #41
theklub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone waste their time trying to live in the Gobi desert? The point is to get humanity into space.

The fact that we don't choose to live in deserts shows that it's highly likely that living in deserts - and all the more in even less hospitable environments - is not sustainable given our current way of living. Unless we can show that we can have a working ecosystem in the least hospitable environments here on earth we aren't going to be able to set one up 4 light minutes away on a desert planet without an atmospher…

What do you mean by sustainable? Plenty of things are capable of being done, but people happen to prefer alternatives. An example might be constructing every building in the US on stilts. It's more expensive and wastes some resources but you can still manage to run farms and cities that way.

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#59

Post by danielweber »

gojomo wrote: post #56
danielweber wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars has as much land area as Earth. So 1) we are nowhere near done searching it with robots, and 2) we will never search it completely with robots. We really need to have humans on Mars to search for life.

How are humans better at searching for life than robots? Humans seem to require much more onsite support infrastructure, including for activities (eating, sleeping, remaining social and sane) that are tangential to most exploration and life-detection experiments. Such an infrastructure also increases the magnitude of Earth-contamination of the Martian environment. I'm all for having humans on Mars so we're a two-plan…

How long would would you have to search the rocky mountains with robots to find a dinosaur fossil?

Re: Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020

#60

Post by [deleted] »

nkoren wrote: post #55
prawks wrote: post #21

It is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was supposed to be like the rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they need? It seems like there must be something else to do aside from.... rove. Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards that? Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on whether life has or has not existe…

> How much of the surface have they covered with rovers? They've landed four successful rovers on the surface. One the size of a microwave oven, two the size of small golf carts, and one the size of a BMW Mini. Meanwhile, Mars has approximately the same land area as all the continents of earth put together. It's a big place. Feel free to do the math to answer your question, but there'll be an awful lot of zeros after…

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