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Martian Futures, Will man really colonize the planets?
nprev
post Dec 25 2006, 12:47 AM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Dec 24 2006, 03:02 PM) *
Stu:

That A4b-esque vehicle is a bit out of place, in all honesty. And generally speaking, those guys would *not* have aimed for the interior of Victoria! But Meridiani is *exactly* the sort of landing site which Von Braun considered for his big delta glider landers... ...some fertile ground for image manipulation there, I think!

Bob Shaw


Now that's a striking mental image. I can see one of the expedition tractors pulling up alongside Oppy down inside Victoria, then everybody piles out for an up-close look at her...


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MaxSt
post Jan 14 2007, 07:36 AM
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http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn10...s-missions.html

QUOTE
Europe targets its own Moon and Mars missions

Someone at the meeting pointed out that what a rover can survey in a year, a geologist could do in 20 seconds," says space scientist John Zarnecki of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.


The figure is a bit off, don't you think? unsure.gif

Unless it's a very fast geologist.
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Stu
post Jan 14 2007, 09:01 AM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Dec 24 2006, 11:02 PM) *
Stu:

That A4b-esque vehicle is a bit out of place, in all honesty. And generally speaking, those guys would *not* have aimed for the interior of Victoria! Bob Shaw


Of course it's out of place Bob, that's the point! tongue.gif And it wouldn't have been a good idea, no, trying to land in Victoria; not even John Boone could pilot a ship in there, I reckon...

Just daring to dream the impossible Bob, just daring to dream the impossible. We can't look at Mars through the cold, steely eyes of engineers and scientists all the time. Mars will be home for poets, artists and writers too. smile.gif


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Stu
post Jan 14 2007, 09:57 AM
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Talking about "Futures", the poet Diane Ackerman eloquently puts into words the way I feel about the future...

This is from her poem "PLUTO" from her staggering book "THE PLANETS: A COSMIC PASTORAL"... ( Ustrax will like it even if no-one else does! smile.gif )


Where are the Balboas
and the Amerigo Vespuccis
of tomorrow,
hot on the heels of the future,
who will give their names
freely, as if to wives,
as they voyage the spaceblack
waters, always going on
with restless ongoing,
to the end perplexed
by the force that sped them,
and leaving only their names behind?

If Pluto anchors
beyond our sweep, docking
far out along the midnight wharf,
we'll braise
our frontier towns on Triton.
How eerie its floe-broken lands
will seem, with no pink and green
wispy trees of summer
or every so often a blinding white birch.
Could I face only the galaxies
coiled like cobras?

Surely frontier towns
there will always be,
even if "town" seems
too fixed, too stolid,
for anything so mercurial
as "frontier" to be caught with.
Deep in the mountainsides,
where the temperature
is least likely to skitter,
we'll build
our snuggeries and hives,
be cave dwellers again.
It's as if, flummoxed
by the shock of living,
we step by step re-stage it,
driven to the most far-reaching
ritual. Like a catechism,
we begin again: the cave-dweller,
the trapper, the trader,
the explorer; the self-reliance,
the hope, the patience,
the invention; wrapped in our past
as we breathe down
the glistening neck of the future.

That's the future, my friends, right there. Because that was the past. We'll just use bigger ships and explore further, that's all, stopping where and when we can, laying down roots, resting, reflecting, making homes, raising families, then head for the horizon again. It's what we do.


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post Jan 15 2007, 05:07 PM
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QUOTE
MaxSt wrote: The figure is a bit off, don't you think?


Oh yes its definitely off. It would have taken a human astronauts quite a number of excursions to walk all the area covered by either Spirit or Opportunity. If he even would have been allowed to walk that far like 2 km single trip and then back.

But that illustrates the difference between the mission of the rover and what human astronauts would do.

The rovers work slowly and provides an in-depth look at each location, something a human wouldnt do. Just imagine a human standing for one entire day with a hand held Mössbauer instrument! smile.gif

Seriously the astronaut would bring back any sample for one preliminary analysis and if deemed interesting enough he would bring it back to Earth - so anything that involves humans is a sample rturn mission also.
In short, a human mission with astronatus and one with rovers are completely different missions and I seriously dont think they should be compared in a way like this.
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dvandorn
post Jan 15 2007, 05:43 PM
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Steve Squyres came up with a ratio of MER time to human time. I believe he said that what it took the MER an entire sol to do, a human geologist could do in about 30 seconds. This was in terms of moving to a sample site, selecting a rock or patch of soil to examine, using your rock hammer to break off a chunk or a rock pick to clean off a spot, and then using a hand lens to look at the rock's structure.

Of course, the MERs can do other things in situ that a human observer can't -- getting images in multiple wavelengths (as opposed to taking pictures that can be analyzed later), taking APXS and Mossbauer readings (as opposed to simply picking up rocks for later lab analysis) -- but all in all, robotic explorers are going to take a lot longer to accomplish most geologic tasks than human explorers will take.

-the other Doug


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lyford
post Jan 15 2007, 11:09 PM
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If you told MER and a human geologist to go sample the same rock on Earth, who would get there first? Now make that a rock on Meridiani Planum. I think you would need to give about a 20 year head start to that human.....

(I do realize Steve was making a point about robotic capability, but as it stands , robots are actually doing the work slowly and getting results RIGHT NOW, as opposed to a hypothetical human on some future mission who may work faster)


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MaxSt
post Jan 17 2007, 03:02 AM
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I believe Steve also said that 2 rovers at 2 different places on Mars provide more science than could 10 rovers at one site.

And human expedition would basically put lots of resources at one site. So that's better be a good place then. smile.gif
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Bob Shaw
post Jan 17 2007, 12:47 PM
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Humans and rovers would both have a role to play, especially by the time a manned Mars mission becomes possible.

o Rovers could be sent to explore in interesting/boring/dangerous/biologically sensitive places

o Men could follow rovers to high value targets or exploit their superior mobility and geological instincts

It's not some much the tortoise and the hare so much as horses for courses.


Bob Shaw


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mps
post Jan 8 2008, 12:13 PM
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Some more russian pipe dreams. Last time it was to the Moon by 2027.
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JonClarke
post Jan 21 2008, 07:46 AM
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QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 15 2007, 05:43 PM) *
Of course, the MERs can do other things in situ that a human observer can't -- getting images in multiple wavelengths (as opposed to taking pictures that can be analyzed later), taking APXS and Mossbauer readings (as opposed to simply picking up rocks for later lab analysis) -- but all in all, robotic explorers are going to take a lot longer to accomplish most geologic tasks than human explorers will take.


An astronaut would carry such instruments or collect samples and analyse them back in the lab using using a much greater range of instruments of much greater precision than say MER would have. An astronaut would not take all day getting a single measurement, or even several days. An astonaut would be able to pick rocks up, turn them over, crack them open. An astronaut would not normally work on foot, but with a rover that could cover up to 100 km a day and carry perhaps a 100 kg of instruments. An astronaut would not have work with a time lag of up to 40 minutes every time a major decision would have to be made.

On a pedestrian EVA an astronaut could cover and study in better detail what a MER could do in a terrestrial year. An astronaut with a rover could cover in a day what the MERS have done in their entire mission and bring to bear a much greater range of instruments.

And of course a human mission would bring back hundreds of kgs of sample and do whole categories of science imposssible for a unmanned mission.

Jon
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post Jul 13 2008, 10:32 AM
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Colonize Mars?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...le-on-Mars.html
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imipak
post Jul 13 2008, 02:02 PM
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All these points and counterpoints are well laid out in the well-known piece by Charlie Stross (EDIT: on his blog, and in the many many comments added to it.)


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